Rambles Reviews

Actors' Shakespeare Project, King John — by Ian

2008-05-20T16:32:00.000-04:00

Posted by Ian Osmond @ 2008-05-20 16:32

Last season, there was a swath of productions of Titus Andronicus, as college troupes saw it, realized it was a fun play which didn't deserve its negative reputation, and decided to perform it themselves. I would be really happy if the same thing happened with King John this season, and the Actors' Shakespeare Project production, playing now until June 8th, demonstrates why.

See, Titus picked up a reputation as being too bloody and over-the-top to be performed, but a couple good productions, including ASP's, showed folks that "bloody and over-the-top" is not actually a BAD thing in a play. This play has a reputation as being so full of deception and plot twists that it can't be followed -- and it doesn't deserve that. Oh, it's chock-full of deception and twists, but that's a good thing. I suppose that, if one was reading the play, one would have trouble following who was backstabbing whom, but when it's performed on stage with a competent cast, the actors are able to take you through with no trouble whatsoever.

Yes, the plot twists and turns, and you never know what's going to happen in the next scene. But, no matter where you go, there you are. It's not hard to keep track of what's going on, even if you can't predict what will happen next.

It's sort of like one of those walking labyrinths, like the one that my parents built in their backyard, or the ones that a number of churches have painted on the floor. It consists of a single twisting path, looping back on itself, but with no deviations. You walk through the path, never knowing quite what the path will be, but nonetheless, never getting lost. There is only one path, and it takes you through it -- no matter how convoluted it looks from the outside.

Hold onto that image, by the way. We'll be coming back to it.

Shakespeare provides us with a guide through the treachery and deviousness of the court -- the two-fisted action Shakespearian pulp hero Philip Falconbridge, who has become one of my favorite Shakespearian characters. He's noble, brave, upright, and witty, with an action hero's penchant for snappy one-liners and clever observations. Stick with Philip the Bastard -- he'll take you through the play unscathed. Of the few characters who are more-or-less honest, he's the only one who isn't a victim.

So. This being the Actors' Shakespeare Project, let's start with talking about which odd corner of Boston they've found to fit with this play.

Next to the Common is an Episcopal cathedral, the Cathedral Church of St Paul. The Church has a basement. Deep in the bowels of the basement is a room which is used by a Chinese congregation, a homeless congregation, and a Muslim congregation, at different times. And, until June 8th, it's also used by a Shakespearian acting troupe.

I can only imagine what went through Ben Evett's mind when he looked at the space. (Well, that's not strictly true. I could, y'know, ASK him -- it's not like his email address is hard to find, and he's a generally approachable guy. But imagining is more fun.)

Evett would have walked into a room which feels like a high school gym cum-function hall. And he would have looked at the unfinished rough stone walls, and the beautiful faux-marbled pillars, and the beat-up-high-school-basketball-court floor. And the labyrinth painted on that floor in slightly-chipping but very tough paint. See? I told you to hold on to that image.

And he would have thought, "This space has character. What story does this place want to match up with? What play wants to be heard here?"

Like most of the places that ASP has found, this one is weird. And like most of the places, they use that weirdness to shape their performance.

There are a few things about the space that are genuine weaknesses. Those four beautiful faux-marble pillars obstruct views occasionally. The performance space is buried deep underground -- I felt that a miner's helmet might have been appropriate, and I'm not sure about how handicapped-accessible the space is. (The press materials state that the space is accessible, but I didn't see how that worked, so, if mobility is an issue for you, call them and ask what the situation is.)

But most of the things which seem like they WOULD be weaknesses ended up, bizarrely, as strengths. Somehow, the trains rumbling through Park Street Station diagonally above us added to the experience -- it's a play in which mysterious ominous rumblings are dramatically appropriate.

And the whole production design -- sound design, lighting design, everything -- works with the space to create an atmosphere for backstabbing, betrayal, and back-room dealing.

Now, let's talk about the actors, and how they portray the characters. And, since he IS my favorite character, and holds the play together, let's start with Bill Barclay's portrayal of Philip the Bastard.

See, there are two types of Shakespearian monologues. First, you've got the ones like Hamlet uses -- where he's talking to himself, or to God, or to something like that. They're introspective -- they're about the internal life of the character.

The other kind, though -- well, those are the ones where the character realizes that we're there, and decides to tell US what's going through his mind. And Philip is THAT kind of character. And so he needs to form a connection with the audience. The actor needs to have chemistry with the audience.

(As an aside -- this is among the reasons I think Shakespeare generally works better in smaller theaters, and in the round. A proscenium is a border between the audience and the actors -- and I think that a lot of Shakespeare needs to be more interactive. Maybe less so for his latest plays -- I think that The Tempest and Pericles, for instance, can work in proscenium-type settings.)

And Barclay does. He's our guide, our buddy, and we are willing to hang out with him as he attempts to find his way through the treacherous footing of the play. Barclay portrays a Philip who covers a spine of steel under a somewhat goofy exterior -- and it works.

Shakespeare wrote Hubert as King John's thuggish hatchetman, but, in this production, Sarah Newhouse plays a female Hubert, which changes all sorts of relationships. I don't want to say too much about it, because I don't want to give away plot points, but it's an interesting variation, with resonances throughout the play. Jennie Israel's Constance is emotionally powerful, and John Kuntz is deeply creepy as the manipulative Cardinal Pandulph.

As King John, Michael Forden Walker is the center of the play -- but he is shaped by circumstances as much as he shapes them -- he's as much a victim as he is an active player, and Walker's performance shows this dichotomy.

So -- to conclude: the Actors' Shakespeare Project shows us that a complex plot need not be a confusing plot. Their actors and production team lead us through the labyrinthine paths of King John's many betrayals and twists, letting us feel the emotional impact of each one, but never losing us or confusing us.

Tickets are forty bucks, plus or minus a couple bucks depending on which seat, for adults, thirty to thirty-five for students. But remember, guys: they also may have student rush tickets available just before the show, for just fifteen bucks. I encourage you to go and check it out -- I'd like to see if you in the college companies like the play as much as I do. If so, I'd love to see what you'd do with it if you put it on yourselves.

Rambles Review: King John

2008-05-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

It was a dangerous time for the English monarch:

France was championing rival candidate to the throne -- a royal cousin who actually had a reasonable claim.

Meanwhile, the Pope had not only excommunicated England's monarch, but encouraged the citizens to revolt and even sanctioned assassination attempts.

The challenges Queen Elizabeth faced are relatively well known.

So how much more daring for Shakespeare to recount the parallels in King John's lifetime?

In his director's notes, Ben Evett writes:

[King John] has more plot than most Shakespeare plays -- so much, in fact, that it is easy to get lost in its twists and turns. But what happens in this play is less important than how it happens. ... [I]f you find yourself getting a bit lost in the labyrinth of events, don't despair: the characters are just as lost as you. Focus instead on the moments between characters.

Despite this warning -- or perhaps because of it (and the directorial choices it implies) -- I had no problem following the unfolding plots and machinations.

To aid with understanding, Shakespeare provides an entertaining outsider to help guide you through the court intrigues. Bill Barclay plays Philip Faulconbridge: "good old sir Robert's wife's eldest son." Or, as he's known in the text, Philip the Bastard.

He's alternately bemused and befuddled as he observes the ongoing events, quick with a quip and deadly with both words and weapons. He definitely prefers the direct approach to diplomacy, but his frequent asides definitely keep things from bogging down. [Although I do wish his expression while standing on the sidelines was a little less gobsmacked. I know it's in character, but it got tiresome after a while.]

This is the second time I've seen King John -- I also caught Tina Packer's 2005 production (which I reviewed here).

But each version focused on different aspects, creating a very different experience.

King John and his mother, Queen Eleanor:
Shakespeare & Company, 2005: Allyn Burrows and Annette Miller	Actors' Shakespeare Project: Michael Forden Walker and Janet Morrison

Shakespeare & Co. presented a costume drama focused on questions of honor.

ASP's version is a modern-dress look at back-room political wheeling and dealing.

As King John, Michael Forden Walker's lives the adage that it's lonely at the top. Effectively isolated by the demands of the job, he has more cocktails than close confidants. But there's a strength to the portrayal that makes his inevitable fall magnetic.

The first half of the story is driven by two powerful women. Constance (Jennie Israel), King John's widowed sister-in-law, passionately believes that her son is the rightful king of England.

Constance may have the laws of primogeniture on her side, but John has a more powerful ally -- his mother, Queen Eleanor (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Katherine Hepburn's role in The Lion in Winter).

BASTARD:	Madam, I'll follow you unto the death.
ELEANOR:	Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

As played by Janet Morrison, Eleanor reminded me of women such as Margaret Thatcher, Leona Helmsley, or the matriarchs from the prime-time soaps of the 1980s. She was a force to be reckoned with, and woe to those who stood in her way.

As if to compensate for the absence of these characters during the second half of the play, Ben Evett cast Sarah Newhouse as Hubert de Burgh, changing a few pronouns here and there to render the role female.

And with that simple twist, King John's expressions of admiration to his loyal retainer gain an added sexual dimension:

Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,
We owe thee much! within this wall of flesh
There is a soul counts thee her creditor
And with advantage means to pay thy love:
And my good friend, thy voluntary oath
Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.

And this begins Hubert's character arc of mutual betrayals and rediscovered trust.

What's impressive about this company and this play is that there aren't any throwaway characters. Even when playing minor roles, the actors imbue them with depth. They aren't bodies occupying the stage like human props -- I got the feeling that every one had a story to tell.

Speaking of which, we couldn't help but notice John Greene, whom we've previously seen in Harvard student productions of Romeo & Juliet and Titus Andronicus. He played Lymoges of Austria and doubled in several other minor parts. Of course, after watching him repeatedly bear the brunt of the Bastard's wrath (along with a knee to the groin from Hubert), I began to wonder if this was some kind of company hazing ritual. "Welcome to the ASP. Hope you survive the experience!"

In short: If you're looking to see Shakespeare on stage this month, ASP is still the best around.

King John
directed by Benjamin Evett for Actors' Shakespeare Project

Cathedral Church of Saint Paul: 138 Tremont Street, Boston (across the street from Park Street Station)
Due to the intimate space, late arrival seating is not available.

Now through June 8th
Runs approximately 2 1/2 hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

SCCardenio: Specific Spoilery Responses

2008-05-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

In my regular review, I mentioned I had further criticisms with Greenblatt & Mee's Cardenio, but couldn't elaborate without revealing major plot details.

So, this entry is intended to address those issues.

Consider this An Open Letter to the Playwrights.

As it stands, the play is flawed, but still salvageable.

My intentions are to pinpoint specific areas in need of improvement, that might assist in the revision process.

Here there be spoilers:

Rambles Review: Greenblatt & Mee's "Cardenio"

2008-05-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

I maintain a list of every Shakespeare play I've seen. I've been looking forward to adding Cardenio to the tally ever since A.R.T. announced this season's schedule.

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting.

* * * * *

An addendum to my Cardenio timeline:

In 1990, Charles Hamilton made a big splash when he claimed The Second Maiden's Tragedy was actually Shakespeare's Cardenio. This identification has since been debunked, and the incident has been relegated to an embarrassing footnote in literary history.

I suspect the new play by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee will suffer a similar fate.

