Merriweather
"Noddy, get that frock on and get on that stage' - Shakespeare?'
At St Cyriac's on Feast Saturday 10th May, 7.30pm, for one night only, Alex
Knight's One-Man-Shakespeare is not to be missed.. ..
THIS IS THE STORY OF A LIFE IN SHAKESPEARE'S THEATRE. It lasts two hours, including interval.
'My name is Merriweather; Nicodemus; Doctor Nicodemus Merriweather, and I am an actor. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness sharing their dressing room once in a while. Richard Burbage shared mine, and Will Kemp, and Bob Armin, and Gus Phillips, and Ned Alleyn (once, and never again) and Will Shakespeare. Ha! Ha! Yes, him.. '
Nicodemus Merriweather (born Nick Meadows in 1571 nr St Martins in the Field) ran away to join the theatre on his fifteenth birthday. He freely admits the inherent stupidity of his actions.
Thrust into the breech by William Shakespeare himself, Merriweather's inglorious debut on the London stage both made the history books ('a night of errors!') and heralded a career of playing sidekicks, foils, straight men and stooges to all the truly great actors of the age, but while his work may have drawn only moderate praise ('Really quite good as Sebastian', 'A convincing Claudio', 'Plausible Edgar'), and if triumph came far too late in his life to be exploited, he did serve alongside the greats of his day for more than fifteen years. Now he tells his story.
'When I was a boy, I had no idea that I might end up an actor. John
Meadows, my father, was a farmer, and we lived hard by St Martin in the Fields.
Now one day, when I was nearly fifteen, a troupe of players came by on their
way back to Southwark, and rather than roll on past, they stopped and set their
stage up and everyone from the village came to watch, and they played a play.
It was called Titus Andronicus, and it was very strong meat for a boy of nearly
fifteen; some poor girl raped, then her hands are cut off and her tongue ripped
out, then Titus, who's her father, goes mad and kills the guilty men, bakes
them in a pie, and feeds them to their own mother. Phew! And the very best bit
about the play was that the villain was.. a black man - a Moor; we poor
country people had never seen the like of such a fellow before.. '
Merriweather's perspective is unique, his memory remarkable, and his honesty unflinching. His tenure with the Lord Chamberlain's - later The King's Men - took him through turbulent times - The Essex Rebellion, The Gunpowder Plot, a change of royal dynasty; true horror - the execution of Roderigo Lopez, and his own interrogation in The Clink, and the Plague - while all the time he saw how Will and those closest to him turned life in the late 16th/early 17th centuries into the greatest drama in history.
During the course of the play, Merriweather portrays forty or more characters, some real people, others Will's own creations in their finest speeches. Hilariously funny, hair-raising, bloody and poignantly sad, 'Merriweather' is a great night out for lovers of The Bard and newcomers to Shakespeare alike.
'Then news went round that he was writing his last play, and that it was going to be the best ever with tragedy, comedy, magic and history (or at least mythology), and a bear. He called it The Winters Tale, and a right winters tale it was too. Burbage played Leontes, the insanely jealous king, while I played a bear - I'd been with the company for fifteen years, and there I was, in Will Shakespeare's farewell to the London Stage, dressed up in a flea-ridden bear skin, trying to bring about the fatuous stage direction 'Exit Antigonus, pursued by a bear'.. '
About the Show
Merriweather is a one man show, all of the costumes and properties for which come on stage with the performer in his special one-man-theatre that he carries on his back. The show is designed to be entirely self-contained.
The script was inspired by Anthony Holden's book 'Shakespeare', and tells the story of Shakespeare's career, attempting to explain why he wrote what he wrote when he wrote it, as told by a former member of the company, ten years after Will's death.
Merriweather is a fictional character, but only because he never became famous
- he could very easily have existed - the acting profession has always had its
Merriweathers; able, reliable, voluble, but never quite making it beyond one
very good role at just the wrong time for it to be really useful, and then
falling back into obscurity. Merriweather worked with the best actors of his
day alongside the greatest literary genius who ever lived.
Shakespeare is among the forty characters that make up the cast; it is Will who gives Merriweather his big chance to join the company, and his appearances in the show are from Merriweather's rather awed perspective. There's been more than one suggestion that the historical Will would have had a Warwickshire accent, and he certainly has in this story; just because he's the greatest literary genius of all time, why shouldn't he have a regional accent'
Favourite Shakespeare line 'Noddy, get that frock on and get on that stage'.