Whitney White, the US writer, director and singer, is bringing a boundary-breaking musical mashup to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Titled All Is But Fantasy, the production mixes characters from various Shakespeare plays, giving the fates of Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra and more a thrilling twist. White, a Tony-nominated director, describes her deep respect for Shakespeare, but also interrogates the playwright's treatment of female characters.
White's first encounter with Shakespeare was in high school in Chicago, where A Midsummer Night's Dream sparked her inner 'theatre nerd'. She recalls thinking theatre should be as full as possible, with music, dance and text. Her background in church, where her grandfather's choir had 50 members, informs her approach: 'The musicality in Shakespeare is key for me, the metre every bit as valid as the meaning.'
As a performer, White found she was only cast in supporting roles such as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet or Maria in Twelfth Night. 'To be a leading lady still felt reserved for some people – and I think that's really what kicked all of this off,' she says. The project began when she read Macbeth and heard rock'n'roll: 'To me, Lady Macbeth sounded like Tina Turner. She was saying, “I want more but the world won't give me more.”'
White realised her favourite characters – Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Emilia, Cleopatra – all die by act five. The show reframes these characters and interrogates female ambition, power and mortality. 'In the midst of all this, I lost two women in my family and I'm still not OK with how I lost them,' she says. 'The show is a look at fatal heterosexual female arcs … I feel like we're all a little too comfortable with women meeting an untimely end.'
The witches from Macbeth are front and centre, sung by a trio that White sees as her aunts and mother. 'A spell is a prayer, and a witch is a holy woman, right? That didn't feel like a big leap to me.' She adds: 'My whole life has been my mother and her two sisters guiding me. The three witches are those people – my aunts and my mother are on stage with me every night.'
White's relationship with Shakespeare has become complex after this examination. 'I think Shakespeare captured something 400 years ago but why haven't we changed? It's about us. We're the problem, not Shakespeare.'
