So I'm excited to have Robert Sicular here, who is currently playing Toby Belch in CSF's production of Twelfth Night. Welcome, Robert. Thank you, and I would like to add that it's Sir Toby Belch? Yes, Sir Toby Belch. Yes. Well, I want you to talk about that. So before the cameras started rolling, you were telling us this is your fourth time playing this role. This is my first time playing this role. I played it originally in high school when I was 16, and then I played it at the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival when I was 25, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when I was 49. Coincidentally, the actor playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek in that production was Christopher DuVal who directed this year's production of Romeo and Juliet. Excellent. Yeah. Small world. It is, it is a small world. This is actually also my eighth time doing this play. I played Malvolio three times, and Feste once. That is something I'm going to want to talk about. Yeah, it's a lot of fun looking at things from different angles for sure. You have an extensive Shakespeare resume? I do. I lost count a little while ago, but I believe it's somewhere over 90 productions of Shakespeare, going back to when I was 15, playing my first Shakespearean role, which was Peter Quince, in a Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter Quince in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Yeah. Excellent. So talk a little bit about Toby's worldview, Sir Toby Belch's worldview, having gotten to portray this role as often as you have, what did you learn about him? Well, all we have is what the text gives us, and in language, what's said about the character, what the character says about themselves, and the various clues they're in. I've surmised that Sir Toby is ex-military. He talks in terms of wars and soldiers a fair amount. There's no war going on now, there are oblique references in the play to some wars having occurred in the recent past. I figured that he's the Countess Olivia's mother's younger brother, so he was not in a position to inherit. A soldier out of war has nothing to do. He's bored, he makes mischief, he drinks way too much, he has no money. So he's made the acquaintance of this foolish night, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and one of the first things he says about him is that he has 2,000 ducats a year, that's his income, which is a lot of money, 3,000 ducats a year. It's a lot of ducats. It's a lot of ducats, yeah. Later on he says in the play that he's already spent 2,000 of his ducats. So he's taking advantage of this guy he's using to have fun. We all had nerdy friends probably when we were kids that we let hang out because they were fun to be around and also you could make fun of them behind their back, which Toby does a lot with Sir Andrew, and at the very end of the play, of course, he rejects him finally. He comes to, not a catharsis exactly, but a place where he can't do this anymore, and he marries Olivia's chambermaid, Maria. The feeling is that he is going to go straight. I don't know what that means, there's no sequel to the play, so you don't know if it works out. So that's basically, I think his worldview is that world is here to have fun because there's nothing else to do. It's a way to distract from whatever skeletons. Whatever demons he has going in his mind. I think that's great. It's interesting. So tell me about he is a veteran, is a really interesting [inaudible]. It could be played in many different ways, I've seen it played just totally for laughs, that at the end of the play when he rejects Andrew, that it's more or less, it's just because he's been beaten and he's got a bloody head, that he's just in a really foul mood. I've also seen it played extremely darkly. That's the thing about Shakespeare, especially his comedies, that there's just all kind of levels there. I've always characterized Shakespeare as being an unfathomable mine. You can keep digging and digging and digging and digging and you're never going to get to the bottom of it, and there's always nuggets that you're going to take out. I can't tell you how many times I've done a Shakespearean role. We've rehearsed it for 4-8 weeks, we run the play anywhere from 4-12 weeks or eight months or whatever, and then the show closes and the next day I go, "That's what that meant. I could have done it this way." It's pretty great stuff really. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. So I like that you pointed out that he's a Sir, because class figures pretty strongly into this play. Yeah, that's true, it does. It has the position or the luxury. Yeah. To behave in the way he is. He does. That's one thing that I think Americans in particularly have a difficult time with, the idea of class structure. Yeah. Especially as almost codified as it was during Shakespeare's time. Yeah. It still exists in Britain to a degree. Most of the class structure we have hear in America has to do with money, and not how you were born. Yeah. There is a point on the play now you're talking about his relationship with Malvolio. Malvolio, of course, he's Olivia's steward. He runs the household. He's joyless. She wants to be morning for seven years, so she's hired this guy to make sure that there's no frivolity, no extraneous noise, and all that. Of course, Toby wants to party. Yeah. There's one late night drunken debauch that they're just singing, carousing, and Maria comes and says, "Please shut up." They won't, and Malvolio shows up, and says, "What's wrong with you? Are you crazy?" Toby won't stop, and then finally, he goes up to him and says, "At anymore than a steward. Yes. Does thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" In other words, he's saying, "What right have you to tell me what to do?" Yeah. You have absolutely no right, you're a servant. That's a prevalent through, of course, well, sides all over the world, especially sides with