By Anne W. Semmes
Last Sunday afternoon, a hundred plus members of the Greenwich Branch of the English-Speaking Union (ESU) gathered at the Belle Haven Club overlooking Long Island. The ladies by custom were bedecked in their colorful hats for the event’s annual birthday celebration of the reigning English sovereign King Charles III’s 77th birthday. But importantly featured were the winners in the ESU’s National Shakespeare Competition for high school students, also teachers, with two winning students and two wining teachers from Greenwich.
Presiding in her 18th year as Greenwich Branch president was Natalie Pray, with her new title of MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for her “services to UK/US cultural relations and to philanthropy.” She kicked off the presentations with that “raise your glass” birthday toast “To the King,” then introduced Dr. E Quinn Peeper, Chair of the ESU of the U.S. and His Majesty’s Honorary Consul General in New Orleans, wearing a colorful celebratory suit.
Dr. Quinn spoke of the 100-year-plus age of ESU and praised its continuing focus on Shakespeare. He noted next year’s Shakespeare Competition will be held in April as usual at Lincoln Center but at an historic time – “It’s America’s 250th birthday and on April 23 Shakespeare’s [462nd] birthday.” He also shared an upcoming ESU Patron voyage on “Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Sea Cloud Two,” following British Admiral Nelson’s life “From Shore and at Sea,” with on board biographer Flora Fraser – sailing from Naples to Malta, July 6-14, “with a few spaces available.”
Brigid Barry, ESU Education Chair, introduced the two winning Greenwich High School English teachers. “The opportunity to study something as joyful and meaningful as literature,” began Keith Contorno, “at an institution like Oxford University is not something that I imagined would materialize in my life as I grew up in a household without a college graduate…” He was looking forward to “diligently” preparing for a summer study of Shakespeare and Jane Austin, to then sharing it he said, “with the community that I serve.”
Kara Peters introduced herself as a teacher of British literature, and the course she will take this summer is on “the 19th century English romantic poets. I have to read Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem ‘The Prelude,’” she told, “which is 200 pages long but I’m relishing every word of it.” She shared a short excerpt from its “Book Six, Cambridge and the Alps.” “He’s studying and hiking in nature which mirrors my emotions… ‘The poet’s soul was with me at that time, / the still overflow, Of happiness and truth. A thousand hopes/Were mine…’”
Pray then handed the baton to Shakespeare Chair, Anne Elser to introduce three of the four high school winning students, with Third Place winner Verbatim Rodriguez absent, from the ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. The first Competition event Elser told of being on March 5 at the Berkley Theater at Greenwich Library. “The competition is open to students in grade 9 through 12, public, independent, and parochial high schools registered to perform for 18 students from nine schools statewide.” The final National competition occurred in New York City on April 28 at Lincoln Center.
First up to perform was First Place Greenwich Academy rising junior Abby Kesmodel, whose acting out put her to the floor as Trinculo in Act 2 of Scene 2 of “The Tempest.” “Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear any weather at all. And another storm brewing; I hear it sing i’ th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head.”
Second Place winner Roby Sickles – a rising senior at Brunswick School, chose his monologue from “Henry IV, Part 1, as the character Falstaff. “This chair shall be my state, this dagger my scepter, and this cushion my crown. Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept, for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein.”
Honorable Mention was given to graduating senior Kaylin Harell, from ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. She performed those famous lines from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29.” “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, / I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, /And look upon myself and curse my fate.”
Afterward, with guests enjoying champagne and edibles Joshua Mandelbaum was introduced as executive director of the St. George’s Society of New York, where Natalie Pray has served as president. The Society is another British organization in the U.S. doing good, providing “life-changing assistance to people of British and Commonwealth heritage in New York.”
And yes, St. George is the patron saint of Great Britain. Mandelbaum was sharing their recent benefits – a Central Park picnic coming up – and often having a James Bond theme. The word is he told – with production rights now passed from the British to Amazon MGM Studios – a new Bond movie is being fast-tracked. But who will be the new James Bond remains a mystery.
“The opportunity to study something as joyful and meaningful as literature at an institution like Oxford University is not something that I imagined would materialize in my life.” Keith Contorno.
The annual Greenwich Branch of the English-Speaking Union meeting took place at the Belle Haven Club celebrating King Charles III’s 77th birthday, and this year’s Shakespeare winning Greenwich High School students and teachers.
