The English Channel

The question of Shakespearean authorship—that devil’s food cake on which critics have gorged for generations—is not limited to whether the Avon man actually penned the plays that history accords him. There is also the problem of authorship in general: whether great writers pluck masterpieces from the ether of their genius, or serve as conduits for the energies and voices around them. The venerable Robert Brustein, éminence grise of the American theater, is well versed in these issues, and he synthesizes them cleverly in The English Channel, a modest historical diversion set in 1593.

Played with an easy smile by Stafford Clark-Price, this Shakespeare is akin in character to the attendant lord of T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” (“Deferential, glad to be of use.… Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse”), and a magpie collector of other people’s ideas. The English Channel situates him in one corner of a romantic and political rectangle that also involves the sly libertine Christopher Marlowe (the exceptional Sean Dugan), as well as the two main figures from the Sonnets, here identified as the pretty Earl of Southampton (Brian Robert Burns) and the defiant Emilia Lanier (Lori Gardner). Accessorized with florid language and much winking to the audience, the plot dips into themes from Henry IV and takes a long bath in Othello; and although the play lacks the farcical vigor of Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon (or the film Shakespeare in Love), Daniela Varon’s handsome staging keeps you entertained as Brustein lays out groundwork, not always flattering, for the eventual triumph of the Will.