Juliet: A Revenge Comedy wrestles female characters' fate back from the Bard
Co-creators Pippa Mackie and Ryan Gladstone mark five years of irreverent fun, as Monster Theatre play hits The Cultch stage
Lili Beaudoin & Carly Pokoradi. Photo by Peyton Mott
Ryan Gladstone as William Shakespeare. Photo by Pink Monkey Studios
The Cultch presents Monster Theatre’s Juliet: A Revenge Comedy, extended to February 23
AT ONE POINT IN Juliet: A Revenge Comedy, after a particularly gruelling section of the action-adventure Shakespeare sendup, the titular heroine sighs, “I’ve been on a jo-o-ourney!” Reflecting that, the gang at Vancouver’s Monster Theatre has a little ritual before the curtain opens. “We all have a hug in the middle and we yell ‘Let’s go on a jo-o-ourney!’” writer, director, and actor Ryan Gladstone reveals to Stir in a Zoom interview with his co-creator Pippa Mackie. “So every single show has started out that way.”
“Which is probably close to 100 at this point,” Mackie adds.
The preshow ritual could not be more fitting: Juliet has been a real trip since Mackie and Gladstone cooked up the idea five years ago. It’s gone from Fringe circuit favourite to Jessie Award–winning play. This week it sees its debut on its biggest stage yet, with a new design, at The Cultch’s Historic Theatre, followed by a trip to Orlando in May and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan in August.
But the hit show still holds onto its rowdy, irreverent roots, according to Mackie.
“We had some of our first performances in the King’s Head Pub in Winnipeg,” she recalls, “and it’s in the upstairs part of the bar, where people can order food and drinks during the show. The stage is basically not a stage.”
“It’s dining-room table size,” jumps in Gladstone.
“And there’s something so fitting about premiering the show in that environment—it did something to the show that we’ve carried forward,” Mackie continues. “And that’s kind of similar to what I imagined going to some of Shakespeare’s shows, in his time, would be like: kind of raucous and interactive and not taking itself too seriously. I remember some bachelorette parties came to the show. And the bartenders had their favourite lines and they would yell them out to us.”
Those beginnings gave the show an atmosphere and energy that have stuck, she adds.
“We sold out the first-ever show we did. So we had nothing to back it off of, and it’s just been touring the country in a similar fashion ever since,” Mackie says. “Like, we just want to have fun and make people laugh and take the piss out of Shakespeare a little bit.”
In the irreverent comedy, the title character (originated by Mackie, with Lili Beaudoin in role here) finds herself in an endless loop of turning a dagger on herself—eventually recruiting some of Shakespeare’s most famous, and similarly doomed, female characters to help her break the cycle. Gladstone plays the Bard himself, pursuing his heroines before they upend his canon.
As a playwright, Mackie recently debuted her full-length Hurricane Mona. As an actor, she’s played roles from Pinocchio at the East Van Panto to Leap (a character who wished she was Juliet) in The Society of the Destitute Presents: Titus Bouffonius. For his part, Gladstone is a veteran improvisor (thanks in part to a decade working with Keith Johnstone at Loose Moose Theatre) and has co-created more than 40 plays as artistic director at Monster.
Fittingly, the two friends hatched the original concept for Juliet: A Revenge Comedy while hanging out at a Fringe bar.
“Shakespeare’s writing is freaking amazing, but part of what we’re taking the piss out of is our reverence for it,” says Gladstone. “The idea that, because it’s in the canon, it must be perfect and marvellous, and everything is great. Because when we picked apart the writing, we were like, ‘Good Lord, all these women, um, killed themselves!’”
Playwright Pippa Mackie.
Mackie interjects: “And with two of them, for sure it’s because of hysteria. They’re written in lots of ways so strong. They’re incredibly well written. And then there is something about Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia just kind of disappearing in the shows. And then they’re gone and so it's a chance for us as writers to imagine what they would do if they didn't die, if they didn’t kill themselves out of this hysteria.”
For women coming up in the theatre world, Juliet and Shakespeare’s other female characters are often held up as the be-all-and-end-all of roles. But Mackie admits she never really related to them—or at least the ones in the Bard’s tragedies.
“I think in the comedies—well, they live and there’s more fun to be had there,” she says. “But there’s something about their lack of presence in certain aspects of the tragedies that I wanted to challenge.
“This character in particular is so culturally relevant to people,” she adds of Juliet. “She’s either the character you want to play out of theatre school, or you want to do her monologue. You know, it’s like the greatest love story of all time. But when you actually kind of look at the facts, it was not so romantic. It was kind of ridiculous. And really, to us, it was very funny. She’s only 13!”
Not to mention she dies over a dude she met only two days before—and on the rebound from another crush.
As for Gladstone, he sees his role as Shakespeare as a bit of the “Revenge” in the show’s title. “It’s so much fun to stand up there and be a pompous, arrogant, chauvinistic asshole,” the improv veteran says with a laugh.
As for the third actor in the play, Carly Pokoradi, Mackie and Gladstone have written no less than 20-plus characters for her—including an iconic Cleopatra, Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth, that last one with a punishing Scottish brogue.
“Acting with her you forget that it’s just one person,” Mackie marvels. “She has found a way to vocally and physically switch between the characters so precisely.”
In some ways, Mackie and Gladstone are rewriting all we’ve been taught about women sacrificing themselves in literature. But don’t take their messages too seriously: Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is a laughter-filled theatrical journey.
“We don’t want to hit people over the head with some sort of feminist message, even though that’s very much part of the show,” assures Mackie. “I think that it’s occurring naturally in the storytelling. People are resonating with that, and have had really strong opinions about these characters for a long time and not had a place to express that or to see that.”
Adds Gladstone: “I always believe in that phrase that if the central question of your play is answerable, it’s not deep enough. This gets deeper into it: there’s not one answer, there’s not one moral to it—people have to go home and say, ‘What do I feel about that?’, which I think is the power of art in general, but also what’s been great about this project.”
And unlike a regular production of Romeo and Juliet, you’ll just have to wait to see if she dies in the end.
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