Going into this trip, I never expected to enjoy Arden of Faversham in performance as much as I did. Seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance has really shown me that a production is more than just the icing on top of an already great play. A wonderful production can elevate a sub-par play to exceptional heights, but icing cannot make a disgusting cake worth eating. Seeing Arden in the Swan Theatre was incredibly different from reading the rather boring text of the play itself. The actors did wonderful jobs of bringing their characters to life, but it was truly the director’s vision and the choices made for the staging that transformed the lack-luster text of the play into one of the most striking theatrical performances I’ve ever seen. The setting and costume design was almost entirely modern, and Arden was shown as a retail tycoon, head of a company that sold everything under the sun. This distinct setting for the play transformed Arden of Faversham from a soap-opera-like frivolous comedy into a blackly comedic decisive commentary on the commodification of everything in the modern-day world, especially people themselves. Susan, Mosby’s sister, and Arden’s factory workers are perfect examples of this.
I was lucky enough to be able to see Arden twice, and while a few changes were made between the two performances, one thing that didn’t change at all was the opening sequence. No one was allowed to enter the Swan until 15 minutes before the show was due to start. The first night, I was surprised to see actors already on stage. At first I wondered if they were still rehearsing, but it soon became clear that this was part of the performance. Each actor meticulously performed one set of actions repeatedly: they were packing, stuffing, and moving boxes, and load after load was placed onto a lift that ascended up to almost the roof of the theater, where someone could be seen removing the boxes. It would then be lowered back down, and the process would start again. Each cycle was exactly as the one before; this roboticness cannot be stressed enough. In addition to the simple packing of the goods, some actors were performing other actions, such as slapping themselves in the face or smoking a cigarette. These, too, were performed exactly the same every time. As all this is occurring, Arden sits at his desk near the center of the stage, gazing out into the audience. The boxes, labeled with Arden of Faversham and his wife Alice’s smiling face, are being packed by his own work force. They all seem lifeless, nearly puppet-like, casting Arden firmly in the role of puppet master. Arden, although he is only a few feet away from the workers surrounding him, appears as if he is living in a different world entirely. His rich blue wardrobe and his calculating stare combine to remove him entirely from the world inhabited by the workers he employs. They are the toys he uses to do his own bidding, and from the time they step into the factory and punch their time cards, they have no autonomy: they belong to Arden. This obvious commodification of people is cast in an eerie light, thanks to the setting choice of a factory-like atmosphere. And all this is accomplished before the play even begins!
Alice’s unfaithful philandering and attempts to have Arden murdered would ordinarily draw a lot of sympathy from the audience, but this opening scene lingers in the viewer’s mind throughout the play and prevents us from feeling full sympathy for Arden and in turn becoming complicit in his commodification of his workers. His cruelty and abuse of his workers resurfaces a few times throughout the play when one of them repeatedly comes and begs him for her lands back. In the text, this character, Dick Reede, is male. The production has cast him instead as a female and, if she was given a name, I didn’t catch it. She pleads to speak with Arden several times throughout the play and is cruelly denied time and again, until she finally catches up with him and speaks her piece. Arden refuses to return the lands that were taken from her and given to him. He then insinuates that she might come to some harm if she continues to harass him and she responds, “What, wilt thou do me wrong and threat me too?” Thanks to this character, we never forget Arden’s cruel treatment and complete commodification of his workforce.
Arden’s workers aren’t the only openly commodified people in the play by a long shot. The most prominent of all is Susan, Mosby’s sister. She is bartered back and forth between Clark and Michael by Alice and Mosby to entice the two to do their bidding. Alice promises her to Michael for his assistance in the plot to kill Arden while Mosby promises her to Clark if he can create something that successfully poisons Arden. The production emphasized this obvious commodification of Susan by having her constantly on stage, privy to all of these plans to auction her off to whoever can succeed at getting Arden killed first. This only emphasized her powerlessness and fear, and the actor did a wonderful job of playing up Susan’s emotional distress as well. When Mosby promises her to Clark, she sharply jerks her head up from her position under the table where has been cleaning and thunks her head loudly. She then peers out from under the table in the direction of her brother, looking horrified at the prospect of marrying Clark. She shakes her head furiously from side to side and looks near tears. Susan never, however, openly dismisses the idea of marrying Clark. This moving performance coupled with Susan’s complete silence on the issue of her future marriage prospects only increases her apparent helplessness. She does seem to reject Michael’s proposal in the final scene, but she never speaks up to object when she hears Alice or Mosby selling her off. She has almost no lines at all before the scene where Arden is murdered. Throughout the play, we simply see her cleaning. She dusts the blinds in the opening sequence, polishes furniture, cleans up the torn pages of a book Alice tears to shreds, and in the end tries to get Arden’s blood off of the floor. Cleaning has long been seen as one of a female’s most important roles in a household, so for me this only emphasized her subjugation to the males around her, and even Alice, who is above her in status.
Just as previous productions of the play often encouraged husbands to scrutinize the behavior of their wives more closely after viewing the successful murder of Arden by his wife, so this production encourages its audience to consider the ramifications of the extensive commodification present in our society after presenting the overt commodification of Arden’s workers and Susan. Have we turned people into objects to be bought and sold and simply given slavery a different name? The question the production poses is quite a radical one, but it’s not entirely unfounded. Polly Findlay’s beautiful production has taken an outdated play and used it to get us thinking about modern-day pressing questions.