That's a shame, because they created a perfectly decent play. It's just not Shakespeare, no matter how much they try to tout it as such. And while that kind of hype may sell tickets, it also burdens them with certain expectations that this play can't possibly fulfill. I avoid reading reviews until I write my own, but I suspect that by any other name, opinions would be much rosier.

Frankly, the play's relationship to Shakespeare's Cardenio is so tangential that I don't feel comfortable using that title. Instead, I'm dubbing this new production SCCardenio in honor of authors Stephen and Charles.

For those seeking simple advice on whether or not to see the show, Ian summed it up nicely:

There are three questions to ask about a production like this:

Is it fun to watch?
Is it a good play?

Is it a good pastiche of Shakespeare?
The answers, in this case, are "yes", "meh", and "no".

Most of my criticism focuses on Ian's third point -- its Shakespearean aspects.

Several years ago, I attended a panel on Shakespeare and SF. From my notes:

Key to transplanting a story to another time and/or place is recognizing which constraints are necessary for the story to make sense, and finding a reason for them in the new location. Certain history plays don't make sense without a firm belief in the divine right of kings. If you don't provide some reason for that within the new setting, the story won't work so well. Classic stories that depend upon the heroine's virginity/chastity have similar problems. Somebody described Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, in which "the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology" as demonstrationg a good understanding of this concept.

According to ARTicles, "Greenblatt and Mee quickly decided that the plot, based on the feudal relation between master and vassal, could not be modernized."

I find that disappointing and difficult to believe.

If the contemporary milieu is such a hindrance, why not choose a different setting?

[I'm tempted to take the playwrights' statement as a challenge, and if I had more time, I'd love to try my hand at modernizing the plot. My initial ideas involve office politics, and competing with the boss to court an attractive client...]

At any rate, instead of trying to recreate the plot, they follow the example of other Shakespeare-like stories by including a cute nod to the source material. In this case, the characters are involved in putting on a play -- specifically, Theobald's Double Falsehood -- with requisite exposition providing the relevant history of Shakespeare's Cardenio.

In the process, characters fall in and out of love, and learn that the one you love may not be the person you expected to fall in love with.

But for a play which is trying so hard to be Shakespearean (a list of tropes), they got far too many of the fundamentals wrong.

For example, SCCardenio is set in Italy, like nearly a third of Shakespeare's plays.
But they portrayed the region with accuracy, realism, and attention to detail.

As I blogged the other night, SCCardenio observes the classical unities, dramatic rules which Shakespeare is famous for disregarding.
The entire play takes place in one location, and each act spans a single day.

I'd go on, but I think you get the idea.

If I try to examine other elements of the play -- setting aside the Shakespearean baggage they've saddled themselves with -- we definitely had fun, but it's not without flaws. Unfortunately, I'm finding it difficult to elaborate without revealing major spoilers.

As I told Ian on the drive home, "I wanted something close to Shakespeare's Cardenio. What I got felt more like an episode of Friends."

Many recent Hollywood films have been labelled "critic-proof" -- attracting a certain core audience who will see the movie regardless of the reviews. Titling this play Cardenio may provide a similar boost to the box office (I understand a New York run is already scheduled for next year). But poetic justice rarely favors Falsehoods.

Cardenio
written by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee for American Repertory Theatre

Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge

Now through June 8
Runs approximately 2.5 hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

Shakespeare's Cardenio: A Brief and Quixotic History

2008-05-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

To provide a bit of context to subsequent entries, here's some of what I've learned over the previous week:

1605: Miguel de Cervantes published El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. It includes a character named Cardenio, who relates his story in several chapters.
1612: Thomas Shelton published the first English translation of the book, The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant Don Quixote of the Mancha
1613: The King's Men twice presented a play before court called (spellings vary): Cardano, Cardenno, Cardema, or Cardenna
1653: Humphrey Moseley entered several plays in the Stationers' Register, including "The History of Cardenio, by Mr. Fletcher and Shakespeare, and the Merry Devill of Edmonton, by William Shakespeare" and "Henry I and Henry II by William Shakespeare and Robert Davenport"
This is the earliest known evidence tying Shakespeare to Cardenio, although scholars reject the other three attributions made by Moseley.
1727: Lewis Theobald produced The Double Falsehood; or, The Distressed Lovers, a play which he claimed was "Written Originally by W. Shakespeare; And now Revised and Adapted to the Stage by Mr. Theobald"
This account was commonly denounced as a hoax and forgery, but recent textual analysis has found "distinctively Fletcherian" stylistic mannerisms.*

And, basically, that's what we know.

^* If this interests you, and you have access to Shakespeare Survey, I recommend Stephan Kukowski's 1991 essay on The Hand of John Fletcher in Double Falsehood.

Rambles Reviews: Blow, blow, thou winter wind

2008-02-13T08:10:00.000-05:00

In the program for Brandeis Theater Company's production of As You Like It, the Assistant Director's Note reveals:

Before rehearsals began, [director] Adrianne [Krstansky] gave us a bit of homework: to fall in love or do something that feels like falling in love.

That exercise certainly paid off as we watched each character succumb to Cupid's sting.

AYLI relies on its strong central lovers, and this show didn't disappoint.

Ramona Alexander's Rosalind was "more than common tall" and quite striking. Whether in a melancholy mood or girlishly giggly, she made the character believably human. As with most productions, the boyish disguise was more portrayal and plot than physical presentation -- but Alexander deserves credit for a most impressive swoon in V.1, collapsing into a full faint.

Playing Orlando, Anthony Mark Stockard hit all the right notes. Handsome, fierce, devoted, desperate...

Inexplicably, they rushed through some of the banter in III.2 (the divers paces of time), trampling the jokes in the process.

But in this production I was even more drawn to the usually-minor characters.

Sheldon Best made Oliver surprisingly sympathetic from the start. When Orlando says "Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up" (I.1) the little brat becomes deliberately provocative, showing a little brother's expertise at pushing his older sibling's buttons. Orlando's attack is so disproportionate that there's little wonder Oliver encourages Charles the wrestler to hold nothing back.

And though Celia is mostly played for humor, I was blown away by the spine of steel Sara Oliva showed when her father banishes Rosalind (I.3). According to the campus arts magazine (PDF), Oliva's dream roles are "Cleopatra, Medea, Electra..." and I could see that strength keep the character from becoming a one-note joke.

Even LeBeau, who is often overlooked, felt like a power to be reckoned with. Lindsey McWhorter imbued LeBeau with such a knowing air, that I wondered whether lines were reassigned to bulk up the part.

In the countryside, Dimitri Papadimitriou's Corin is quite the "natural philosopher." He's not the butt of Touchstone's jokes, but holds his own, playing along with the jester's banter.

As for Touchstone, like many modern-dress productions, the formal role of Fool was eliminated. Joshua Davis played the part more like an oversized goofball; the closest he comes to motley were some rather loud shirts.

As played by Hannah Wilson, I found Phebe totally endearing She didn't convey the typical Lucy van Pelt bossiness, either. Combining a grey cardigan, peach shirt, green skirt, and lavender knee-highs, she'd rather bury her bespectacled nose in Raising sheep the modern way than listen to Silvius' love prattle. But when she fell for Ganymede -- that pathetically hopeful hunch of her shoulders was something out of a comic strip.

Brian Weaver's Silvius reminded me a bit of Arnold Horshack in dress and and manner. Ilya Sobol played Charles as a boisterous Eastern European bear. Naya Chang imbued Audrey with such innocence that I thought she was a freshman. I was surprised to read she's a third year graduate student, who's co-directing BTC's next production. And Molly Haas-Hooven, who played Adam and the deer, seemed to be channelling Andrea Martin with a shuffling gait that could evoke laughter just by crossing the stage.

Professor Elizabeth Terry -- the oldest member of the cast -- was an adequate Jacques, but somehow her recitation of the Seven Ages managed to omit the schoolboy.

Director Adrianne Krstansky may be better-known locally for Actors' Shakespeare Project's recent all-female Macbeth. In this production, she added some touches that I'd never seen before in AYLI.

The initial forest scenes take place in the dead of winter. A much more desperate situation than normally portrayed.

Every other stage production I've seen (four others), broke for intermission in Act III, Scene 2: as Orlando began hanging poems from the trees. This version waited until after the scene concluded -- with Rosalind's contrivance to "cure" Orlando.

Returning from intermission, the stage was a verdant spring. The passage of time added depth to the Ganymede charade, spacing it out over several months, when it often seems to rush past in a matter of days.

Video screens above the stage were largely used as extensions to the scenery -- sparks rising from the bonfire, for example.

However, I'm still not quite sure what the Big-Brotherish eyes before the show were meant to symbolize. And displaying the full moon for Orlando's ode to Diana (III.2) almost felt condescending -- although overlaying Rosalind's face at the end of his soliloquy did evoke a laugh from the audience.

As You Like It is also a musical, and J Hagenbuckle's musical arrangements fit the tone and setting. [I'll confess, I want a recording of their rendition of Marlowe's "Come Live With Me"]

And I would be remiss if I didn't praise fight choreographer Ted Hewlett for the best wrestling match I've seen in any AYLI.

What more can I say? It's funny, it's romantic -- it would make a great Valentine's Day date...

As You Like It
directed by Adrianne Krstansky for the Brandeis Theater Company

Spingold Theater at Brandeis University Waltham, MA [directions & parking]

Five more performances thru February 17:

Thu., Feb. 14 @ 8 pm, $18
Fri., Feb. 15 @ 8 pm, $20
Sat., Feb. 16 @ 2 pm, $18
Sat., Feb. 16 @ 8 pm, $20
Sun., Feb. 17 @ 2 pm, $18

Tickets: Internet ticketing available or phone (781)736-3400, option 5

Runs about 2 hours 45 minutes with a 10-minute intermission.

On Thursday, February 14, join Professor of English and American Literature William (Billie) Flesch for a post-show discussion about the history, context and themes in 'As You Like It.' Professor Flesch is a noted Shakespearean scholar and well-loved professor here at Brandeis University. The actors will join the discussion too.

[I want to go, but that could run awfully late for a work night...]

Rambles Reviews: Shakespeare's Actresses in America

2008-01-29T12:05:00.000-05:00

Reading theatrical histories (such as Nigel Cliff's The Shakespeare riots), one often hears how acting styles have changed over the centuries. The great actors of each generation are lauded for playing roles more naturally than their predecessors.

But reviews and descriptions can only go so far in conveying what that means. Furthermore, most of this discussion focuses on the male actors: David Garrick, John Kemble, Edmund Kean, William Macready, Edwin Forrest... It's a never-ending chain of dominance; even Kenneth Branagh seemed compelled to take on all Lawrence Olivier's best-known roles.

The actresses generally get far less attention, even though they often earned equal acclaim in their day.

“There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses -- and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.”
— Mark Twain

In her seventy-minute one-woman show, Rebekah Maggor portrays sixteen actresses in eight roles from seven of Shakespeare's plays, re-enacting performances in three languages from over a century of stage and screen.

According to the program, Ms. Maggor is a voice coach and "associate editor of the International Dialects of English Archive." She used historical voice recordings and prompt books to recreate the roles in this show.

Of the few actresses whom I've seen perform (Claire Danes, Elizabeth Taylor, and Kathleen Turner), Ms. Maggor's renditions seemed spot on.

Most of the play is narrated in the persona of actress and director Margaret Webster (1905-1972). You don't need to know much Shakespeare to enjoy the production, because she provides context for all the speeches.

