Allison McWood's Shakespearean Adaptations

Allison McWood

Link to It was Kit: The TRUE story of Christopher Marlow

Link to The Embarrassing Life of King Ficklefred

Allison McWood received an honours degree at York University in English Literature with a speciality in Renaissance drama. She now works as a full time librettist and playwright. McWood has written a wide variety of plays, many using established characters or historical figures in new and humorous ways, such as Welcome to Eden, population 2 and Death of a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman. She has written three plays, which adapt the character of William Shakespeare, using satire, farce and humour. Her works, Shakespeare’s Brain, It was Kit: The TRUE story of Christopher Marlowe, and The Embarrassing Life of King Ficklefred join the twenty five adaptations CASP has archived that feature Shakespeare as a character. These adaptations situate Shakespeare’s historical presence, reaffirm his character to a wide and varied audience and attest to his significant and important role in contemporary Canadian culture.

Shakespeare’s Brain is a one act comedic play that opened at the New Ideas Festival in Toronto, and ran from March 21-24, 2007. The production asks the question: “If only Shakespeare could see what we have done to his plays … Wait a minute … What if he can?” (Production Summary). To explore this scenario, McWood utilizes two settings: one of William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin playing checkers in Purgatory, and the other featuring two literature professors, Smog and Blather, who through a mysterious and possibly illegal situation have obtained Shakespeare’s brain for dissection. McWood’s play focuses on the comparison between supposed “scientific” fact and the academic speculation associated with literary criticism. The use of University professors and the characters of Shakespeare and Darwin further accentuate McWood’s critique of academic pedantry. The critique of the often-convoluted attitudes and theories of Shakespearean academics is brought to the forefront when Shakespeare returns to Earth to engage Smog and Blather.

It was Kit: The TRUE Story of Christopher Marlowe is a full-length play that debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2006. The Fringe program states that the play “is a farce [that] examines the last week of Marlowe’s life, raising questions regarding the accuracy of history, the legitimacy of the Monarchy and the interpretation of the artist” (Fringe Program). The ideas of academics and theorists are again criticized and exemplified as over-saturated and problematic. Shakespeare is presented as the black sheep of Elizabethan playwrights. Marlowe tells him that Romeo and Juliet “is the corniest play I have read in my life” (It was Kit Playscript 2) and Robert Greene advises him “Keep your hindquarters out of the theatre! You don’t belong here! Just because everyone loves your plays, doesn’t mean they are any good” (It was Kit Playscript 4).

The academic theories regarding Marlowe and Shakespeare are numerous and often unbelievable. One that McWood confronts is the idea that Marlowe wrote some of Shakespeare’s plays. Within the play, the theory originates when Shakespeare tries to comfort Marlowe’s over-excitable Mother after Marlowe’s death by stating that Kit has gone into hiding, and will be writing Shakespeare’s plays from now on. The fabrication of gossip and over-exaggeration is just one example of how McWood examines how scholars can take hearsay and speculation as extravagant fact. Additionally, It Was Kit reminds its audience that scholars essentially know very little about the everyday lives of Shakespeare or Marlowe, which then suggests a more cautionary approach to the theoretical tales and biographical speculations of scholars.

The image gallery below showcases posters and production photos of Shakespeare’s Brain and It Was Kit: the True Story of Christopher Marlowe. These images demonstrate the playful, modern and anti-generic nature that productions produced on the low budget Fringe or amateur level can convey. Additionally, the themes of spoofing and criticizing academic theories and speculation become further apparent in the costumes, body language and mock seriousness of the poses. Shakespeare’s Brain is set in the modern day, which allows for easily recognizable costumes that confirm a characters role and his position within the comparison of science and literature; lab coats for the professors, a suit and tie for Darwin, and the stereotypical lace up Renaissance shirt for Shakespeare. Alternatively, It was Kit is a “modern farce, set in an antiquated time”, which allowed the costume designers to utilize a “design concept known as the omnigarment, which is highly convertible but has the draping look of Renaissance attire” (Concept statement). This essence of the period is exemplary of the blending of modern and Renaissance in history, language and ideas within the play. The images also demonstrate the minimal use of sets and props, which is typical in low budget productions, but also allows full attention to be placed on the characterizations and performance.

Shakespeare's Brain photos by Duncan McAllister, TELECHROME DIGITAL MEDIA INC.
It was Kit: The True Story of Christopher Marlowe photos by Melissa-Jane Shaw, and graphic design by Johnny Vong.

Danielle Van Wagner

Shakespeare's Brain

It was Kit: The TRUE story of Christopher Marlowe

Link to Shakespeare’s Brain

Link to It was Kit: The TRUE story of Christopher Marlow

Link to The Embarrassing Life of King Ficklefred

Disclaimer: This site has been designed with only non-commercial, academic uses in mind. Although every effort has been made to secure permission for materials uploaded on the CASP site, in some circumstances we have been unable to locate copyright holders. Links may be made to our site but under no conditions are the texts and images to be copied and mounted onto another site server. Researchers using the site should accredit it following standard MLA guidelines on how to do so. Correct citation of information from the site is as follows:

Fischlin, Daniel. Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. University of Guelph. 2004. <http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca>.