Interview with Hadrian

What happens when Shakespeare’s overlooked characters are given the chance to move beyond the stories that characterised them? In Understudy No. 5, a janitor finds himself possessed by a collection of minor Shakespearean characters, each having their own frustrations, ambitions and questions of free will. Blending physical theatre, inventive storytelling, as well as an original perspective on the Bard’s canon, the production explores what it means to be a supporting character in somebody else’s story. Following a sold-out work-in-progress performance, I caught up with Hadrian, the writer and performer behind the show, to discuss its origins, the challenges of bringing multiple characters to life on stage, and why even Shakespeare’s smallest roles deserve their moment in the spotlight.

I’d love to start at the beginning: what first sparked the idea for Understudy No. 5, and where did the idea of a janitor being possessed by minor Shakespearean characters come from? 

It was actually a very actor-y spark: last year I was in Star-Cross*d for Camden Fringe, which was a new play by George Bootle that looked behind the scenes of Romeo and Juliet. I played Benvolio, who in this was the primary antagonist, and just absolutely fell in love with him. I wrote him a monologue during the rehearsal process (sat outside in the pub with a cigarette and my chicken-scratch script), performed the monologue at the Old Red Lion back in February, and when Jack offered me space I proceeded to write the whole thing.

The janitor came after the monologue cycle concept - I’d played around with a bunch of different ways to connect them. There was an actor talking about the roles they’d played and how they affected him (too naturalistic and confessional); a plague-cart driver talking about the corpses in the back (slightly too unrelated to the concept); none of these felt quite right. I don’t actually fully remember where or when the janitor came from! The actual origin of that idea is lost to me I’m afraid.

What was it about Shakespeare’s minor or overlooked characters that made you want to give them a life beyond the plays they originally appeared in?

As mentioned it was sparked by playing Benvolio last year, and continued on from there. I’ve a continuing fascination with minor characters - I think my brain generally works in a very associative way, rather than creating ideas out of the aether. Primarily the gears get going when there’s something existing, a novel or a script or an artwork, and then my mind is like ‘oooh what about the character in the background?’

How did you decide which Shakespearean characters would appear, and what made those particular characters interesting enough to build into the story? 

As with the janitor, I experimented with a bunch of different characters - discarded ones included the doctor from Macbeth, the jailor’s daughter from Two Noble Kinsmen, Antonio from Twelfth Night. The reason these four characters were the ones to make it in is essentially connected to the main theme of the play which is agency and free will - all five characters struggle with agency in their own unique way, whether that’s class-based, linguistic, narrative, etc. Also, part of why these four characters were the ones who appeared is simply because I enjoyed writing them. Maybe that’s bad literary practice! But in many ways Understudy is an homage to minor characters, and maybe just enjoying them is enough reason (as long as it still works thematically).

With some of them there’s also just the mechanics of it - there’s not really much to choose between Cobweb (whose lines in Midsummer’s consist of “And I”, “Hail!”, “Cobweb”, and “Ready”) and Moth (who says “And I!” and “Hail!”). But Cobweb fits the rhythm scheme of “The ass’s head affix’d on high / After ‘Cobweb’ and ‘And I!’”, and so I went with her purely because her name is two syllables instead of one!

It’s definitely something I’m interested in, exploring which other characters can be included while keeping the primary engine/structure of the play the same. I’m considering doing it aboard a ship sometime next year with some maritime-themed characters (Antonio from Twelfth Night, or one of the minor spirits from The Tempest), and we’ve even been considering recently what it might look like with characters not from Shakespeare. I feel it’s the kind of show that might continue to develop or change based on the spaces and opportunities available to us, which I’m really into as an evolving thing.

I’m particularly interested in the relationship between the janitor and the characters possessing him. Is he simply a vessel for them, or does he begin to develop his own relationship with their frustrations and ambitions? 

The janitor definitely starts as a vessel for these characters - he begins not knowing what’s going on, and then becomes more and more aware. He is in essence the main character of the play, despite not having any dramatic meaty monologues to chew on. All the characters change, but the janitor I think changes the most. And the reason he changes is the possessions he goes through, sometimes what he feels from them, sometimes with the characters almost speaking to him directly, however it is, he learns about himself and eventually challenges his own limited agency due to the characters possessing him, and his own reaction to that.

