Sherry Chandler

Fairies and Fusiliers–Pibgorn as Puck

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Must winds that cut like blades of steel

And sunsets swimming in Volnay,

The holiest, cruelest pains I feel,

Die stillborn, because old men squeal

For something new. “Write something new….”

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No, no! My chicken, I shall scrawl

Just what I fancy as I strike it

Fairies and Fusiliers, and all

Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl

Across my verse in the classic way

And sir, be careful what you say

There are old-fashioned folk still like it.

__Robert Graves, 1918

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Perhaps the greatest obstacle to staging a Shakespeare comedy is the awe in which we have come to hold his work. Max Reinhardt felt obliged to stage a huge spectacle for his stage productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in the 1935 film even though he cast a batch of American Movie Stars in that. While many of the choices he made were inspired–Mickey Rooney as a manic Puck with an obstreperous cackle, Jimmy Cagney as Bottom–he miscast Dick Powell as Lysander. The massive production tended to overwhelm the comedy.

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Comic book and graphic novel adaptations have fared no better–the Classics Illustrated version ignored the verse of the play–and Shakespeare employed far more rhymed couplets in MSD than in any other play. Charles Vess tried to adapt it to graphic novel form but felt overwhelmed–probably because he was so influenced by Arthur Rackham and other Victorian illustrators–and ended up doing an MSD metafiction with Neil Gaiman in his Sandman series.

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In his webcomic Pibgorn Brooke McEldowney adapted the play using characters from his mainstream comic 9 Chickweed Place to supplement his comic fantasy saga cast. He adapted many of his female characters to traditionally male roles; one major conceit is that the play is set in a 1930s “Athens City” theatre district which is a thinly veiled New York. Art Deco skyscrapers abound so that they nearly become supporting cast members. Allusions to the Ashcan School of American Art culminate in a direct copy of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. McEldowney manages to evoke nearly every trope of 20th C. Broadway comedies/musicals and Hollywood adaptations of same along with film noir and pre-code movies and cartoons.

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Much of this adaptation ponders the role of women in 20th C. America–the power they had gained before WWII, before the Depression, before the repression of the ethics code. This fits very well with the concerns of the play with the tension between male power and female resistance–is Pyramus a tyrant or a lover–or both? Hermia and Helena gain power in the Wood they never could have in Athens, and when Chickweed’s Gran is cast as Egea, with the power of life or death over her recalcitrant daughter, it points up just how much power 20th C. American women gained.

But the most dynamic bit of casting is the fairy Pibgorn as the pwca Robin Goodfellow. This allows for a love triangle between Puck, Titania (the succubus Drusilla with short black spitcurls–Betty Boop as Mae West?) and Oberon (Geoff, the mortal pianist as underworld boss–his acetylene-blue eyes burning under the shadow of his fedora). McEldowney also matures the changeling Indian prince into a haughty handsome youth, the perfect boytoy for Titania and fitting rival for Oberon, so there is a second interlocking love triangle in the fairy realm.

There are sly allusions throughout the adaptation to numerous 20th Century comedies, romantic, screwball, fantastic. Solange the Chickweed Siamese colorpoint accompanies Puck so often that Bell, Book and Candle’s Pyewacket rises in the magic circle. The girls who work in Titania’s nightclub The Wood form a Busby Berkely chorus line–clothed only in pink thistledown– to help the Prince sing their mistress asleep. The Prince himself, who could be a cross between the pop star Prince and Cab Calloway, with a dash of Valentino, finishes the number with a bit of slide dancing and a slow striptease. For me, this evoked all three of the Cab Calloway/Betty Boop cartoons. Then he enjoys a Code-flaunting love scene with Titania. They apparently do everything short of kicking that gong around.

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But Puck has already seduced Oberon after she delivered Cupid’s herb–a passion-flower? — and they wind up in bed for a post-coital tete-a-tete as he outlines his plans to get the changeling away from Titania. Puck’s frustration and jealousy complete the movie-oriented genre which Shakespeare’s plays helped inspire. She is a working class girl to Oberon’s criminal overlord and is fated to win his love, according to the conventions of the best screwball comedies of the 20th Century. All of the dancers, Titania’s fairies, the rude mechanicals/chorus girls and Puck are solidly working class in contrast to the aristocracy–the theater and nightclub owners.
Bottom is also female–probably the only time the ingenue plays that role–and she is another fairy, Oognat,–the musical reference is typical of McEldowney, who is also a professional musician; she may also evoke a certain G. Herriman character. McEldowney even manages to make her transformed ears exude a certain je ne sais quois so that one can understand why Titania could be so taken with her charms. The scene where the succubus’ serpent tongue twines about the delicate tip of a gracefully tapering ear is inspired.

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