Boston trivia aside: Paul Robeson was the first black actor to play Othello in the United States. Fearful of the controversy, no Broadway theater wanted to stage the play. So the American premiere took place at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. Reaction was so positive that the New York theaters which initially refused the show were soon clamoring to bring it to their stages.

I actually would've liked more of history. Listening to some of the more affected styles of 19th century acting (such as the rrrolled R-r-r's), I can't help wonder what role they played in projecting unamplified voices to audiences of thousands.[Contrast the early crooners, who relied upon microphones, to someone like Al Jolson.]

This is a show that can be enjoyed in at least three levels: hear some of Shakespeare's greatest soliloquys, learn a lesson in theater history, and marvel at a virtuouso one-woman performance.

Shakespeare's Actresses in America
Created and performed by Rebekah Maggor for Huntington Theatre Company

Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA,
527 Tremont Street, Boston (Map & Directions)

Six more performances thru February 11:

Tue., Jan. 29 @ 7:30 pm
Sun., Feb. 3 @ 7 pm
Mon., Feb. 4 @ 7:30 pm
Tue., Feb. 5 @ 7:30 pm
Sun., Feb. 10 @ 7 pm
Mon., Feb. 11 @ 7:30 pm

Runs for approximately 70 minutes without intermission; one scene involves cigarette smoke.

Tickets:
$50 ($5 discounts for student, seniors, and military personnel).
Patrons 35 years and younger may purchase $25 tickets through the Huntington's "H_tix Program," available online with code 1723.
Limited $15 student rush and back-row tickets.

Purchase online at huntingtontheatre.org, by phone at (617)266-0800, in person at the Calderwood Pavilion Box Office (527 Tremont St.) or the BU Theatre Box Office (264 Huntington Ave).

PS: On the subject of minimalist Shakespeare, Actors' Shakespeare Project's five-person Henry V closes February 3rd. More info @ Bard in Boston.

Rambles Reviews: Henry V by 5

2008-01-17T23:40:00.000-05:00

But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?

The audience chuckled, finding surprising resonance in the familiar prologue as we all stared at the tiny platform in a Harvard Square basement. And at that point, I knew I had found the lede that would probably launch most reviews of this production.

Into a thousand parts divide one man...

Mistress Quickly (Paula Langton) and Pistol (Ken Cheeseman) say farewell.

King Henry (Seth Powers) and Princess Katherine (Molly Schreiber) decide to wed.

In college, I saw Actors from the London Stage perform Midsummer Night's Dream with five actors and minimal sets. I was utterly blown away by the experience. Eliminating all the stagecraft intensifies your focus on the acting and dialog. Shakespeare's language can hold up to the scrutiny, leaving it all up to the cast. Impressively enough, even when AFTLS actors played multiple roles in a single scene, I never had any confusion about which character was which.

That's what Actors Shakespeare Project accomplished with Henry V.

Last season, ASP put on a six-person Love's Labour's Lost, but I found the experience a bit too gimmicky for my tastes. They played Henry V straight, and it was everything I remembered so fondly about AFTLS.

The doubling and tripling of parts does not interfere with comprehension. They definitely edited the text, reassigning lines and possibly conflating characters. Shakespeare helps keep the audience keep track of who's who, with dialog clearly introducing newcomers by name.

In fact, doubling of roles can actually reveal subtle resonances. For example, I never before noticed how many characters lecture Henry in the guise of giving advice: the Archbishop of Canterbury in Act I, Lord Scroop (briefly) in Act II, Michael Williams in Act IV... But with Ken Cheeseman playing all three, the repetition becomes more obvious.

Although allocation of roles is tricky in a production like this -- everything hinging on which characters appear in scenes together -- I did notice that the male characters who came closest to crying (Exeter in IV.6 followed by Fluellen in IV.7) were both played by Paula Langton. Given all the discussion the previous week regarding gender issues in the presidential race, I wondered how the crosscasting influenced the emotional reactions.

Of course, the only way to carry off a production like this is with a strong and talented cast. And, though I noticed a handful of flubbed lines here and there, they were all seasoned pros.

Why, how now, gentlemen!
What see you in those papers that you lose
So much complexion? — Act II, Scene 2

I recently read an essay (which I've been trying fruitlessly to find for this review) which compared stage Shakespeare to film Shakespeare. The author discussed soliloquys as a device for revealing characters' innermost thoughts -- but a well-shot close-up can be equally effective in a way rarely possible onstage, given audience distance. [I believe the example chosen was Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar.]

ASP arranged the room so that no seat is more than three rows from the stage. During the scene quoted above, I was startled by the intimacy in watching Molly Schreiber's face fall.

Unfortunately, center stage is dominated by a massive support beam. David Evett, the company dramaturg, blogged about the challenges this presented. And by using a circle-in-the-round arrangement, every seat will have at least some obstructed views. Most of Henry's wooing of Kate (V.2), one actor or the other had their back to me. Later that scene, I didn't even realize the King of France had returned until he spoke, the pillar so effectively blocked my view.

[Also, although not personally affected, I should point out that the venue is handicapped accessible by appointment (call to arrange access) and you have to go outside for the nearest bathroom. This play had been scheduled for Jimmy Tingle's theater in Davis Square, and relocated here when that establishment closed.]

Inconveniences aside, if you like your Shakespeare tight-knit, well-acted, and without a great deal of sound and fury (hopefully, I'll find time to blog our experience with the Met's HD Live broadcast of Verdi's Macbeth, which we also saw last weekend) ASP is definitely the place to be.

Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.

Henry V
directed by Normi Noel for Actors' Shakespeare Project

January 10 - February 3

Downstairs at The Garage,
38 JFK Street, Harvard Square

Actors' Shakespeare Project's production of Henry V — by Ian

2008-01-13T13:33:00.000-05:00

Posted by Ian Osmond @ 2008-01-13 13:33

The first question about any production of Henry V -- any production going back to the first time that Shakespeare's company put it on after he wrote it -- is "how do you deal with the audacity of trying to put an empire-spanning war, including one of the most dramatic battles in English history, on a stage?"

Shakespeare's answer was to, in effect, "hang a lampshade on it". Do you know that phrase? It means to call attention to the ridiculousness of a concept, to encourage the audience to go along with it. Actually, the time Shakespeare REALLY did this was in Twelfth Night, when, after the "big reveal" of everybody disguised as everybody else and all the other wackiness, one of the characters says, "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." In Henry V, he uses a slightly different tack. He simply tells the audience that the task of representing what he's representing is impossible. So we, the audience, will have to fill the rest of it in.

I assume most of you know the speech that opens the play. If you're not familiar with it, you may want to take a quick look at it before I go on.

Now, there are two ways you can go with this: you can take this as a challenge to fight against, and prove that you CAN do more to represent reality, or you can embrace it, and trust your audience to fill in the gaps. Of course, one can debate about what Shakespeare would have done if he could -- if he could, would Shakespeare have done a Cecil B DeMille "cast of thousands"? Would he have preferred to do a Battle of Agincourt with seventy thousand CGI warriors fighting?

It's an interesting question, but "what Shakespeare would have done" is not terribly relevant to the question of how a director wants to present the play.

The Actors' Shakespeare Project, under the direction of Normi Noel, has chosen to embrace the "trust the imagination" school of thought. They present a lean, spare production, in which the forty-some-odd characters in the play are portrayed by five actors: Ken Cheeseman, Paula Langton, Doug Lockwood, Seth Powers, and Molly Schreiber.

The space they use is the basement of the Garage in Harvard Square, the same space they played Titus Andronicus and Love's Labours Lost last season. Those of you who have seen those productions can remember the . . . challenges . . . of the space, not least of which is the big freakin' support post smack dab in the middle of the room.

This production uses a similar layout as they did in Titus, making the support post the center point of the stage, with seating on all four sides around it. This, naturally, means that, no matter where you sit, there WILL be times where you can't see exactly what is happening, or, at least, you can't see the facial expression of characters. Of course, the blocking they use attempts to minimize these problems, but it nonetheless can be frustrating. I know that some people I've talked to were annoyed by this when ASP put on Titus in this space, so be aware that many of the same issues exist.

But they also use this. It is a small space, and an awkward one, and they use that as part of the energy in the play. When Ken Cheeseman asked, ". . . can this cockpit hold/The vasty fields of France?", a ripple of laughter went through the room, as we recognized the simple truth of that. The Prologue worked in a way I've never seen it work before -- because the space was so small, the task of bringing forth this tale so impossible, the idea of presenting the scope of the story so ridiculous, that we, the audience, accepted the task of filling in the gaps with our imaginations.

Who remembers Infocom text adventures? Like Zork and the rest? There was a way in which the best-written ones were more immersive than games written today with photo-realistic graphics and all the rest. There are ways that radio plays are more immersive than television, and books are more immersive than radio.

And storytelling can be the most immersive of all.

That, at least, is the goal of this presentation of Henry V. The role of "Chorus" -- aka, the narrator -- is taken by different cast members at different times. And, for me, those were some of my favorite moments in the play -- when one of the members of the cast comes out, and talks to us, filling in bits of the story that just can't be staged.

Because of the space, because of the energy of the production, I, at least, felt comfortable allowing my mind's eye to fill in all the action sequences. This goes for the fight scenes, too. In previous productions, I've seen the fights done (in movies) with special effects and realism, I've seen impressive fight choreography, and once, I saw the fights done as interpretive dance. That last one was kind of embarrassing to watch.

In this production, the fighting happens offstage. We see people running in, exhausted, wounded, and sick, or victorious and bold, or disheartened, and from that, we know what happened. There is one exception: just before the "Once more into the breach" speech, they use a rather symbolic piece to show the English onstage attacking and being thrown back -- and, to me, that was one of the weakest moments in the play.

One final bit that I want to mention is the final scene, where Henry woos Katherine, the Princess of France, as part of the treaty to make a lasting peace between England and France. In order to have a happy ending (or, rather, as happy an ending as you can honestly have in a history), the play ends with a romance, to end the violence. The concept is that this marriage is, or at least, can be, a marriage of love, as well as one of political expedience, and Molly Schreiber and Seth Powers get only one scene in which to attempt to have two people meet and fall in love.

They nail it. The scene is just adorable. I don't know what else I can say about it. Maybe "KAWAII!!!"

Henry V
Directed by Normi Noel
January 10 – February 3
Downstairs at The Garage
38 JFK Street, Harvard Square

Rambles Reviews: Titus at Harvard

2007-12-14T20:20:00.000-05:00

[Work has kept me tremendously busy; I wish my schedule would permit me to write more timely reviews.]

This week's production of Titus Andronicus by the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club marks the fourth version of the play staged in the Greater Boston area in the last thirteen months.

And I've managed to catch all of them (plus one in DC, making five).

If you haven't seen the play before (and do not suffer from any PTSDs which might be triggered by scenes of rape), I do recommend catching it.

I'm not sure how to describe the arrangement of the room and stage aside from experimental. The stage filled most of the room, with only a few rows of seats forming an L against two of the walls. This gave the cast plenty of room to move around, and enabled the politicking Saturnius and Bassianus to address their campaign speeches to different parts of the crowd. But some scenes played in the back corner would've been more effective if the actors were more visible to the audience (II.4).

I've grown accustomed to seeing Act I performed without interruption. HRDC added some minor scene changes, which surprised me and prompted me to reconsider the effect. By breaking up the action in this manner, I think it provided a little more realism and sense of place to the story.

