After lapping up Anne Tyler’s updated Taming of the Shrew, I was keen to feast my eyes (and brain) on some of the other titles in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Because the bones of the stories and characters are, to a greater or lesser extent, already familiar, the novels provide a unique insight into the workings on the authors’ imaginations. For the reader, the interpretations highlight the particular passions of our favourite authors. For the writer – especially one like me who continually asks herself How am I going to pull this one off? – they are a lesson in casting the spell that renders the most crazy plots convincing.
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Canadian author Margaret Atwood and British writer Jeanette Winterson have both chosen to update plays with a magical element and a father-daughter dynamic in the Shakepearian version. (Winterson gives a nod to this by having her daughter-character borrow the name of the daughter from The Tempest when she goes incognito.) Replacing royalty with politicians and hedge fund managers, these are highly contemporary retellings for the digital age, complete with themes of exile and the surveillance society. Both are extremely playful stories that would merit multiple readings. Thanks to Vintage for my review copies.
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As Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, Felix has delegated the boring bits of his role to his Machiavellian second-in-command. So it’s perhaps inevitable that, on the brink of staging what he’s sure would be a magnificent production of The Tempest, Tony has engineered Felix’s departure from his post. A widower, riddled with guilt since the sudden death of his beloved daughter, Miranda, at the age of three, Felix retreats to a backwoods hovel to lick his wounds.
After twelve years in the wilderness, the ghost of his daughter having become more real to him than the limited number of living people he encounters, he takes a job as a tutor in a nearby prison. Before long, his theatre course has become popular with inmates and officers alike. But when he suggests The Tempest as their next production, the students are unsure. They are suspicious of the magical element within the play and bemoan the lack of fight scenes. But Felix wins them round by reframing it as a multi-media musical about prisons, literal and metaphorical, with a dialogue rich in swear words. As the project develops, Felix, as actor-director playing the part of Prospero, cycles between excitement and anxiety. But when he learns that government ministers want to attend the screening for a photo opportunity prior to pulling the plug on funding, Felix realises that he has been gifted the perfect opportunity for revenge on those who betrayed him all those years ago.
Margaret Atwood seems to have had great fun in her retelling of The Tempest, primarily in prose but with a chunk of script as a prologue and a smattering of rap-style poetry. She’s drawn a lot of clever parallels with the original; those more familiar with the text than I am will surely discover more. But even without the shadow of Shakespeare, Hag-seed is an engaging and beautifully written novel about creativity, revenge and second chances, as well as providing an excellent argument for the arts within penal institutions.
For Margaret Atwood’s own account of writing this novel, see this article from the Guardian review.
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On somewhat scant evidence, Leo is convinced his wife is having an affair with his childhood friend, Xeno, who has been staying with the couple and their young son in London. His hyper efficient deputy, Pauline, is unable to persuade him otherwise and, when his wife MiMi gives birth to a baby girl, Leo persuades his gardener, Tony, to take the infant to Xeno, who has fled to the American city of New Bohemia. Unfortunately, the hapless Tony is murdered before he has chance to hand her over, but the baby is rescued by the kindly Shep and his gullible son, Clo.
Eighteen years later, Perdita and her big brother, Clo, are preparing to celebrate their father’s seventieth birthday. She sends him off to purchase a special present, but we know he’s going to be exploited when he meets up with the dodgy used-car salesman, Autolycus. Perdita’s awkward boyfriend, Zel, also shows up to the party, followed shortly by his father, Xeno. Does this mean Perdita is falling in love with her brother? Or are we heading for a family reunion of a different kind?
The Gap of Time is a wonderful tale of sexual jealousy, migration, myth and religion, greed and the banking crisis. Most of all, it’s about the elasticity of time and, in parallel with the author’s own real-life story, it’s about adoption and the abandoned child. But unlike many of Shakespeare’s stories, it’s about healing, forgiveness and happy endings. Having studied this play at school many years ago, I loved Jeanette Winterson’s ingenious updating.
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As Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, Felix has delegated the boring bits of his role to his Machiavellian second-in-command. So it’s perhaps inevitable that, on the brink of staging what he’s sure would be a magnificent production of The Tempest, Tony has engineered Felix’s departure from his post. A widower, riddled with guilt since the sudden death of his beloved daughter, Miranda, at the age of three, Felix retreats to a backwoods hovel to lick his wounds.
After twelve years in the wilderness, the ghost of his daughter having become more real to him than the limited number of living people he encounters, he takes a job as a tutor in a nearby prison. Before long, his theatre course has become popular with inmates and officers alike. But when he suggests The Tempest as their next production, the students are unsure. They are suspicious of the magical element within the play and bemoan the lack of fight scenes. But Felix wins them round by reframing it as a multi-media musical about prisons, literal and metaphorical, with a dialogue rich in swear words. As the project develops, Felix, as actor-director playing the part of Prospero, cycles between excitement and anxiety. But when he learns that government ministers want to attend the screening for a photo opportunity prior to pulling the plug on funding, Felix realises that he has been gifted the perfect opportunity for revenge on those who betrayed him all those years ago.
Margaret Atwood seems to have had great fun in her retelling of The Tempest, primarily in prose but with a chunk of script as a prologue and a smattering of rap-style poetry. She’s drawn a lot of clever parallels with the original; those more familiar with the text than I am will surely discover more. But even without the shadow of Shakespeare, Hag-seed is an engaging and beautifully written novel about creativity, revenge and second chances, as well as providing an excellent argument for the arts within penal institutions.
For Margaret Atwood’s own account of writing this novel, see this article from the Guardian review.
#############################################################
On somewhat scant evidence, Leo is convinced his wife is having an affair with his childhood friend, Xeno, who has been staying with the couple and their young son in London. His hyper efficient deputy, Pauline, is unable to persuade him otherwise and, when his wife MiMi gives birth to a baby girl, Leo persuades his gardener, Tony, to take the infant to Xeno, who has fled to the American city of New Bohemia. Unfortunately, the hapless Tony is murdered before he has chance to hand her over, but the baby is rescued by the kindly Shep and his gullible son, Clo.
Eighteen years later, Perdita and her big brother, Clo, are preparing to celebrate their father’s seventieth birthday. She sends him off to purchase a special present, but we know he’s going to be exploited when he meets up with the dodgy used-car salesman, Autolycus. Perdita’s awkward boyfriend, Zel, also shows up to the party, followed shortly by his father, Xeno. Does this mean Perdita is falling in love with her brother? Or are we heading for a family reunion of a different kind?
The Gap of Time is a wonderful tale of sexual jealousy, migration, myth and religion, greed and the banking crisis. Most of all, it’s about the elasticity of time and, in parallel with the author’s own real-life story, it’s about adoption and the abandoned child. But unlike many of Shakespeare’s stories, it’s about healing, forgiveness and happy endings. Having studied this play at school many years ago, I loved Jeanette Winterson’s ingenious updating.
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