aristocracy. Yeah. So from Toby's perspective, that's justification enough to escalate the jokes to the degree that he does? Yes. Absolutely. I mean, there's a fare amount of cruelty in this play? Yes. That's true. Especially for a comedy. Can we talk about that? Again, there are many different levels. Well, I mean, they take this, just they fooled Malvolio into thinking that countess Olivia is in love with him by forging this letter, and he comes in, I'm sure you've already talked about this, but dressed crazily and smiling and acting really weird. They think he's insane now. In those days, what they did with crazy people is they locked them up and they tied them up, and beat them with a whip. There's actually a line, as you like it about whipper lovers deserve a dark house and a whip as much as mad man do or something like that. Yeah. Toby says, "Hey, let's do this. This sounds like a lot of fun." It does go too far. He can be played as penitent, and I think he is to a degree, but when he actually says, "I am now so far an offense with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot." He doesn't really have pity on Malvolio. He doesn't care. He hates that guy. He still hates that guy. Right. You just don't want to get kicked out. He don't want to get kicked out. He's already maid a lot of errors and he's living there by the grace of his nice. Again, you don't have to play it that way. I'm not playing it that way, because I like happier ending. Perhaps we rejects the foolishness and the drunkenness and tries to straighten himself out. He gets married at the end. Yeah. That's a great segue, you mentioned he seems to have taken a shine to Maria. He's deferential to her throughout the play, would appear, and then marries her at the end. She's really smart. Yeah. She sees through all a lot of the crap. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting now we're talking about class. I known. Because she's not of the nobility, I don't think. Right. But I guess you can fudge it. Yeah. Especially, well, I hate to say that, but if you're a man, you can probably lift up a woman easier than a woman lifting up a man. At that time, certainly. Yeah. Well, though Malvolio does say that there is example for it. Lady of the Strachey married the woman of wardrobe, whatever that means. Well, that's really interesting. I mean, so you do, you have high hopes for the marriage. For the sequel. And for the reversal. I do. That's great. I mean, I like happy endings. Yeah. I really do. I grew up in Hollywood movies. Right. Well, one thing that we were talking about with Twelfth Night is that these later comedies are sort of darker, and he is putting pressure on the form of a comedy. Not everybody in the play does have a happy ending. No. Certainly not. Malvolio doesn't. Right. When he swears revenge, Andrew doesn't. He's rejected and the feeling is that he goes home to wherever he's from, much poorer, perhaps slightly wiser. Yeah. But then Toby marrying Maria is the chance to begin again. Yeah. At least nobody dies in this one. Right. Well, except for all the sailors in the beginning, and during the shipwreck. Right. They all die, but they don't count. Right. Olivia's mother and father but that happened before. But it's interesting how in a lot of the Shakespeare plays, they never mentioned mothers. The mothers never mentioned there King Lear, the mothers never mentioned as you'd like it. Mothers never mentioned, I don't know, maybe Shakespeare thought that, he just have to write more poets for boys, and it was just a bother because good boy actors are hard to find. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to talking about the later comedies. I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, this was written in 1600 or 1601, and I think it's thought that the next play he wrote was Hamlet. Well, it was right around that time. It was right around the same time. As you'd like it to. Yeah. That's really interesting, that he is shifting into another mode write then and there because there is. He only writes a couple of comedies as far as we know. Again, these are all educated guesses, but yeah, and then he leaves comedies and that's when he starts with the tragedies. The tragedies. It's almost like he's got tired of the form. Who knows what was going on in his life too. I mean, it's all speculation because we known so little. He ends his career with all these, what we call romances. Yeah, he seems to get to the other sighed of whatever. Yeah, and those are all about reconciliation and forgiveness, sibling Winter's Tale, The Tempest, great place. It's wonderful actually as an actor, being able to play. I've done, 31 over 37 plays. Getting close. Yeah, well, I'm missing sum of the easy ones too like Much Ado About Nothing, or Two Gentlemen of Verona. However, I've done all three parts of Henry The Sixth. I've not done Henry The Eighth, I've done King John, I've done Parakletos, not done Timon of Athens, but who has, who wants to, but why not? But it's interesting to have disguise words in your mouth doing glare from the very early plays like Richard the Third or the Henry Six plays or comedy of errors all the weigh up into the End. The Tempest, or the two Noble Kinsmen, which I've also done. It digress for a second about the hole authorship question. The Earl of Oxford or the Earl of Derby or Christopher Marlow. I've read the works of those men. I've out loud, I've performed the works of Shakespeare, like I say something close to a 100 times. How it feels in your mouth is different. You can read the sonnets of Edward de Veer over of Oxford and red Shakespeare sonnets and it's not the same man. You can read Tamerlane or Edward the second by Christopher Marlow, and then read Richard the Second by Shakespeare,and it's not the same man. But you can tell when you do Richard the third, you do Hamlet, you do King Lear, you do The Winter's Tale, that it's the same man, it feels the same in your mouth. It's something that