I also noticed several cuts during the second half. Out of five productions, I've only seen the pigeon-seller once, so consider it no big loss. However, I found myself missing the family meal (Act III, Scene 2) and the archery scene (Act IV, Scene 3). Interesting choices which again made me think.

The violence was mostly handled symbolically -- no need to worry about splash zones in this production. Lavinia wore red opera gloves; Titus wrapped his hand in red cloth. Red fabric was used heavily in this performance, much the way ASP's production was dominated by rocks and stones (my review).

But even without graphic blood and gore (as contrast, see Shakespeare Theatre's Lavinia), they confront the audience with the most effective and uncomfortable version of Lavinia's rape I've ever witnessed. After Chiron and Demetrius hustle Lavinia away, the stage remains empty and they let you hear the pleading and screams and thuds coming from offstage. There's nothing to look at, no distractions -- just those awful sounds with your imagination to fill in the pieces. A most impressive performance and brava to Olga Zhulina.

As the title character, Jack Fishburn oddly reminded me of the Joker (by DC Comics). Particularly the origin story of The Killing Joke. "Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour." I enjoyed watching the character go mad, and seeing the glimmers of method to his madness.

I also recognized several actors from May's Romeo and Juliet (review). John Greene, who was Lord Capulet, plays Saturnius. And former Romeo Chris Hanley seemed much better integrated with the rest of the cast as Lucius.

Aaron has become one of my favorite Shakespeare characters, and I have high expectations for the role. I didn't much care for Mat Nakitare's delivery of Aaron's first monolog, but the character grew on me as the story progressed. He flourished a red delicious (Act III, Scene 1: another symbolic substitute for violence) with devilish delight, and I could not have been more pleased by the way he portrayed Aaron's feelings towards his son.

The biggest detraction in the production was the music. It neither reinforced the mood of scenes nor provided ironic contrast. It was just there at unpredictable moments and added nothing.

But audio aside, the acting was solid and I had fun.

Titus Andronicus
by the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club

FREE (e-mail to reserve tickets)
Loeb Ex in Harvard Square

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 2:30 and 7:30 pm.

And now to watch a rented DVD of Middleton's Revengers' Tragedy (starring Christopher Eccleston) which has been recommended by multiple people whom I trust.

Rambles Reviews: Two by Marlowe

2007-12-10T21:40:00.000-05:00

Forgive me, but work and personal responsibilities have kept me too busy to complete the writeups these two plays sorely deserve.

And with time running out on their runs, I wanted to get something up so you all have time to get tickets and make travel arrangements, if you can.

Needless to say, both are strongly recommended.

Tamburlaine

Spectacular is an overused superlative, but I can think of no better word to describe Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.

Its grand epic scale seems to demand CinemaScope; something by Cecil B. De Mille, perhaps, with a cast of thousands. According to the teachers' guide,

Geographical locations either visited, conquered or mentioned in the play include, in the following order: Persepolis (present-day Iran), Scythia (present-day Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia), Persia (present-day Iran), Turkey, Fez (present-day Morocco), Morocco, Argier (present-day Algeria), Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), Egypt, Arabia (present-day Saudi Arabia), Damascus (present-day Syria), Natolia (presentday Turkey), Hungary, Jerusalem (present-day Israel), Larissa (present-day Greece), Balsera (present-day Turkey), Aleppo (present-day Syria), Trebizon (present-day Turkey), Soria (present-day Syria) and Babylon (present-day Iraq).

Of course, those analogies come from a modern perspective. I can only imagine how mind-blowing this must've been to the original audiences, considering the earliest dedicated playhouses were barely 20 years old at the time. [According to Brian Gibbons, "Eighteen years separate the last performance of the York mystery cycle of miracle plays and the first performance of Tamburlaine."]

Needless to say, audiences of the period loved it. This was the first big blockbuster smash. In fact, Marlowe's original play was so successful, that he quickly followed it up with a sequel. I mean, how else can you read this prologue to Part 2 except as "Because you demanded it!"

The general welcomes Tamburlaine received,
When he arrived last upon our stage,
Hath made our poet pen his second part

But I digress...

Shakespeare Theatre Company, like most modern adaptations, has combined Marlowe's two plays into one show, separated by a 15-minute intermission.

They skip the traditional prologue and jump straight into the story. A projected caption identifies the setting in a manner reminiscent of old films (and it does so every change in locale).

Avery Brooks (probably best-known to my readership as Captain Sisko on ST:DS9 and Hawk in Spenser for Hire) plays the lead. He has a commanding presence and I think he's having fun with it.

Tamburlaine
adapted and directed by Michael Kahn for Shakespeare Theatre Company

Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

Now through January 6, 2008
Runs approximately 3 hours 15 minutes, including one intermission.
Recommended for ages 13 and up. Contains violence.

Edward II

The king is dead. Long live the king.

The play opens on a funeral, a procession of mourners paying their silent respects before the casket, as the new king stands pensively apart. After a brief moment with his wife and son, he finally has a moment alone in which to send a message:

My father is deceased. Come Gaveston,
And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.

The story is set in an undefined early twentieth century England, which evokes both the Oscar Wilde indecency trial and another King Edward forced to abdicate over an unacceptable love affair -- a very different tone from Tamburlaine.

All the more impressively, these plays are being performed in repertory, with most of the cast taking roles in both. Wow.

Edward II
directed by Gale Edwards for Shakespeare Theatre Company

Sidney Harman Hall, Washington, DC

Now through January 6, 2008
Runs approximately 3 hours 15 minutes, including one intermission.
Recommended for ages 16 and up. Contains strong sexual content and violence.

Marlowe Symposium

2007-11-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC held a one-day Marlowe Symposium on Saturday, November 10, 2007.

I attended and took notes, and my writeup can be found in the following eight blog posts:

Rambles Reviews The Winter's Tale

2007-09-23T13:25:00.000-04:00

Evil Shakespeare Overlord List #107:
I will not use a chipmunk puppet, a frog puppet, and a neon green alligator puppet (or indeed, any puppets at all) instead of actors.

It takes a talented troupe to make these things look good.

Fortunately, the Cambridge American Stage Tour seems to be such a company.

Their current touring production, The Winter's Tale is the second of their shows I've seen (the first being their 2003 Dream) and in both they supplemented their small cast with puppetry.

This was the second production of The Winter's Tale I've seen, the first back in January by ASP. Fortunately, CAST's interpretation was sufficiently different that I didn't have my usual second-time troubles. [Upon first encountering a play, everything is fresh and new, making a review relatively easy to write. The second production one sees, it can be difficult determining which similarities might result from the later production inspired by the former and which are just common interpretations. Third viewing and beyond, provides enough datapoints to separate the general trends from individual innovations. But I digress...]

CAST is a touring production of Cambridge students (how do they balance this with classes?): eight actors with minimal costumes and sets.

The director's notes in the program describe the play as "a bit like Othello with As You Like It in the middle." And the production follows this interpretation by taking a drastic change in tone with the change in scenery.

The initial scenes in Sicilia evoke an Edwardian atmosphere. The pastoral Bohemia is a wonderland -- as envisioned by Lewis Carroll. The Shephard is the Mad Hatter, his son, the March Hare, and when Time enters after the intermission as Chorus, he's dressed as the White Rabbit. [At "Now take upon me, in the name of Time, To use my wings," he brushes his long white ears.]

Very clever, and it did work.

What I found particularly nice is that they don't force the metaphor too far. Perdita's dress is reminiscent of Alice's... but then, so is Florizel's hair. Polixines' suit is adorned with hearts -- initially, I thought them a token of Leontes' love, but is he intended to evoke Carroll's Queen of Hearts? Possible, but subtle enough to be seen either way.

I take pains in my reviews to distinguish between professional and college/amateur productions. But paradoxically, I think I preferred Ed Martineau's Leontes to the one by the ASP. With a younger actor, the king's insecurities became more plausible.

Leontes was doubled with the Shepherd -- shuffling, stooped and just plain silly to see. Quite the opposite from his portrayal of Leontes, and thus all the more impressive. I wish I could describe Martineau's facial expression during "receives not thy nose court-odor from me?" Suffice it to say, he's got a great comedic talent.

Autolycus has joined the ranks of my favorite characters to watch. He's such a delightful rogue -- in one scene, he literally scams the pants off another character. As played by Owen Holland, he smirks at the other characters... and at the audience. He's a dab hand at the banjo, and a bit of added banter at the end of Act IV provided a deft distraction while the doubled castmembers changed costumes for the return to Sicilia. He definitely put hs stamp on the role in a way that didn't leave me comparing him to previous portrayals.

Most of my negatives were matters of interpretation. I didn't much care for how they staged Exit, pursued by a bear, and by the end, I was tiring of the puppets and would've preferred some other means of handling minor roles. But the puppets worked for Ian, so I'm expressing a matter of taste rather than finding a flaw.

One actual problem to report: In Act III, Scene 3 the Clown delivers a humorously jumbled account of a bear attack and shipwreck. Shakespeare wants us to laugh at the Clown's confusion, but instead it left the audience befuddled. At intermission (which followed that scene) I heard several people trying to puzzle out what had just happened in the plot -- and we ended up having to explain that plot-point for them.
I don't know if the cast has time (or inclination) to work on the delivery of that scene, but it could use some clarification.

But these off-notes were minor quibbles in an overall entertaining evening.

The dance at the sheep-shearing feast was a particular high point. What starts as a somewhat typical English country dance turns into a work of choreographed slapstick that had the audience roaring.

The cast also used their youth as fodder for interpretation. Leontes assertion that his daughter "'tis a bastard, So sure as this beard's grey," gains new irony when he's pinching a black-whiskered chin.

I could go on, but just catch it if you can.

Having had such a good experience, I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for their future tours.

The Winter's Tale
by Cambridge American Stage Tour

Forthcoming shows:
• New York City, September 22nd and 23rd
• Frostburg, MD, September 25
• Washington, VA, September 29
• Cambridge, UK, October 2 - 6

The English Channel at Suffolk University— by Ian

2007-09-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

Posted by Ian Osmond @ 2007-09-09 12:40

This is probably one of the most intimidating reviews I've ever attempted to write. Robert Brustein is perhaps the most significant name in American theater criticism in the past several decades. He is the person who, in many ways, codified and defined what a competent theater critic should know and be, and what a competently-written theater review should include. Lis and I are trying to write things that fit in with some of his ideas of criticism.

He is also the author of the new play The English Channel, which just had its world premiere at the newly-refurbished and gorgeous C. Walsh theater at Suffolk University -- and therefore, there is a chance that he'll read this thing.

Um, Prof. Brustein, if you read this, please feel free to criticise our criticism -- we'd actually be very glad of your opinion of our opinions.

The English Channel is an example of the developing subgenre of "Will&Kit" fiction. There are enough examples out there of stories which imagine the relationships between Shakespeare and Marlowe, and their contemporaries, that one can start to notice themes and tropes among them. The stories range from the highfalutin' literary to porn, and even a few which are both.

Brustein's play isn't either extreme, but has elements that would appeal to fans of both types.

The content of the play doesn't break any new ground. The action is set in one room of the Mermaid Tavern outside London, where Shakespeare is living while the playhouses are closed, in April and May of 1593.

In terms of characterization and interpretation of events, Brustein generally chooses the interpretation most common among this subgenre. As various people and events were mentioned, I saw Lis marking off notes in her "Stories About Shakespeare and Marlowe Checklist": Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, check; the Baines note, check; Dutch church libel as a frame-up, check. . . .

