At the end of Shakespeare in Love, a ship sinks and from these underwater, light-filled visuals comes forth the tale of Twelfth Night. The shimmering water glitters and the clothes and hair of the ships' unfortunate inhabitants beckons to the audience with its rich details. In a theater, that same liquid effect may be seen overhead as the projector illuminates dust in the air, like sunlight in the sea. A gorgeous film, Shakespeare in Love produces this effect so beautifully, capturing the disorientation of waves and the chaos that it produces, which contributes to the exact displacement that allows the conscious play and willful distortion of Viola's appearance in the gender-bending comedy.
In Head Over Heels, a new musical featuring the music of The Go-Go's that is wrapping up now at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, I was reminded of this scene days later. It is a musical that stays with you (as they sing "Two weeks without you and I still haven't gotten over you yet") and in that time more comparisons arise constantly. At one point walking through foggy seaside weather, I suddenly thought of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night because of the shared queerness the aquatic space not only permits, but encourages in their respective stories. The musical is in many ways a legacy of comedies like Midsummer's Nights Dream or Twelfth Night or even tragedies like The Bacchae—they most notably share large groups of people in a forest, multiple instances of mistaken identity and misperception, and, of course, drag. The disorientation of forests and the effects of their status outside of society is well-documented in literary works where the biome allows utopic dreaming and unchecked transgression. Less prevalent in the history of art, however equally effective, watery systems possess this similar capability given that in many ways oceans are reference-less.
This fluid subject is harder to treat in theater, so perhaps it has been left out for this reason. But Head Over Heels deliciously jumps to the task of representing a complex scene featuring the sea. The production's set design is campy (for instance, a giant snake created from a painted, flat piece, sinuous of wood, drops from the ceiling—twice), however, the set also is incredibly naturalistic in other ways, conjuring the atmosphere of the forest effortlessly moving between its two poles of sheer delight and brooding mystery. The forest is where most of the play occurs, yet there is a terrific scene on the island of Lesbos as well that echoes a similar aesthetic as the wooden snake—embracing paradox by capturing fluidity through rigid geometries.
In the program notes, designer Julian Crouch said that he had suggested a character, Mopsa, take her scripted vacation to this particular island. Lesbos, he believed, would allow him to create a new set design, complete with wooden waves and an island environment, but this scenery also allowed the whole musical to become woven into a long legacy of stories about aquatic displacement, disorientation, and some would say, consequent, awakening. It is on this island (of course famed for Sappho) that a character acknowledges her own love of another woman. Of course, the island has symbolic queer power, but water has this history of freedom, a resonance I believe must have been kept in mind. After all, the island is shown unpopulated. Her queer awakening does not arise from other women—rather it arises from memories mulled over in this landscape. As in many theatrical productions, an island scene could have shown a faint bit of blue to give it a watery setting, playing up the sound of waves rather than showing them, but Crouch dove into this challenge—waves occupy the majority of the stage. Of course (again), he could have been inspired by the cover art of the Go-Go's—Mopsa sings "Vacation" from the album of the same name, which has a cover featuring the five members of the Go-Go's leaving a watery wake behind them.
Whether by coincidence, this resonance between water and queerness, water and turmoil, adds substantially to the storytelling. While the forest shenanigans recall Midsummer's Nights Dreams (until they turn dark, then they are more Bacchae-like), it is this other, coastal Shakespearean play that emerged to me afterwards. Like Viola who dresses as a man after her shipwreck, perhaps the oceanic journey gave Mopsa the freedom to experiment and explore. It is not the place that triggers her realization, but the freedom that place allows. Separate from others, Mopsa can finally come to terms with her desires.
After all, she acknowledges, "I should have known all along that time would tell."
Film still from Shakespeare in Love.