an actor knows. I think a lot of academicians miss that because they don't speak it. There is a difference, of course, through the time, definite evolution in is use of language inverse. But to me, it feels like the same guy,. Yeah. The same author. It's really quite wonderful. I always forget that I go through periods in my career where I know more classical theater, I can't do it. I really wanted to film or want to do contemporary American works,and just not have to worry about style or that kind of language. Then I get back to Shakespeare and go, I remember now, skies the best. Yeah, it really is because he gives you so much, not only in his characterizations and the situations, but there's something about, again, in the language. This is a problem I found with, I'm not going to mention any of us specifically, any theater specifically, but a lot of interpretations of Shakespeare that they apologized for the language. They give it short shrift. What has to remember that Shakespeare was not called a playwright at the time, did not refer to themselves as a playwright. nun of them did. They called themselves poets. A lot of his plays have written mostly in poetry in Iambic pentameter. I have a hard time interpreting or understanding modern poetry. But when you get to classical poetry is like Earl. It's not just the usage of the words or the syntax, it's poetry. This is the Shakespeare's genius. Maybe this is what going to the previous question, something about how it feels in your mouth because he gives you clues as to the emotional content of the character by the words, the word order, and the sounds. Just give a brief example. I'm also playing Lord Capulet, Juliet's father in Romeo and Juliet, and when he won't do his bidding and you're getting really angry with her. He says, "Federal. 'You're fine.' Joints against Thursday. Next go with Paris distinct Peter's Church, or I will drag the Anner hurdle thither". So you listen federal, you're playing joints against Thursday next two go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church. Now, what does that say to you? I will drag the honor hurdle to that much more open sounds, so that he's trying to convey the meaning of what he means, what he wanted to do and then he gets to the emotional part of it. Yeah. My teachers always taught me that consonants carry meaning and vowels carry emotion. If you want to look back in time a little bit, watch Lawrence Olivier and John Gielgud. Gielgud was accused of singing his poets. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, tell sad stories of the death of Kings like that. It's because he's, delivering the emotional content of it. One of our exercises, and I would encourage anybody reading Shakespeare or studying Shakespeare to speak it out loud. Speak it slowly, give it it's full value in the vowels, the consonants, the alliteration, the assonance, what we call verbal conceits, to see how that sounds and how that feels in your mouth, and how that informs the emotional and intellectual good content of the text. It's a wonderful thing to do. So there are many different approaches. The thing is that never give the language short shrift. It's never just about the situation and the characters, it's also about the language and it's heightened language. It's poetry. But it's natural for these people. It's not natural speech, but it's natural for these people to be speaking this way. So it goes from prose to poetry, to rhyming poetry, to sonnets. Like when Romeo and Juliet meet, they meet with a sonnet, 14 lines sonnet. It's incredible. Yeah. Really incredible writing. Wonderful stuff. They write one together. Yes, they do. Yeah. That's great. So these terrific reflections about language, can you talk about Toby's language, especially considering that you've played the role for different times in your life? Yes. I'm so interested to hear what you make of Toby's language and how that may have changed over the various times that you have played the role? Well, obviously, I have much more of an understanding of language in general now. Although I was blessed in high school when I first performed this with wonderful director and wonderful cast. Actually, it was back in the good old days when there was a lot of money for the arts and my high school in particular did a really great job in theater and dance and music. But Toby's language is interesting. He doesn't speak verse at all in the play. He's entirely prose. The danger of that, of course, is to make it plotting. Shakespeare is such a good writer that a lot of his prose sounds like poetry. But it also gives you a license to bend it more. When he's telling Andrew to go, he's challenged [inaudible] the boy, to do, and he's telling Andrew to go get himself ready. He says to him, just go Sir Andrew. Scout before him at the corner of the orchard. So soon as ever thou ceased him draw and as though [inaudible] swear horrible. When it comes to pass off that a terrible oath with a swaggering accent, sharply twined off, gives manhood more approbation, they never proof itself would have earned him away. He says," No, let me around for swearing.". Yeah. It's totally fun stuff. But there's an awareness of the power of language there. Yeah. Yeah. I had a teacher one time who told me that some of the great Shakespearean speeches, the Othello or Hamlet or Lear, whatever, it's almost like a plane taking off. It gathers momentum and sores in the sky. That's a trick that we actors do especially in theater. Because, you got to remember that, that Elizabethans society was a more verbal society, not a literate society. He went to hero play. He went to hero play. So the idea of building a speech to the end actually works for prose, as it does for poetry. You can hear when my voice, it builds to the point of away, because that momentum and that drive, that's very important in language to maintain that drive, to keep the energy going forward. No pauses in Shakespeare. It's been said