What would your friends do to preserve the legacy of your body of work? The work is appreciated in your lifetime, but your friends see how far-reaching it can be, and they are determined you will be remembered long after you shuffle off this mortal coil. This question is answered by Lauren Gunderson’s brilliant “The Book of Will”, this Summer’s production for Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in the FM Kirby Theatre. Artistic Director Emerita Bonnie J. Monte directs this gimlet-eye view of what it takes to assure that while Ars Longa Vita Brevis, art is long and life is short, memory may be shorter still.
Within the span of this play, we see the struggle that Kings Men company administrator John Heminges and actor Henry Cordell, two of William Shakespeare’s dearest friends, endured from the time they determined to collect all of Will’s genuine works as well as to separate the literary wheat from the chaff of those who would capitalize on Shakespeare’s name without a scintilla of his talent. And what a cast!
John Heminges (Anthony Marble) and Henry Condell (Michael Stewart Allen) are the two movement leaders with John’s daughter Alice (Carolyne Leys) supporting the effort at every level. She literally knows the players and the program. Other STNJ Company favorites in the cast include Brent Harris as both pontificating Richard Burbage as well as the gnarly and nefarious publisher William Jaggard with Isaac Hickox-Young as Isaac Jaggard, the son who got all the scruples that William left behind. Victoria Mack returns in an intricate portrait of Rebecca Heminges and rounding out the cast Pearce Bunting as Ben Jonson, Gerardo Garcia as the Crier, Amy Hutchins as Elizabeth Condell, Jack Styner’s Boy Hamlet and Patrick Toon’s gifted comic turns as Marcus, among many others as most of the cast has additional roles throughout.
Marble and Allen are so closely fit as Heminges and Cordell that they seem almost like figure skaters, brothers who could finish one another’s sentences and it begs the question of what Heminges, Cordell and Shakespeare must have all been like as one. Perennial themes like how to financing a project works when done for the greater good, swallowing one’s pride in sacrifice to a world treasure and giving up what is happy or comfortable in the moment, knowing that discomfort now means preserving a legacy for generations yet unborn. Sure, it sounds grand, but see “The Book of Will” to understand the will behind the book that would become The First Folio.
Bonnie J. Monte’s hand is evident everywhere and be sure the read the program to get even greater depth on a beautifully faceted gem. Visit https://www.shakespearenj.org/events/detail/book-of-will now for your best choice of dates. The run ends July 28 and it’s right around the corner!