Review: Shakespeare’s Cousin, White Bear Theatre

Imagine a time when surveillance is everywhere, religious minorities are scapegoated, and intellectuals and artists are despised. Dissenters’ homes are raided and they are taken away. Public executions are offered up as public entertainment: Elizabethan England was surely a horrible period for many.

This new play by actor/playwright Jonathan Moore explores what it was like to be on the receiving end of religious persecution, to be hunted, tortured and eventually murdered for the crime of following a faith other than that of the official church of the day. Shakespeare’s Cousin shines a light on one of the period’s many victims: Robert Southwell, a distant cousin of William Shakespeare, who was executed in 1595 at just 33 years old.

The show begins with two men in an English garden. They sit amicably chatting, over freshly baked bread and cinnamon milk. The elder of the pair is the owner of this fine house and garden, and he casually mentions that he has recently adapted his cellar so that he can work from home. We quickly learn that they are not friends but captor and captive: the notorious Elizabethan priest hunter Sir Richard Topcliffe (Robin Kingsland) and his prisoner, the poet priest Robert Southwell (Danny Solomon). Topcliffe initially presents himself as a renaissance man – educated and enlightened, doting on his children. He loves animals, nature, art and poetry. This persona quickly changes. While Topcliffe can be charming and sensitive at times, he is actually a ruthless psychopath who takes pleasure in extreme violence.

The narrative takes a very dark turn, as Topcliffe ruthlessly and sadistically tortures Southwell, trying to make him reveal where fellow Jesuit priests are hiding. After refusing to tell, Southwell is put in the Tower of London, awaiting execution and is visited by his famous long-lost cousin. Shakespeare (Alex Townson) is portrayed as an insensitive narcissist, obsessed with his own celebrity, oblivious to the very real threat facing Southwell. This section provides some light-hearted banter but a discussion about Shakespeare’s religious views (whether he is secretly a Catholic) goes on a bit too long. Shakespeare’s epilogue about how Southwell’s death has changed him, his writing and theatre in general, feels disconnected and indulgent, given the harrowing events we have witnessed.

Moore’s writing is clever, witty, quite wordy but natural sounding. The clear modern English has echoes of Shakespeare but is easy to follow. Shakespeare’s Cousin is not an easy watch. It includes extreme violence, either shown graphically or in a more abstract way with clever lighting accompanied by bloodcurdling screams. Equally disturbing are Topcliffe’s gleeful descriptions of torture and executions that are going to be carried out

The casting is excellent. Kingsland is superb as Topcliffe, swinging rapidly between decent and depraved. One minute he loves his children, the next he is applying a thumbscrew. Solomon’s Southwell is a dignified and defiant presence in the face of Topcliffe’s brutality and Townson is a youthful and nimble Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s Cousin works well in the intimate space of the White Bear Theatre but is significant enough to be seen on a bigger stage. There are many issues raised that mirror current events, such as the growth of dangerous ideologies, erasure of dissenting voices and how seemingly well-rounded people can do horrific things. We will never know whether the cousins actually met, but the grizzly details of the Elizabethan regime are real, and the play does a good job of bringing to life a largely forgotten victim.

Writer and Director: Jonathan Moore
Associate Producer/Assistant Director: Max Bancroft
Set Designer/Costume Supervisor: Violet Gausden
Lighting and Sound Designer: Gabriel Burns
Specialist Prop Maker: Deb Weston

Shakespeare’s Cousin plays at the White Bear Theatre until Saturday 28 November.