that there's no subtext in Shakespeare, and that you think on the line. A lot of times in modern times we think and then we speak. In Shakespeare's time, they thought and spoke at the same time. So sometimes some of his speeches look like stream of consciousness and you don't get to the actual point of the speech until the end. So you have to keep that in mind. Yes, to get back to your observation about Sir Toby as a veteran, Shakespeare puts a lot of veterans in his plays and not just in the war plays. Have you had the opportunity, there are Shakespeare with veterans groups popping up all over the country. I think it's really fascinating. I've had conversations with veterans about these plays and I'm excited for you to work on much to do about nothing when you do, because that's another example of a comedy, it has veterans in it. Thinking about it from that perspective illuminates a lot about the play it seems to be. Well absolutely, and in Shakespeare's time, there were wars going on all the time. There was a war in Flanders, the Dutch wars and succession from the Spanish that were going on for eight years. I think the eight years war and always got to fight against the French one time or another. So there were a lot of people in Shakespeare's time that military experience. Who were then trying to reintegrate into civilian life? Yeah.. There's Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. It's not said specifically that he was a soldier, but he had a lot of military references as well. Mercutio Queen Mab's speech has many times been played as almost a manifestation of PTSD. Right. Which of course didn't really exist back in those days, it did exist, of course it did. Of course, we just didn't call it that. Yeah, and there are other examples of things like that, of war having damaged people. Yeah, this is a total tangent, but I just did a stage reading with some veterans of Coriolanus. Coriolanus is a character who many have said is difficult to like, but if you understand that he is dealing with trying to reintegrate into civilian life after having been in war, a soldier at peacetime. Yeah, and that's all he does there. It's everything you said about Toby Belch. Yeah, Coriolanus is a very interesting play. Yeah. Yeah, and he cannot integrate himself back into society and do what people expect him to do. That shed so much light on Toby Belch, that is such an interesting observation. Yeah. I don't think I came to that later. The first time I played it, in poor is a rapscallion, fun-loving night, although we did play, even in high school, we played the darker edges of the thing. I think they're hard to miss. Yeah, exactly. But my thinking is actually quite developed in the US, a thinking of that underlying aspect of him, of a veteran and disappointed in the world. The idea of melancholy in Shakespeare's time, of course, is a huge one. Hamlet, Jacques as You Like It. Really starting right around these plays. Right around these plays. Again, who knows what was going on in Shakespeare's life? Yeah, exactly. So the question I've been using to wrap these fantastic conversations has been, why Twelfth Night today, in 2019? Again, you've worked on this play throughout your carrier. It's 2019? Good God. Exactly. That happened. Having gotten to be inside this play again for the seventh time. Eighth. Eighth time. Is that a lucky number or not? I [inaudible]. I know. Yeah. What do you come away with? Why is this play relevant today? Why should we be working on it? First of all, why do people go to the theater? What's the fundamental reason people go see anything? Is to be entertained. So that's what's one thing. It's an entertaining play, it's fun play, you care about the characters, you really do. I can say something tried about the universality of it all, but I won't. Well, the thing that I love that you talk about is that we should not be apologizing for the language or normalizing the poetry in order to make it accessible. Do the play and it will resonate with people. Yeah. I've really enjoyed hearing actors' perspectives on what it is about this play that is having the effect on the audience. Well, the audiences are really loving it. Yeah. It's funny, yes, but I'm not really good at the deeper conceptual meanings of place. I tend to think of things more in terms of entertainment value and also storytelling. Yeah, that's great. I think of myself as an actor, but also as a storyteller, and stories are wonderful, and they teach us about ourselves, maybe that's it. They teach us about ourselves, it's like you put yourself a really well done play or a movie or anything or a told story, the hearer, the watcher, puts themselves into the position of the character in the story. Through that journey, you can learn something about yourself, like, what would I do in that situation? Why are they doing this? That makes you think. Also in our modern era issues of gender and race and age and politics, they all resonate. We're a modern audience doing a classical play but in a modern theater for a modern audience, so people will bring their thoughts, I won't say prejudices, but their various Perspectives. perspectives, exactly, thank you. Their perspectives to the production, and it perhaps can make them think outside of their own boxes a little bit, that's the glory of theater. Like I say, the primary goal is as entertainment. But at the same time, like I say, Shakespeare is an unfathomable mind, you are going to be pulling nuggets out of there and people will say, "Wow, that's so rich. This is written 400 years ago, what?". Yeah, exactly. That's one of the great influence with, why do it at all? It is because you can always get more out of it. You can always get more and the audience can take away more. A good production of Shakespeare, the audience will leave feeling smarter. I totally agree with you. Smart is good thing. Yeah, I agree. Thank you, Robert. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming. Alright.