Because the show centres around one person on stage, how have you approached making each character feel physically and vocally distinct without relying on a large cast? 

I’d say two main things were at play here. First, that each character is linguistically distinct: Benvolio speaks in iambic pentameter; First Gravedigger speaks in Shakespearean prose; Cobweb speaks in rhyming iambic tetrameter (and later on, dactylic trimeter); the Musician speaks in modern language and free verse.

The second is the movement work Dan Hardwell led, which was endlessly useful. It was based on… Michael Chekhov’s work, I believe, and basically involved finding an object for each character, embodying that object to 100%, and then slowly bringing that to the level wanted for the character (which varied: e.g. 80% for Cobweb; 20% for the Gravedigger). The most difficult I think was actually distinguishing between the Gravedigger and the Janitor, but that’s improved especially as the Janitor has become far more of a distinct person between the WIP and now.

I’d love to know how much Shakespearean knowledge you expect the audience to have. Can someone come into Understudy No. 5 knowing very little about Shakespeare and still understand what these characters are fighting for? 

I hope so! There are people who’ve come along who are not Shakespeare fans who still got a lot out of it. I have added some exposition to some of the more narrative-based characters (Benvolio especially). There might be times when an audience who knows very little about Shakespeare are a bit lost, but we’ve done our best to minimise that, and to make sure those moments are sandwiched by moments where that knowledge isn’t required.

That said, basic knowledge that might be useful is a three sentence summary of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and the fact that Shakespearean spirits and fairies tend to speak in strict rhyming verse! If you’ve got that down I think you’re probably good :)

What have you found most interesting about taking characters who were originally written for very specific dramatic purposes and imagining what they might want outside those stories? 

Hm.. the most interesting thing is I think the characters’ own relationship to their wants, how they express that, and how much power they give their own desires. We’ve probably all had that feeling of being a side character in our own life - I’ve definitely had the experience where I’ve been like “oh, if this was a movie, at most I’d be a two-second part of some other character’s training montage” or something like that. So I think it’s a very relatable feeling - and then we’ve always also got the question of how much control we have over our own lives, whether we’re thinking about that in a practical or pragmatic way, or if we’re thinking philosophically and whether determinism is the case or if there’s a compatibilist conception of free will within which we can still conceive of ourselves as autonomous agents.

The characters explore this in Understudy No. 5 through a heightened level - while we can be pretty sure that our own universe is deterministic, unless you have a particularly stringent conception of a deity, the determinism of our universe isn’t the same as knowing that some bloke called Will literally wrote you into existence and that your story is 100% set even before you’ve come into existence. So how that plays out I think is super interesting.

What have you learned from taking the show from that sold-out WIP performance into this next version at the Etcetera Theatre? 

Oh soooo much! The janitor has changed a lot as a character and as the main engine of the piece, the character who was Feste is now an unnamed musician and massively different. There’s a bit more exposition - not too much, still quite subtle I think, but enough to make things easier to follow for those less familiar with Shakespeare. I think the main thing I’ve learned is that there’s a really solid chunk of London interested in weird spins on Shakespeare and the canon, and that just talking quite loudly about your new show in a pub to a friend might get a couple interested people to interrupt you and come along!

How have you approached the physicality of the possession itself? Is there a clear transformation when another character takes over, or did you want the audience to experience something more fluid and unpredictable?

The mechanics of the possession revolve around breath, and the props the janitor touches. We’ve added in some lighting changes since the WIP as well, but in fact the mechanics of the possession were one of the only things where the WIP audience were like “yes we understand it easily, you don’t need to keep belabouring the point” haha, so we didn’t feel a need to change it much from the prop + breath combo.

A huge thank you to Hadrian for taking the time to speak with me and share such fascinating views on the creation and development of Understudy No. 5. From the details of portraying Shakespeare’s overlooked characters to the play’s stimulating exploration of agency, identity and free will, it has been a pleasure to discover more about the ideas and creative processes behind this inventive production. I wish the entire team the very best for the run at the Etcetera Theatre. Understudy No. 5 plays at the Etcetera Theatre from the 14th to the 15th of October. For tickets and further information, visit https://www.etceteratheatrecamden.com/events/understudy-no-5