"Shakespeare shakes you. The spear of his imagination shakes you, and the story shakes you," said Mark Rylance, artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, in an interview for The Japan Times last October.
He went on to explain that the first time the playwright's name was published -- presumably with his assent -- it was written as: "Will I am Shake-Spear." "It's as if he wanted us to think of that," Rylance commented, referring to the Bard's feeling for the zest and relish of stage drama as a performing art.
So, is the current "Tenpo 12th no Shakespeare (Shakespeare in the 12th year of Tenpo [i.e. 1842])" at Akasaka Act Theater shaking the spears of its Tokyo audiences? Certainly, the stage shakes from the excessive sound effects, and the actors' voices shake from gremlins in the mikes they all wear. But this three-hour spectacle entirely failed to shake this theatergoer's spear.