But, see -- all that is just the framework. Sure, Brustein stole the plot and outline of the play, from history and from other writers' interpretations of history, Of course he did: it's a play about freakin'Shakespeare. If you're writing a play about Shakespeare, and NOT stealing the plot, you're kind of missing the point. Shakespeare is about writing characters, and about language.

So, let's start with language. On that matter, let me give my highest commendation: Robert Brustein must be totally out of his frickin' mind. I know of no higher praise I can give an artist.

He wrote the entire play in iambic pentameter. If that was just a stunt, I'd have enjoyed it, just for the novelty and "goddamned cool" factor. But it wasn't a stunt. It worked. The story which the play tells, the characters on the stage -- they need to talk in blank verse. It just is who they are. Of course the historical people on whom these characters are based didn't do that -- but we're not watching the historical people. We are watching the characters which Brustein wrote -- and they are characters who think in poetry.

Okay, that's enough about the play as written, for now: what about the play as performed?

Set designer Richard Chambers gave us Shakespeare's small, cramped room above a tavern, with a mattress on the floor, a desk and a chair, an armoire, a bench, and all the props that the theater company owned that had to go SOMEWHERE when the theaters were closed. The effect is flashy, vibrant, and claustrophobic.

The play's four characters are Kit Marlowe (Sean Dugan), Emilia Lanier (Merritt Janson), Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton (Alex Pollock), and William Shakespeare (Gabriel Field).

The costuming of Southampton appears based on his portrait from 1600, but the portrayal is also influenced by the 1590s Cobbe portrait -- you know: this one -- also known as "That's No Lady; That's the Earl of Southampton" Portrait. Shakespeare's costuming is reminiscent of the Chandos portrait,and Marlowe's look is, thankfully, not based on the Corpus Christi portrait.

It's a small play -- one room, four characters, and the proscenium arch works perfectly for it. As Lis and I review mostly Shakespeare stuff, we're actually more used to non-proscenium stages (we generally feel that most of Shakespeare, with the possible exception of his later Romances such as Pericles, don't naturally fit with the proscenium), But you can feel when a play is written for the proscenium, and this one is. The claustrophobia of room, the energy of the four people, is contained in the stage-space, making something of a pressure cooker.

And there's plenty of pressure to cook. Political plots, sexual affairs, jealousy, treason, spying, and all the other things that you'd expect from any "Bill and Kit's Excellent Adventure". But what's actually happening is secondary to the characters.

Among four characters, there are six relationships, some sexual, some not. Will's schtupping Emilia, Emilia's schtupping Will and Southampton, Southampton's schtupping Emilia and Kit. Kit considers himself to be Will's friend and inspiration -- or, at least, Will steals all the best ideas from him, Southampton is Will's patron.

Southampton is a traitor, Kit is a spy for the Queen, Will is stuck between them.

In the mix, I feel Emilia's character gets a bit lost. She feels somewhat one-note. Admittedly, it's a really interesting note: she's a firm believer in women's strength and dignity and inherent worth in a time where that's hardly the prevailing norm -- and it does put her in an interesting position, with interesting conflicts. But she still seems shallower than the other characters. After their first couple scenes together, which I enjoyed, it feels like every conversation between Emilia and Will devolves into carping and bickering -- which is okay -- about the same topics over and over again -- which is not okay. An argument that you've already had gets boring the second time around.

Southampton is a powerful and relatively simple character -- at least compared to the rest of the cast. He is nineteen, passionate, driven, and impetuous. He is driven by a lust for adventure, for conspiracy, for excitement, and for, well, lust. He is beautiful, and knows it. He shows up on stage like a meteor -- bright, hot, and heading to burn up. He is in the "live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" mode.

So is Marlowe. But Marlowe is a bit older: twenty-nine to Southampton's nineteen. He is perhaps equally as impetuous, lustful, and adventurous, but, if not more cautious, at least more skilled. . . which makes a bit of irony as to which of them is alive at the end of the play, but that's history, and historical fiction, for you.

I found Marlowe to be my favorite character, until one of his final scenes, when Dugan, unfortunately, hit one of my pet peeves: he Played Drunk Badly.

I don't know why so many stage actors can't act as if they are drunk. It's not like actors typically are unfamiliar with alcohol, and yet it is extremely common for them to stagger about the stage in an annoyingly unconvincing manner.

Nonetheless, I liked the rest of his performance, both as a living Marlowe, and in his role as a ghost, delivering the prologue of the play and helping bring about the resolution.

Shakespeare is the central character in the play -- there are very few moments in which he is not on stage. Brustein's conceit for Shakespeare is that he does not naturally have a strong personality of his own, but rather channels the personalities of others -- influenced both by the flesh-and-blood people around him, and by the characters he channels as he writes his plays. It's a difficult concept to play on the stage, and Field does it well. He does have his own passions and motivations, but he finds them shaped by the powerful personalities around him. When he butts heads with Emilia, it is as much because her ideas of what women are are in conflict with what Southampton and Marlowe think women are -- in effect, Emilia is in conflict with the other two men in the play, through the medium of Shakespeare, as much as she is in conflict with Shakespeare himself.

The further conflict in Shakespeare's character is a between Brustein's conceit of "playwright" versus "poet". His idea is that poet creates a work which is an expression of his or her own personality, while a playwright is a channel for the personalities of the fictional personalities which inhabit his or her mind. And the play includes this conflict within Shakespeare -- when he is writing sonnets, he is expressing more of his own personality, but that personality is easily subsumed under the overwhelming personalities around him, and by their very language. Brustein has fun with a Shakespeare in Love-like conceit in which Shakespeare observes and absorbs the witty turns of phrase, and the motivations and actions, of the people around him in order to use them in his own writing, and Field appears to enjoy playing that aspect of the character.

In general, The English Channel has a decent but unoriginal plot, four fascinating characters, and amazing language. It very much works as a play, and deserves to be played regularly. And this is a worthy first production of a worthy play.

There are four more productions, next week:

Thursday, September 13: 7:30 pm
Friday, September 14: 7:30 pm
Saturday, September 15 3:00 pm & 7:30 pm

At the C. Walsh Theatre at Suffolk University, 55 Temple St, Boston

All seats are General Admission. Please note that the content of this play is not recommended for children.
Tickets for the general public are $30 and $15 for students with ID.
Box office: Theatre Mania, 866-811-4111

Rambles Reviews: Redfeather's Richard III

2007-08-07T21:40:00.001-04:00

“God keep you from them, and from such false friends!”

— Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Edward, Prince of Wales

Redfeather Theatre Program must have been reading my mind.

At the box office for Richard III, they have a handout diagramming the family tree and political alliances among the characters: including names of those deceased before the play's start, and actors' photos beside those that appear in the play.

I've always wanted this kind of resource when attending the history plays. So my hearty thanks, with hopes that more companies will adopt this practice. And, because it's staged in an outside ampitheatre, it's actually light enough before intermission to make it a useful reference.

The show opened on a high note.

Although "curtain" is officially at 7, try to arrive by 6:45 to hear a lovely pair of chanteuses sing tunes from the 1920s and 30s.

Over the quarter-hour, observant audience members can watch the cast file in, each presence announced by a servant (further assistance in identifying who's who!) The cast then mingled in cocktail-party fashion until it was time for the show to start.

Then, Redfeather threw me for a loop. I'd thought Shakespeare's opening was sacrosanct. (I'd said as much to Ian, while discussing how Shakespeare & Company edited out the first 18 lines of Antony and Cleopatra).

But instead, they began with the final scene of Henry VI, Part 3, which nicely sets the stage and flows directly into Richard's (in)famous "Now is the winter of our discontent"

Timothy John Smith plays Richard with an eyepatch and a cane. The cane makes a most useful prop. While addressing the audience in the first scene, he points with it to indicate who he's discussing -- a third reinforcement for pinning names to faces!

It seems ironic to describe Richard III as friendly, but that's certainly true of the production as a whole, even though the character himself remains typically villainous.

Costumes gave the setting a mid-twentieth century feel, and helped differentiate the factions. The Woodvilles (family and friend of the queen) had a nouveau riche air about them, in contrast to the traditional nobility who were more formally-dressed.

I loved many of the minor directorial touches, such as the continuing reappearance of Clarence's murderers as Richard's henchmen. Likewise, the way Ann Marie Shea's Queen Margaret hovered around the edge of scenes seemed to reinforce Buckingham's final realization: “Remember Margaret was a prophetess!”

On the other hand, Ian was uncomfortable with the Bishop of Ely being treated as comic relief.

Unfortunately, our enjoyment was marred by environmental noise. The night we attended, some other event was going on in the park. Loud salsa music distracted from the atmosphere, and sometimes even drowned out the actors' voices. Not the company's fault, but an annoyance nonetheless.

The problem was mitigated during times when the production used its own background music, so I would recommend future productions consider (a) miking the actors on such nights and/or (b) using more incidental music throughout the performance.

Until then, I suggest checking with local event calendars in planning your visit, to avoid other such conflicts.

Issues of venue aside, consider this another solid offering from Redfeather.

Richard III
directed by Redfeather Theatre Company

Memorial Grove Amphitheatre in Green Hill Park, Worcester MA (Directions)

Playing through August 19th, 7pm Wednesdays -- Sundays (Calendar)
Tickets $20 general admission ($15 for students and seniors)

Running time: approximately 2 ¼ hours, with 15 minute intermission

Rambles Reviews: Antony & Cleopatra

2007-08-06T19:25:00.000-04:00

Cleopatra has always been a larger-than-life figure. Powerful. Desired by great men. Ruled by her passions.

Watching Tina Packer strut and fret her hours upon the stage, one thought predominated in my mind: this could only have been created after Queen Elizabeth's death.

Tits and Asp:

Tina Packer as Cleopatra

As written by Shakespeare, Cleopatra is an exaggerated parody of the worst slanders against Elizabeth. She's dangerously capricious, weakens her generals by toying with their affections, even boxes a messenger's ears for delivering bad tidings then cozens him back with promises of riches if he pleases her by speaking ill of her rivals...

When Cleopatra insisted on “being in” the naval battles, I half expected some rude parody of the Tilbury speech.

After fifty years of queenly rule, Jacobean England really had a lot invested in promoting their manliness. [For more on this, see my longtime favorite: King James and the history of homosexuality; this play isn't mentioned, but it fits in that analysis.]

Historical context aside, it's a magnificent role.

Tina Packer's Cleopatra rides a dizzying emotional see-saw. But while this inconstancy is first played for amusement, it becomes terrifying as one realizes how much power can be brought to bear on one of her whims.

Her performance also reminded me of Diane D'Aquila in ART's 2005 production of Dido (review). Both played aging queens revitalized by love and facing devastation at its loss. [I'm sure some academics have researched Marlowe's influence, so I won't dwell on it in further detail.]

The production was anchored by solid acting all around, especially from the supporting cast.

	Walton Wilson as Enobarbus, Tony Molina as Menas

As the soldier Enobarbus, Walton Wilson provided a steady source of plain-talking common-sense. A refreshing contrast to other characters' flowery (and often false) speech. Pompey tells him to "Enjoy thy plainness; it nothing ill becomes thee." I couldn't put it better. His description of Cleopatra's arrival was wonderfully evocative.

