Being an English teacher and fan of William Shakespeare’s wonderful words, colourful characters, and timeless teachings, I jumped at the chance to review Sport for Jove’s Venus and Adonis. The play takes its name from Shakespeare’s poem, first published in 1593. A text that catalysed the playwright’s career as a poet, Venus and Adonis is Shakespeare’s retelling of the tragic encounter between Venus, the Roman goddess of love and eroticism, and Adonis, a boy hunter in love with Venus. When maps of Elizabethan London, portraits of people in piccadills, and a replica of Shakespeare’s First Folio greeted me as I ventured into the Seymour Centre’s Reginald Theatre, I knew I was in the right place. The dark theatre laced with thin cloth curtains and melodies of Mediaeval-style music accompanied me as I took my seat. I could have been in Elizabethan London, except for the fact that most audience members were donned in jeans and Gorman tops.
Alas! Venus and Adonis defied all my expectations. Yes, the play included colourful characters, incorporated timeless messages about life and love, and used some wicked words. There were also piccadills, Mediaeval-style music, and a mise-en-abyme performance of Shakespeare’s original poem. Yet, I was not expecting the amount of blood, lust, and tears that occupied the stage for the entire 150-minute production. Superbly acted and staged, Venus and Adonis was a play that immersed us in the life of William Shakespeare (Anthony Gooley) as a husband, father, lover, actor, and playwright while simultaneously intertwining the core ideas of his Venus and Adonis poem. Two storylines of first, Shakespeare’s life around 1593 – most notably, the loss of his son Hamnet (Liv Rey Laaksonen) – and second, the adaption of Venus and Adonis into an epic performance to Queen Elizabeth I (Belinda Giblin) at court, played out on stage. Sport for Jove’s production melded Shakespearean dialect with comments about gender and sexuality; serious statements about the power of words with a syphilis storyline; and lots of nudity, swearing, and sex. As I jokingly said to my friend, a fellow English teacher, who accompanied me to the play: “We couldn’t bring our Year 9’s to see this!”
Venus and Adonis is the brainchild of Damien Ryan, a writer and director best known for their productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Antigone (which won Sydney Theatre Awards for best production) and Managing Director & Artistic Director of Sport for Jove — a NSW-based theatre company that focuses on producing, staging, and reimagining Shakespeare’s texts for modern audiences. Initially released as a feature film in 2020, Venus and Adonis made its world premiere last week at Seymour Centre. In the words of Ryan, Venus and Adonis “belongs to the stage.”
“We are endlessly excited to finally bring our passionate work on this story to the stage. Covid nipped it cruelly in the bud in 2020 and these wonderful artists helped us pivot to a cinematic approach, both to create work at such a debilitating time and to give a story we so deeply cared about a home.”
The play’s overarching strength is its ability to “deeply care” about giving a voice to those forgotten women of history. Indeed, while the character of William Shakespeare features prominently throughout the play, it is Aemilia Lanyer (Adele Querol) – the first woman to have her poetry published in the English language and possible lover of Shakespeare – who takes centre stage. It is suggested throughout the play that many of The Bard’s famous phrases were actually stolen from Lanyer, pointing out that while Shakespeare’s lover, Lanyer was, in fact, his rival. This commentary about how female writers are so often under-represented and unknown struck a chord; while set in 1593, these discussions could easily take place today.
Albeit an unexpected turn on my initial assumptions, watching Venus and Adonis was an extraordinary experience, in terms of staging, language, and acting. The performances from each actor of the thirteen-strong cast were mesmerising, particularly that of Gooley and Querol. The play immersed every audience member in a world where love and lust was everything. Indeed, Venus and Adonis captured the rawness of love and passion, portraying Shakespeare not as the elusive superior writer of the English literary canon but as an individual who, like the rest of us, grapples with the everyday complexities of life and love.
Importantly, Venus and Adonis also emphasised that having a voice in society was key to one’s agency, with words – both written words and spoken words – holding immense power to generate change in how we think about the human experience. Ultimately, being immersed in the world of Venus and Adonis reminded me that human nature is complex; the more we write and share words, the more we can make sense of these complexities and, potentially, learn from them. After all, nothing can come of nothing.
Sport for Jove’s Venus and Adonis will be performed at Seymour Centre’s Reginald Theatre until the 21st of October.
