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Michael Barnett (left) and Thomas Churchill hold a poster featuring their “mom and dad,” King Leontes and Queen Hermione, in the recent Royal Shakespeare Co. production of “The Winter’s Tale.”

2 friends share Shakespeare role

If you glanced through a program from the recent Royal Shakespeare Co. residency at Davidson College, you may have noticed among the actors’ photos a pair of young, familiar faces. They were Michael Barnett and Thomas Churchill, both of Davidson, who were chosen to join the world’s most prestigious Shakespeare troupe in the role of Prince Mamillius in “The Winter’s Tale.”

The boys spent much of January and February learning stage cues, practicing elocution and hanging out with the Brits from the Bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.

“I got to eat cake on Anton’s birthday,” said Thomas, referring to Anton Lesser, who starred in “The Winter’s Tale” as Leontes, king of Sicilia.

“I got to be in the big cast picture,” said Michael.

They weren’t included on an RSC NASCAR outing to Lowe’s Motor Speedway. But both appeared in three performances of the play, and both were thrilled to miss two days of school.

“I had to miss four acting classes,” added Michael. Missing an acting class to perform with the Royal Shakespeare Company is probably excused though.

The boys endured stage mishaps and the spray of spit that inevitably accompanies a well-executed Shakespearean speech. They learned to switch costumes, got to scramble through a secret door to get to one scene and gained a special appreciation for one of the Bard’s lesser-known works.

“I thought it was the best play I’d ever seen,” said Thomas, as Michael nodded in agreement. “I wanted to do more shows.”

IMAGINARY MENAGERIES

Suzanne Churchill, an English professor at Davidson College, learned through her work that the RSC was looking for a local actor to play Prince Mamillius, instead of hauling an English boy across the ocean for the entire residency.

Ms. Churchill asked her twin boys, Luke and Thomas (both fifth-graders at Davidson Elementary School), if they were interested. Thomas was, and so he went for the audition, despite knowing next to nothing about the play or about acting in general.

At the audition, he noticed Michael, a sixth-grader at Woodlawn School in Davidson. “We’re best friends,” Thomas explained.

Michael, the son of Bill and Katherine Barnett, auditioned as a relatively experienced actor, having performed as Benjamin in the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and as Nick Bottom in a school adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Plus, he had seen the RSC perform when he was a kindergartner living in London.

Late in the evening after the audition, the boys learned they’d been chosen to share the role of the prince. They attended a lengthy workshop the next day with an assistant director from the RSC and then had several weeks to learn their lines before the company arrived in town and rehearsals began in earnest.

Mamillius has 22 lines in the first two acts, including a witty repartee with the queen and her maids at the beginning of Act II. Both boys can still reel off their lines with ease.

“I will never forget my lines,” Thomas claimed.

“You will, eventually,” Michael told him.

They had to work carefully to distinguish the line, “Ay, my good lord,” from the one that closely follows it, “Yes, if you will, my lord.” Plus, they had to enunciate clearly, and make sure the audience heard such fine points as the “-er” in the phrase “your brows are blacker.”

Michael said their vocal warm-up coach taught them tongue twisters, including one that begins, “Can you imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining an imaginary menagerie…”

DEATH AND DEVASTATION

The prince is fated to die of grief, though offstage, by the end of Act II, after his father throws the queen into prison, convinced that she has been unfaithful. Prince Mamillius sets up the contrast between the king’s jealousy and the wronged queen by cuddling in pajamas with Queen Hermione and her maids and regaling them with a fairy tale at the beginning of Act II.

For Thomas and Michael, the scene involved crawling to the bed through a special trap door and playing with a cool stuffed bear (foreshadowing a bear character that appears later in the play).

“My mom told me, ‘You’ve got the punch line of the whole play,’” Thomas said.

That would be, “A sad tale’s best for winter,” which is uttered just before Leontes pushes into the nursery room scene and rips the prince away from his mother.

“Anton said he bruised some boy back in England doing that, but he didn’t bruise either of us,” Michael said. However, in an earlier scene, the king’s fancy badge of royalty managed to scratch both Michael and Thomas’ foreheads during a fatherly embrace.

“Later on, he started to hug us from the other side,” Thomas said.

The boys learned the truth in the adage ‘the play must go on,’ and also that plays can be tweaked in the process. They had their cues switched from the queen’s “the verier wag o’ the two” to another actor’s “two lads” statement to allow sufficient time to walk to their designated place. They enjoyed whispering “excuse me” and watching the milling audience jump out of the way. (The “promenade” audience allowed on the stage was a special feature of this year’s residency performances. Read our review, CLICK HERE>)

And they watched the company actors overcome difficulties.

“Paulina (the king’s advisor) had a high fever and everybody was very worried, but she pulled through,” said Thomas.

In the final scene of Michael’s last performance, the harness that was supposed to secretly lower Queen Hermione onto the stage behind a curtain malfunctioned. When she was supposed to be revealed frozen as a statue in a dramatic climax, the screen instead lifted to reveal … nothing. Michael said he saw Kate Fleetwood, the actress portraying the queen, put her hands over her face and shake her head in dismay backstage.

But she reacted quickly, and simply walked to her place to assume her pose. The audience gave her and the rest of the cast a standing ovation, just as they did every night of the show.

PROUD PARENTS

The parents of Thomas and Michael took turns as audience members and as backstage chaperones, helping the boys switch from their royal tuxedos to their princely pajamas. The parents also enjoyed watching the two boys bask in RSC glow.

Matthew Churchill, Thomas’ father, said that when Davidson College President Bobby Vagt encountered Thomas after his first performance, Mr. Vagt said, “Can I get your autograph?”

Both sets of parents were pleased with how the RSC embraced the two Mamillius novices.

“The thing that struck me about the whole experience is that it would have been easy for the RSC to blow into town and not pay much attention to these boys. But instead, every step of the way, they reached out to them so much,” Bill Barnett said.

The plays are over now and the RSC has returned to England. Thomas and Michael are still enjoying family snapshots of their performances and admiring the autographed posters they received from the cast. Plus, both have been bitten by the acting bug. Michael will be auditioning with the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte soon.

Thomas nodded thoughtfully at that. “I think I want to act more too,” he said.

RELATED LINK

Read commentator Robert Maier’s review of “The Winter’s Tale,” and what it was like to watch the show from the promenade stage. CLICK HERE>

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