I've delighted in Tony Molina's comic characters in past productions, but I think this was the first time I've seen him in the more serious roles. Here he played the Soothsayer, Menas the warrior, and the serpent-bearing Clown, providing a dark and sometimes menacing presence to his scenes.

The only off note came from Robert Biggs' Lepidus. His vocal style seemed too affected in otherwise serious scenes (although it worked marvelously playing drunk in Act II, Scene 7). But that was a minor distraction.

Like the cast, the crew also did an outstanding job.

From the very beginning, they made versatile use of the minimalist set.

“If it be love indeed... tell me how much.”

Antony (Nigel Gore) and Cleopatra (Tina Packer) enjoy a tender moment.

A rug transforms to a curtain and then a blanket as the story opens on a playful bedroom scene (right).

Lighting effects reinforced the sense of place. Egypt was lit in soft blues, while Roman scenes were predominantly yellow, giving them a sharper feel.

Arthur Oliver's costumes were spectacular. I wish I had bandwidth to include more images, but consider it an incentive to see the show.

Suffice it to say, all the women looked fabulous. [Tina Packer has a great figure, which her costumes really showed off!] The men wore relatively similar tunics, with rank indicated by color (Caesar in purple, others in reds or browns) and other accoutrements. I was particularly captivated by Caesar's shiny gold breastplate.

Be sure to look around the lobby during intermission. The gift shop has several costume sketches on display.

Battle scenes were represented through stylized choreography. It's a valid artistic choice (common to S&Co productions), though I tend to prefer more realistic stage combat.

Unfortunately, the story does drag a bit in the second half. It's pretty clear where the unlucky couple's tragic flaws will lead them, and there just came a point where I wished they'd get a move on.

Antony and Cleopatra is another strong offering from Tina Packer and everyone at Shakespeare & Company.

Antony and Cleopatra
directed by Michael Hammond for Shakespeare and Company

Founders' Theatre, Lenox MA (Directions)

Playing through September 2nd (Calendar)

Henry IV, Part 1, by the Industrial Theatre — by Ian

2007-07-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

Posted by Ian Osmond @ 2007-07-14 23:11

So, Lis and I saw the Industrial Theatre's production of Henry IV today. It'll be playing again tomorrow at 2, next weekend on Saturday and Sunday at 2, where we saw it, on the lawn of the First Parish Church in Taunton Center, then it will be at the Sanders Theater at Harvard on the 27th, and in the state park in Easton on the 28th and 29th.

All shows are free -- just show up.

So, is it worth showing up?

Short answer: sure! It's free!

Frankly, it's a pretty basic production -- no particularly impressive conceits, no standout amazing performances. Very basic sets (which, incidentally, I tend to like), very simple costumes. They chose to put Hal, Bartolph, Pistol, and the rest in modern dress when they were boozing it up, and they used bottles of Bud for the sack, but, other than that, it was all more-or-less-generic-medievalish-kinda costuming.

The performances were solid. Nothing amazing, but the lines were delivered clearly, and with appropriate amounts of emotion and inflection. No complaints there.

If I had a complaint, it would be that the fight scenes could have been better. They were fine, but, given that we're in Boston, which has so many people working on medieval and Renaissance swordplay, and so many people who do fight choreography, I've gotten to expect a pretty high standard for my Shakespearian swordfights. But, again, there was nothing wrong with them.

Everything was solid. It was a good, average production.

Which made it a hell of a lot of fun, because the play is good. We'd not seen Henry IV before, although Lis had read it. I was generally familiar with some of the basic outline of the story, but not the details.

And it's a good, fun play. Some of the bits where Shakespeare is deliberately trying to be funny are, well, kind of embarrassing -- I generally feel that people who deliberately annoy their waiters should be beaten with sticks -- but other humor bits are damn good. And the main plot itself is fast-paced and exciting, while Prince Hal is a genuinely interesting guy.

So is it worth it? Yes -- I mean, c'mon, it's free. But even so -- we drove an hour to Taunton and an hour back, and feel that it was time well-spent. If you can easily get to Taunton, the Borderlands state park, or the Sanders Theater, it's worth going. Especially if you've never seen Henry IV before.

Henry IV and Harry V

2007-07-14T19:37:00.000-04:00

So, we caught Henry IV this afternoon.

It was a perfectly serviceable production. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly inspired, either.

Shakespeare told a good story, and they gave a reasonable showing.

A nice easy afternoon-in-the-park -style Shakespeare. It was worth free. It was even worth the hour-long drive each way.

If you're on the South Shore, it's an entertaining way to spend an afternoon. It will also be playing one show in Sanders Theatre in Harvard Square for those who live farther away.

Afterwards, we took a sidetrip on the way home to Jordan's Reading.

Signs said that all today's showings of Harry Potter were sold out, but when I got to the ticket booth, they said they had four tickets left to the midnight showing.

So, I scooped up 25% of their remaining inventory, and will catch that in just over four hours...

That's been most of my day.

How're you?

ASP's Love's Labour's Lost, a review — by Ian

2007-06-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

xiphias and I are having problems posting to LiveJournal, so I am posting this here on his behalf:

The Actors' Shakespeare Project is finishing off their third season with an extra, bonus play, a six-person Love's Labour's Lost, a light, fluffy, and funny play to balance out a season which would otherwise be entirely about psychotic princes killing their families.

If you include the 2000 Kenneth Branagh movie version, Lis and I have now seen LLL four times. In those four times, we've seen it done more-or-less straight once.

This wasn't that time.

(For the record, it was the 2006 Huntington Theater production, reviewed by Lis and by me. The other one was the 2005 ART student-troupe production, which I also reviewed.)

As pure entertainment, it works very well. If you want to laugh and enjoy yourself for two and a half hours, this is an extremely good way to go about it. The belly-laughs started within thirty seconds of the actors' first appearance on the stage. They use physical comedy, including slapstick, and very clearly let you know what you're in for -- and they deliver handsomely on that promise of entertainment and humor.

So it works as entertainment. Which makes it worth watching. But how does it work as a production of Love's Labour's Lost?

Let's start with some basic things. First, it's a six-person cast. Now, there are nineteen characters in the play -- but you can safely ditch three of them.

Here are all of First Lord's lines:

"Lord Longaville is one."
"Here comes Boyet."

Here are all of Forester's lines:

"Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice; A stand where you may make the fairest shoot. "
"Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so."
"Yes, madam, fair."
"Nothing but fair is that which you inherit."

And here are all of Mercade's lines:

"God save you, madam!"
"I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The king your father—"
"Even so; my tale is told."

So there are actually sixteen real characters.

The young actor Khalil Flemming plays Moth, one of Shakespeare's better roles for a child actor, since he actually gets to use other characters as his straight-man and deliver the punchlines himself. And the other five actors each play three roles apiece.

Now, given that there are several scenes in which nine or more characters are on stage at one time (heck, I'm pretty sure that, at the last scene, pretty much EVERYBODY is on stage at once) this is a bit of a challenge, which is one of the things which makes the performance fun.

So, how do they manage this? Well, each actor wears several hats. Literally. Each character is signified by a hat-and-wig combination, which sits on a set of hat-trees which are at the back of the stage (and which also work as the trees in which various characters hide.. .) As actors play different roles, they get different hats.

As it turns out, it takes very little re-organization of the text to make this flow smoothly.

Let's start with a brief overview of the play. The young King of Navarre and his three buddies swear to study day and night for three years, and for that whole time, not even see nor speak to any women. Just as they finish up swearing to this, they remember that the Princess of France and her three buddies (along with Boyet, their servant) are about to show up and they need to deal with them.

Then, some other stuff is also happening in the "B" plot. Costard and Don Armando both love Jacquenetta (which is convenient, because Jacquenetta appears to be one of those women who loves anybody who's got a buck or two), Holofernes and Nathaniel use lots of big words, Armando attempts to use lots of big words, but isn't very good at it, and Moth makes fun of him.

In the "A" plot, there are, obviously, four pairs of lovers. You have the King and the Princess, you have Berowne and Rosaline, who are the lovers who are clever and witty and get all the good lines (think Beatrice and Benedick), and you have the Other Two Pairs, who are, um, extra.

So: Johnny Lee Davenport gets Boyet, the servant of the Princess in the "A" plot, and Don Armando in the "B" plot. He also gets Constable Dull, a sort of "utility infielder" character who gets to carry people off to jail and be made fun of by the people who use big words. And Khalil Flemming gets Moth.

The other four actors each get one male lover, one female lover, and one person in the "B" plot. Marianna Bassham gets Dumaine (Spare Male Lover #1), Costard (Rustic Horny Guy), and Rosaline (Clever, Witty Female Lover). Jason Bowen gets Berowne (Clever, Witty Male Lover), Holofernes (Pedantic Schoolteacher Who Uses Big Words), and Katharine (Spare Female Lover #1) Sarah Newhouse's roles are Longaville (Spare Male Lover #2), the Princess of France, and Jacquenetta the bicycle, while Michael Forden Walker portrays the King of Navarre, Maria (Spare Female Lover #2), and Nathaniel (Pedantic Curate Who Uses Big Words).

All four of the important lovers (Rosaline, Berowne, the King, and the Princess) are done well. All four of the unimportant lovers (Dumaine, Katharine, Longaville, and Maria) aren't. Bassham does try to distinguish her Unimportant Lover, Dumaine, by making him unusually stupid. I thought it was a good idea to try to do something to distinguish Dumaine from Longaville, but Lis thought that it was just more distracting than useful. As far as I could tell, the other three actors don't even particularly try to distinguish their Unimportant Lovers, focusing their energies instead primarily on their Important Lovers, and secondarily on their "B" plot characters -- and, frankly, I think that's the right choice. I may someday watch a production of LLL which makes me care about Dumaine, Longaville, Katherine, and Maria, but I haven't yet, and, for now, I consider them important only in that they make up the numbers, giving enough characters to make up funnier scenes with more confusion. If anyone reading this wants to consider this a challenge, of course, I'd be thrilled to see what you can come up with to make those four interesting and distinct. But, for this production, I was happy to see everyone get one good lover, and one of the spares.

How about the "B" plot?

I think Lis and I disagreed almost completely down the line about who we liked best in the "B" plot. But neither of us disliked any character. I thought Bassham's Costard was okay, Lis thought he was great. I loved Newhouse's Jacquenetta; Lis felt she was acceptable. I didn't have any problems with Walker's Nathaniel, but he didn't really "click" for me, either; Lis really enjoyed him a lot. And, of course, for me, every performance of Holofernes I ever see, I'm going to be mentally comparing it to Robert Jason Jackson's performance in the 2006 Huntington Theater production. Bowen's Holofernes was perfectly fine -- but it wasn't Jackson's.

About the venue: imaginary_love_ mentioned that she had problems with the venue as it was set for Titus. I'd like to reassure her that the venue is entirely re-arranged for this performance, and that I don't think she'd have the same obstructed-view problems that she had then. The production has very simple set dressing, and the stage is placed against a wall. While, for Titus, they used the support pillars of the building as part of the stage (or, at least, that's how I recall it), in this case, those pillars are simply things that the risers for seating are built around. Titus used a very creative and evocative set-dressing, but, as imaginary_love_ discovered, no matter how good that is, it rarely comes without some sort of cost; this is much less experimental, a much more typical setup, with seating on three sides of the stage. It's one of the ways to set up a room that I consider typical, and consider a generally solid choice for performing Shakespeare.

