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November Shakespeare News
“Buzz” at Alabama Shakespeare Company
Few have heard of Buzz Goodbody, the female director who crashed through the glass ceiling in 1975 by directing what some considered the best “Hamlet” of her generation. This is a fact playwright Susan Ferrara’s “Buzz” is likely to change.
Ferrara has created an intelligent portrait of Goodbody, who used the non-traditional casting of Ben Kingsley as the young prince of Denmark, a corrugated tin storage building as her stage and an unwavering belief in her theatrical instincts to turn “Hamlet” into a hit during a time when the world of theater was dominated by male directors.
Rosalind (Eileen Atkins) and Orlando (David Suchet), 1973, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Photo by Joe Cocks Studio Collection © Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Buzz Goodbody's feminist modern-dress production featured a rock and roll score and a forest of metallic trees.
In an interview, Goodbody explained her thoughts on the play: "Hardly anyone seems to do any work: the shepherds and shepherdesses...are not really country people. I see them as art college students - drop-outs who live in the country and have mummies and daddies in the town with large incomes." Birmingham Post, 9 June 1973.
She was the wildcat feminist who stormed the RSC – launching stars and gripping critics. Andrew Dickson on the short, fast life of Buzz Goodbody, creator of Stratford's Other Place
In April 1975, a production of Hamlet opened at The Other Place, the Royal Shakespeare Company's pocket-sized studio theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. A little-known 31-year-old called Ben Kingsley was the prince. Elsewhere in the cast were Charles Dance and Mikel Lambert. The reviewers fell off their seats in shock. Nicholas de Jongh, writing for the Guardian, called the production "totally unexpected". The Times' Irving Wardle confessed: "It is a long time since I have been so gripped." He later ranked it one of his productions of the decade. In fact, played in jeans and shirt-sleeves to an audience of just 150, this Hamlet was proclaimed one of the greatest anyone could remember.
One person was not there to celebrate: the director, Buzz Goodbody. A few days before, she had taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in her London flat. She was just 28...
"She had confidence, this amazing energy, but she always felt that she'd had a privileged upbringing, and she somehow wanted to atone for it." Her elder brother John, now a well-regarded sports journalist, recalls her struggles to fit in at Stratford: "She found it difficult to accommodate her principles with people at the RSC. There's a school of thought that says the RSC gave her The Other Place to keep her quiet, almost...”
Speculation ran rife ("Top theatre girl 'Buzz' in death mystery," frothed the Sun). There was talk of a recent break-up, and stories that she was worried about her job, given that the RSC was in financial meltdown. A few years previously, another actor had committed suicide on tour in Australia. Buzz had discovered his body. Was there a connection? Or was Hamlet itself to blame? Her brother John inherited her books, one of which was a critical study of the play. Goodbody had marked up a section on its theme of suicide. "I wonder if she felt she saw the reality, as Hamlet can, that it's all a play within a play," he says. "I think it caught her at a particularly vulnerable time." Whyman is cautious: "We'll never know the whole truth. She takes that with her."
A history of The Other Place ft. its founder, Buzz Goodbody. Read more about the history of the theatre here.
Photo by Sam Allard © RSC