To celebrate Vilis’s birthday, we packed a picnic supper and drove to Queens Gardens near downtown Townsville for an outdoor performance of William Shakespeare’s tragic two-act play Richard III (here subtitled There’s One in Every Family!). While we settled into our chairs in temporary stands, dusk dropped onto the city, bringing with it stars that sprinkled the heavens and lent credence to the ‘Shakespeare Under the Stars’ event title.
Brendan O’Connor opened and carried the play with a riveting performance as the deformed youngest royal son, Richard. His swaggering/skulking, black-adorned character slipped into and out of the darkness around the lit stage like some evil spirit. The entire performance was rather a macabre, but very effective collage of Elizabethan and modern costuming, eerie music from Nox Ancana’s Carnival of Lost Souls, and professional and amateur acting. It contained considerable dark humour.
Bush Stone-curlew (© Magi Nams)
I had to smile several times not at the play itself, but at its setting. Black flying foxes flew through the night above the stage, their wings black against the falling darkness. The gardens’ resident owls’ hoots punctuated a particularly tense scene. The maniacal wails of the bush stone-curlews floated on warm evening air and blended with the eerie music. Afterward, I wondered how many of the performers or audience members had noticed the bats and night birds. For me, the critters had both enhanced the ghoulish atmosphere of the production and allowed me to step outside it. I think Will would have approved of them.