We didn't notice any of the problems with heat that she'd had, but, then, this WAS an evening performance on a pretty nice night.

So, to summarize: first, it's a heck of a lot of fun. Second, doing it with a six-person cast is not simply a gimmick, but it strengthens the play by allowing everybody to concentrate on one or two of the stronger roles in the play, while de-emphasizing the weaker ones. Third, after a season of murder, psychosis, paranoia, and treachery, the ASP really deserves to get to do a fun, light play. And finally, you deserve to see it.

See the lady the epilogue

2007-05-16T07:05:00.000-04:00

A while back, chatting with a dramaturg friend of mine, he commented that Shakespeare's endings suck.

And they really do.

I'm not talking about what happens in the action, but how Shakespeare delivers it -- which is a challenge for modern directors.

For example, Cymbeline concludes with denouement after denouement, as characters reveal various plot points (which the audience already knows) to other characters. Individual characters only understand their part in the story, so they have to explain things to one another until everyone has the full picture.

Something similar happens in Titus, where the (surviving) characters inform the Roman citizenry of what just happened -- everything the audience saw in the previous five acts of the play.

Shakespeare is worse than the (typical) reveal in murder mysteries, because we the audience already watched all these things acted out.

Why do we need to be told what we just saw?

It's a question I've been pondering since my friend first pointed it out.

And I've now got an idea...

I'm in the middle of reading The Shakespeare riots by Nigel Cliff.

In 1849, a massive riot broke out in New York City (we're talking at least 20,000 rioters) fueled by a rivalry between two Shakespeare productions (the Scottish Play, of course).

But much of the book does an excellent job setting the scene -- explaining what Shakespeare meant in America and England, how it was acted and how it was perceived.

Modern theater is nothing like it once was.

Nowadays, we're more common with moviegoing. All seats face the screen in a pitch-black room. You can't see the rest of the audience, but that's fine because (except for shows like Rocky Horror) disruptions are unwelcome intrusions to the performance you came to see. Each spectator has an individual one-way relationship with the screen (or stage).

But that's a relatively recent innovation.

Drury Lane interior, c. 1808:

In the days before electric lighting, the audience was often as well-lit as the stage. Some theatres had gas lighting by the mid-19th century, but that merely improved contrast; it didn't plunge the auditorium into full darkness. [According to Wikipedia, Richard Wagner started/pushed the trend for darkening the auditorium during performances.]

So when people speak of the theater as a place to see and be seen, they weren't just talking about making a dramatic entrance (like modern red carpet walks) -- people-watching was a major part of the entertainment.

Furthermore, until theaters had microphones and amplification, you probably couldn't hear the stage that well anyway.

This was exacerbated by theater owner's attempts to maximize profit by cramming as many seats as possible into the theatrs. If you could barely see the stage and couldn't hear the actors, what was the attraction? Well, it was a great place to catch up with friends, particularly for poorer folk who may not have room in their houses to entertain.

Needless to say, all these distractions meant audience attention was only partially focused on the play itself.

No wonder Shakespeare felt the need to conclude his plays with a recap. It was all too easy for his audiences to have missed those points during the action, and he didn't want people leaving confused.

Make sense?

On a related note, Shakespeare's openings also often suck.

As I wrote last summer:

[T]he very first line in As You Like It is, effectively, "As you know, Bob...":

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness...

As a matter of fact, there are several exchanges in the first two scenes in which characters rehash things they already know for the audience's benefit:

There's no news at the court, sir, but the old news: that is...

And AYLI is hardly the only play guilty of this. I noticed it in Cymbeline, too.

Romeo and Juliet both summarizes the plot in the prologue and retells it at the end.

The old advice to "Say what you're going to say; say it; then say what you've said" was meant for nonfiction presentations, and works much less well in storytelling.

Frankly, I'm reminded of an exchange in The Great Muppet Caper:

Miss Piggy: “Why are you telling me all this?”

Lady Holiday: “It's exposition. It has to go somewhere.”

And realizations like this are one of the reasons I mock anyone who falsely lionizes Shakespeare's writing abilities.

He was damned good, but by no means perfect.

Double, double toil and trouble

2007-05-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

The New York Times review of Cymbeline makes the following comment:

The decision to cast Mr. Hiddleston in the roles of both Cloten and Posthumus is intriguing but not particularly illuminating, unless it is meant to suggest, again cynically, that the loutish Cloten and the mistrustful Posthumus are two sides of the same perfidious coin, twin examples of the varieties of masculine pathology.

Now, I didn't receive any kind of press kit, but I was curious about the choice to double that role -- both in this production and historically.

So I hit the search engines...

...and the second result was Cheek by Jowl's Education Pack (PDF), featuring an article specifically discussing "The Doubling of Posthumus and Cloten" (by Valerie Wayne, Bronwen Lawton and Melissa Chia).

Here's the relevant answers -- it reveals a number of plot points, so I'm posting this with spoiler protection. Highlight the text to read it:

Posthumus and Cloten are never on stage at the same time. As the play opens, Imogen refers to her husband as an 'eagle' and her stepbrother as a 'puttock', but those distinctions become quickly blurred when Posthumus is entrapped in a wager on his wife's fidelity and wants her killed because he thinks she has been unfaithful. Cloten, too, plans to kill Imogen but wants to rape her first. Are these characters really so different? As the play poses this question, it presents Imogen with the 'body' of Cloten dressed in the clothes of Posthumus, and the clothes fit perfectly. Whose body is this? Although Imogen claims to know the 'shape of's leg' and the 'martial thigh' of her husband, the audience knows she has confused one man for the other. Cynthia Lewis claims that at this moment the issues of misperception in the play reach their peak. Imogen's confusion is an ironic commentary on the similarities between Cloten and Posthumus, and we can sympathize with her predicament when we have shared in those confusions ourselves. Cloten reveals many of the boorish traits that Posthumus does not fully repress, and D.E. Landry claims he is a 'parodic double' of Posthumus's own instincts. Posthumus eventually changes from a murderous to a repentant and more loving husband, but that happens while he is absent from the stage. He is gone for all of acts three and four, and the character we see instead during those acts is Cloten. What we witness then, according to Homer D. Swander, is Posthumus's 'symbolic life and death in the caricature named Cloten'. When Cloten dies, the part of Posthumus that was most like Cloten dies as well. Using the same actor for both roles makes the connection between the two characters more explicit, so the death of one can contribute to the reform of the other. However, we may wonder for a moment how complete that transformation is when Posthumus strikes Imogen just before they are reunited.

Given all that, I can't help wondering why Mr. Isherwood is asking questions and I am providing the company's answers.

And, as I said before, I'm doing this without benefit of the press kit or the resources of the Times.

At any rate, I found it sufficient knowing that the roles were clearly designed to be doubled -- like the human and fairy monarchs in Midsummer Night's Dream or Cordelia and the Fool in Lear.

Furthermore, as I wrote in my review, I thought it was the perfect showcase for Tom Hiddleston. And if you've got an actor capable of pulling it off as well as Mr. Hiddleston did, why not give him the chance?

PS: While trying to title this entry, I came upon the following quotes in the play:

About Posthumus: “[H]e's honourable
And doubling that, most holy

and

Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name

Sometimes I love Shakespeare's wordplay...

Rambles Reviews: Cymbeline

2007-05-15T21:35:00.000-04:00

Cymbeline is one of the more rarely performed of Shakespeare's plays.

It may be difficult -- the story is certainly complex -- but it was a most satisfying experience.

David Collings' Cymbeline:

Gwendoline Christie as Queen

For those unfamiliar with the story (which is most people), here's the setup:

The title character was king of England during the reign of Augustus Caesar.

As the play opens, two suitors vie for his daughter's affections. Imogen is expected to marry Cloten, her stepmother's son, but she prefers the lowborn Posthumus.

And from that simple start, Shakespeare pulls out all the stops.

The play includes:

rustics, royalty, royalty raised by rustics, Britains, Romans, Britains in Rome, Romans in Britain, evil queens, foolish kings, loyal servants, suspicious husbands, wronged wives, unreasonable fathers, headstrong daughters, wicked stepmothers, ambitious cads, malicious gossip, falsified evidence, imagined cuckoldry, divine visitations, magic poisons, false identities, faked deaths, failed diplomacy, crossdressing, estrangement, banishment, decapitation, ghosts and apparitions, jealousy, romance, ambition, deception, warfare... and a song.

In other words, everything but the kitchen sink.

Truly a magnificent tour de force.

Ian and I gaped in awe, marvelling as each new device was revealed. [The closest analogy to the experience would be watching a plate spinner or juggler, wondering how many items they could keep in the air, holding one's breath in awe.]

On our way home, we tried to think of any tropes Shakespeare left out, and finally came up with one: Cymbeline lacks a malaprop-spouting clown (a common omission in later plays, after Will Kemp left the company). Indeed, there are no fools at all in the story. Then again, it really doesn't need one.

But that's all Shakespeare's doing.
How was Cheek by Jowl's production?

Flipping through a copy of the play afterwards, they definitely streamlined certain aspects.

I don't know how much of the play was cut, but most of the edits I noticed would belong in a DVD's deleted scenes -- generally additional exposition that didn't advance the plot.

We don't need 20 lines in the first scene explaining Posthumus' upbringing (I.1.34-60), particularly since the relevant information is revealed elsewhere (I.1.185). Details about Imogen's assumed identity were snipped, as were Posthumus' dream sequence. Nothing which really impacted the plot.

And, the story flowed. A brief dumb show added some color and interest to the introductory exposition. And as I said above, we were delighted by the twists and turns Shakespeare threw into it.

Tom Hiddleston as Cloten

Tom Hiddleston as Posthumus

Despite the title, the true star of the show was Tom Hiddleston, playing a double role as the cad Cloten and gentle Posthumus.

He was astonishingly good.

Costume-wise, the only difference between the roles two were a trenchcoat and a pair of glasses. All the rest he managed with voice and body language alone.

And yet, whether he played Posthumus, Cloten, or Cloten disguised as Posthumus, we didn't experience the slightest confusion over which character was onstage at any particular moment.

As a matter of fact, the characters were so distinct that it took several scenes before Ian or I realized they were played by the same actor -- and Hiddleston changed outfits onstage! That's talent.

Superman's Clark Kent disguise doesn't seem so implausible anymore.

Hiddleston plays Posthumus as a sweet and stammering innocent, who toughens up over the course of the play. I can see why Imogen fell for him. Cloten is smarmy and polished -- an arrogant rich snot who can't handle having his desires thwarted.

While no other actors played quite as ambitious a role (Hiddleston was the only actor playing doubles, aside from some of the minor servants/lords), the whole cast was solid.

Jodie McNee was a passionate Imogen. Like Cloten, she started as a rather demanding child of privilege, but her tribulations through the play mature her.

Gwendoline Christie made a fine fairy-tale villain as Queen. She's appropriately beautiful and polished -- you can see how she won the king -- but it's a brittle shell over a heart of pure ambition.

Guy Flanagan's Iachimo stood out as a suave seductive Italian. While in the role of Pisanio, Richard Cant embodied the perfect valet while avoiding the trap of imitating Jeeves.

Geek aside: When I saw Richard Cant's biography in the program, I immediately noticed his appearance in Doctor Who and filled with curiousity to know when and where. [He'll be in a forthcoming episode.] But looking up the rest of the cast in IMDB, my jaw dropped at David Collings' credentials, which include three episodes of Dr. Who (including the titular undead Mawdryn), Blake's 7 and (I know at least one reader who may find this interesting) Sapphire and Steel. Kyool!

