Complicity in Edward II. In this blog Assistant Director George Nichols of Edward II

Complicity in Edward II. 

In this blog Assistant Director George Nichols of Edward II asks, should the audience feel complicit in Edward’s shocking death? 

How would a 17th-century audience have reacted to being included in the political machinations of Richard III? How is an audience meant to feel after laughing at Malvolio’s humiliation in Twelfth Night?  What about at Edward II’s grizzly death?

The productions of these plays that I find most affecting are those in which the audience feels complicit in the action of the play. Really, I think this should be a guiding principle throughout all theatre, as writers, directors and actors should think of the audience not as observers, but as participants.

Complicity is definitely something we learn about from the unique stages at the Globe. The proximity of the audience to the stage and the fact that in many instances you must push through or walk past audience to get into the space suggests that the complicity of the audience was a key aspect in how these plays were originally performed. It’s also inherent in the texts; soliloquies, for example, show us that characters were in a constant dialogue with the audience. By letting us in on a clandestine plot as Edmund does in King Lear, it creates dramatic irony through the fact that we are privy to something that the other characters are not.

In our production of Edward II the idea of the audience being participants had to take the fore, not least because of the number of characters we had to cut from the text. In some cases, to accommodate these cuts we changed pronouns from ‘we/ they’ to ‘I/ me’ etc, but occasionally we felt there were opportunities to open the play out to the audience. For example, the barons often refer to a number far greater than themselves, and so in our production they address the audience as their accomplices, at other points we have changed the allegiance of some characters to aid with the flow of the story, and so in one instance the audience becomes Edward’s friends, replacing lost allies in the play.

The shows played before press night when the media review the play are an interesting time for any production, but at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse they are particularly significant. Whilst all pre-press night shows are to some extent a method of gauging how a production sits with an audience, in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse you feel guided toward what their role is in the action through their particular mood or the atmosphere. As we get more experience of the reaction we get, the more the actors learn which lines work as direct challenges to audience members, and which lines are best kept in the space. There’s beauty in the fact that it can be different for each performance once you establish that the audience is flexible and can be friend or foe depending on what you need in that moment.

Once this relationship is established you can use all sorts of techniques to keep an audience on board; soliloquies, asides or even humour. But sometimes, the most effective tool you have is just to pose a direct question. After watching the suffering Edward goes through, being entertained by and complicit in his downfall, how do you  feel when he turns to you and asks: ‘Pity you me?’

Edward II is in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 20 April. Tom Stuart’s contemporary response to Marlowe’s play, After Edward, opens on 21 March. 

Photography by Marc Brenner