In an odd directorial decision, the lost princes were portrayed less like the rustics Shakespeare described and more like noble savages.

Also, I noticed no gender or racial cross-casting in the company -- which is getting rare enough to be worthy of comment.

But the plot was engaging enough to overlook any such lapses.

I'll just sum up this way. Ian and I spent about nine hours on the bus -- effectively dedicating an entire day -- to see this production of Cymbeline. We both agreed, it was well worth our time.

Cymbeline
directed by Declan Donnellan for Cheek by Jowl

Forthcoming performances:

May 15 - 18 in Reykjavik, Iceland
May 24 - June 23 in London, UK
July 3 - 7 in Moscow, Russia
July 19 - 28 in Madrid, Spain

Watch the Trailer

PS: In the audience, I met a Toronto actor in town for some auditions. I apologize, but I forgot your name. If you happen to find this, drop me a note, because I'd love to see you on stage. Thanks!

Review Rambles...

2007-05-07T18:45:00.000-04:00

As I wrote last week, I feel much more secure in my reviewing skills than I used to.

The fact that I'm writing for my own weblog has allowed me to develop my own unique style of expressing myself when reviewing.

And chief among this is my dismissal of standard highbrow/lowbrow divisions, or scholarly vs. fannish language. A few recent examples:

In yesterday's R+J review, within the space of two sentences, I quoted Samuel Johnson and described something as fanon.
For April's Men In Titus, I made references to Shakespeare Wars, Joss Whedon, and Stage Beauty -- not to mention the Mel Brooks takeoff in the title.
I also posted about slashy ~~sub~~text of Coriolanus.

This is actually how I think, and the way I discuss things with my friends.
And I finally seem to have developed the confidence to write my reviews in that manner.

I no longer feel like I'm stifling myself to fit into a more formal tone, nor that I'm being somehow pretentious by discussing academic theories, nor that I'm using pop culture references just to be "hip." Sometimes, fannish jargon is the most accurate word.

I am Lis; I contain multitudes.

And rereading some of these juxtapositions honestly makes me smile, which I can only consider a good thing.

Hopefully, my writing makes others smile (and think), and attracts an audience for the shows I'm reviewing.

What do you folks think?

Rambles Reviews: Romeo and Juliet

2007-05-06T13:35:00.000-04:00

Crossposted to Riba Rambles () and bard_in_boston:

“There art thou happy”

I've watched both major motion pictures calling themselves Romeo and Juliet (1968 & 1996) but part of me feels I'd never really seen the play until yesterday afternoon at Harvard.

I can't remember such a sense of joie de vivre in either movie. The sheer mirth and whimsy during the first half had me grinning so much, my cheeks hurt.

Ian claims this is because the films have to cut the text, and the humor can be more easily removed without hurting the plot. That may be the case — this performance did seem fresh and new to me — and if so I feel sorry for people whose only experience of the play has been on film.

But the last time I remember such a grin on my face was Redfeather Theatre Company's As You Like It (which I saw last summer), reminding me that professional theatre may have the edge in skill and budget, but the passion and energy of amateur theater — particularly college productions — make them equally worthwhile.

Lois Beckett's Juliet was dewy-eyed innocence covering a spine of solid steel — as Ian put it, everything you wanted in the role.

Christopher Hanley entered as an appropriately emo!Romeo, and over the course of the play see-sawed among emotional extremes. He was so fitful, in fact, that Ian thought him undeserving of Juliet. Mind you, it didn't hurt that Hanley resembled a younger Rufus Sewell...

Their scenes together, particularly the balcony scene, felt fresh with the flush and desperation of a new relationship.

Of course, the love story of two dumb kids from Verona (as Ian is wont to call the play) could easily become insipid without the benefit of the solid supporting cast — which Hyperion certainly had.

The two strongest roles were the parts Shakespeare added to the existing story (according to my copy of The Complete Works):

As the Nurse, a well-padded Dipika Guha just bustled her way into my heart. She spoke her lines with a certain sing-song quality that reminded me of the Granny on The Kumars.

And Sean Fredricks' Mercutio... Guh! It was more than red leather trousers that made him always worth watching (although that certainly helped). He brimmed with energy, deftly parrying every straight line that crossed his path with a nimble grace and rapier wit.

I can see why Samuel Johnson claimed that Shakespeare "was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." As I wrote yesterday, I'm not sure how seriously the association between Mercutio and Marlowe is taken in scholarly quarters, but I can definitely see the similarities between Mercutio and extrapolated (fanon) portrayal of Marlowe^*. [Of course, modern interpretations of Marlowe may also be shaped by the perceived relationship with the character, meaning my observations could just be circular references. I'd better stop this train of thought before I make myself dizzy.]

Morgan Potts as Benvolio was the perfect sidekick, foil, and all-around pal to Mercutio. They made a great comedy team, and were a delight to watch. An interview in The Crimson says Potts drew upon "his friendship with his rugby buddies" for the role, and it shows. The article doesn't specify what kind of injury sidelined him from his sport, but the athletic aerobicism of the three Montague lads — particularly on display in the Capulet party — was magnificent.

As Friar Lawrence, Tom Giordano exuded beatific patience, even while his cell was beset by suicidal teens. John Greene played Lord Capulet as a bluff and hearty fellow, while Alexandra Palma's Lady Capulet had an elegance and aloofness that bespoke a life of luxury. And as if to prove the adage that "there are no small parts, only small actors," Giselle Ty demonstrated exquisite comic timing as Peter the Servant, trying to always stay two paces behind a master in constant motion.

Indeed, everyone did an excellent job in milking the comedy in the first half — both in delivery of lines and body language. [With years of experience tending bar, Ian's become quite the critic of drunk scenes. As Benvolio and Mercutio, Potts and Fredricks were more than plausibly pissed (quite credibly crocked). High praise indeed. ;) ]

Fight choreography by Ted Hewlett was excellent — Ian observed that different characters had distinct fighting styles, suitable to their personalities. As described in the text, Zachary Sniderman's Tybalt wielded a sword with by-the-book confidence and competence. Romeo was mostly pointed passion. As for Mercutio, Ian quipped he never knew there was a style of "drunken rapier." Ian also recognized the influence of the Higgins Armory Sword Guild and hopes more theater companies will take advantage of their expertise.

Yes, there were a few flubbed lines, as is to be expected in amateur theater. Likewise, the location was subject to a lot of background noise which made some lines harder to hear. But those were minor distractions that didn't detract from our overall enjoyment.

On the whole, I am so glad to have seen this production. I recommend catching it if you can.

Romeo and Juliet
directed by Jennie Israel (of ASP) for Harvard Hyperion Shakespeare Company

Harvard Square, only three more shows:

Sunday, May 6 @ 4pm, Adams House Courtyard (behind the Harvard Book Store, enter on Linden St; map)
Saturday, May 12 @ 4pm, Radcliffe Yard (in front of Agassiz Theater; map)
Sunday, May 13 @ 4pm, Radcliffe Yard (in front of Agassiz Theater; map)

Performances are outdoors. Chairs are provided, but bring a coat in case it gets cool.

Tickets $7 thru Harvard Box Office or purchased at the show.
Runs approximately 3 hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

Glorious summer

2007-05-03T06:45:00.000-04:00

Here are some of the forthcoming Shakespeare productions in Massachusetts this summer:

Play by Company Opens in Location More info

Romeo & Juliet by Harvard Hyperion & Actors' Shakespeare Project May 05 in Cambridge Bard in Boston

Love's Labours' Lost by Actors' Shakespeare Project May 29 in Cambridge Bard in Boston

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare & Company June 08 in Lenox Bard in Boston

Henry IV by Industrial Theatre July 14 in Taunton Bard in Boston

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company July 24 in Boston Bard in Boston

Romeo & Juliet by Publick Theatre July 26 in Brighton

Anthony & Cleopatra by Shakespeare & Company July 27 in Lenox Bard in Boston

Play	by	Company	Opens	in	Location	More info
Romeo & Juliet	by	Harvard Hyperion & Actors' Shakespeare Project	May 05	in	Cambridge	Bard in Boston
Love's Labours' Lost	by	Actors' Shakespeare Project	May 29	in	Cambridge	Bard in Boston
A Midsummer Night's Dream	by	Shakespeare & Company	June 08	in	Lenox	Bard in Boston
Henry IV	by	Industrial Theatre	July 14	in	Taunton	Bard in Boston
A Midsummer Night's Dream	by	Commonwealth Shakespeare Company	July 24	in	Boston	Bard in Boston
Romeo & Juliet	by	Publick Theatre	July 26	in	Brighton
Anthony & Cleopatra	by	Shakespeare & Company	July 27	in	Lenox	Bard in Boston

New England Shakespeare Festival's summer touring production will be Comedy of Errors, though they don't yet have dates or locations. And I'm still waiting for Redfeather Theatre Co. to announce their summer production.

[If that's not enough, in the middle of all this, we're going to Old England, where we'll either see Merchant of Venice or Othello at Shakespeare's Globe.]

Also, some day, Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It will finally be released to the general public, though I'll confess, the more time that's passed, the less interested I've become in this project.

In the introduction to Roger Ebert's new collection, Your Movie Sucks, Ebert writes:

When I am asked, all too frequently, if I really sit all the way through these movies, my answer is inevitably: Yes, because I want to write the review.

That's dedication for you.

And, I guess, that's another thing that separates the pros from the hobbyists.

I'll confess, I'm feeling Dreamed out (seven productions in three years will do that to one), and was thinking of skipping those shows, since I'm not duty-bound to go.

I mean, it's not like I'm getting paid to write my reviews (aside from press tickets in some circumstances). More to the point, it's not like I'm getting any extra time for this. No, I see these plays and write up reviews on my own time, working around my regular 9 - 5 paying job.

And it can be rough. [Driving time to a Friday night show in Lenox involves missing a half-day's work.]

My reviews started informally, just blogging about shows I've seen in the same way I blog about anything else in my life. ‘Hey, I did this,’ and if it was any good, possibly a recommendation that others should check it out. I intended them as jogs for my own memory as much as essays for public consumption.

Over time, my writeups got more elaborate, and I worked up the nerve to ask for press kits.

Before long, a few companies offered me press tickets -- making reviews a little more economically feasible, but also adding self-imposed pressure. Reviews became an obligation, rather than something I could do if I felt like it.

For a while, this actually caused me huge writer's block -- not only did I have trouble writing reviews, but I didn't feel right posting anything else until I got my review up. I'm doing better about that now.

Stanley Wells' Shakespeare in the theatre: an anthology of criticism was a great boon. Although reviews he collected were intended to provide insight into great performances/productions, the way these critics described the plays helped me feel better about my own writing.

I no longer feel as much need to compare/compete with the newspaper reviewers, and I feel much more secure about my writing style.

And, honestly, I think that confidence has improved my writing.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

Point is, I have to figure out my next step. Is this still just a cozy little hobby of mine, which means I can see or skip shows as I feel like it, or should I take the next step towards professionalism and start seeing shows I'm less interested in, if they fit my self-defined criteria...

I've been leaning towards the former; Ian's pushing the latter...

Since y'all are my audience, do you have any input?

Miss Piggy:	“Why are you telling me all this?”
Lady Holiday:	“It's exposition. It has to go somewhere.”