PCS's Shakespeare's Amazing Cymbeline (10 February 2012)

I will admit to being extremely skeptical of Portland Center Stage’s Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline. First of all, anything that’s an “adaptation” puts me a little on edge; those tend to be the ones where the people with strange agendas, incomprehensible “concepts” and artsy ambitions crop up. And then, when I got there and realized that it was going to be done with a grand total of six actors – one of them being the piano-playing storyteller – I was even more concerned. On top of all that, when I saw that the part of the evil stepmother Queen was to be played by a guy, I started sharpening my wit and my tongue in preparation for tearing the whole production apart.

I was wrong. Utterly, completely and totally wrong. The entire production was brilliant, and I loved every moment of it.

Director Chris Coleman (who also adapted the play) obviously started with a love for the play and a huge amount of respect for it. In his adaptation, he didn’t stray from the plot or the words, or twist anything out of alignment. All he did was make the story a little easier to follow by adding the storyteller (that and figure out how to make all the doubling work).

Cymbeline is really a very funny play – as you might expect when Shakespeare trots out the old fairy tale tropes and gives them his signature touch. There’s the evil stepmother Queen; the poison-that-is-not-poison; the princess in disguise; the henchman who is supposed to take the princess out, kill her and bring back a bloody souvenir; the princes who don’t know they’re princes; the slimy villain trying to worm his way into the princess’s affections; the woodsmen living in a cave in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Wales); the girl-dressed-as-a-boy bit; the banished lover; the idiot suitor…. It’s all there, and more. And, as you might expect from something that’s so full of twists and devices, it’s a little hard to follow at times. And when we do follow it, sometimes we forget that it’s all a fairy tale, and therefore doesn’t take itself as seriously as perhaps we think it ought.

That’s where the piano-playing storyteller (played by Michael G. Keck) comes in. With a bit of introduction here, a word or two there, an explanation or reminder of what’s going on judiciously placed, and the ever-present hint that this is a fairy tale, he helped the story along. He reminded us that, yes, it’s OK to laugh; the story is supposed to be funny. And his dry delivery highlighted the absurdity of it all. And as if that wasn’t enough, he provided lovely piano interludes as he narrated.

The rest of the casting was gold, also. With such a small cast, it’s hard to single out which performances I liked best. They were all extremely well done. Especially impressive were those who had to switch back and forth between “British” (more like Irish) and “Italian” accents.

Ryan McCarthy played both Posthumous, Imogen’s banished husband, and Cloten, her repulsive suitor. I wasn’t really sure how that was going to work, until I remembered that Imogen has to somehow mistake Cloten’s headless body for that of her husband. And that’s when I realized just how brilliant the doubling of parts was. Ryan did a very believable job in both parts – making Posthumous sincere (if a little gullible and rash), and Cloten slimy, brash and idiotic. He also played Belarius, the old woodsman who lives with his two “sons” in a cave. The three (Belarius, Arviragius and Guiderius) reminded me for all the world of three of the seven dwarves… and I’m pretty sure that’s what Shakespeare was going for.

Arviragius was played by John San Nicolas, who also played Iachimo (the villain) and the evil Queen. I was skeptical of a guy playing the Queen, but then I realized that having a woman play the queen would mean adding another whole actor to do just the one part, and the casting choice made a lot more sense. And John did an admirable job. The Queen was perhaps a little stiff, but I attribute that more to the costuming than to anything else. John’s Iachimo was cunning, duplicitous and slimy – just what the part calls for. One isn’t supposed to like villains, but I do tend to like it when the baddie is well done, as Iachimo was. It made me wonder what he could do with Edmund in King Lear. In contrast, Arviragius was adorable (in a “Seven Dwarves” kind of way), innocent, eager and hysterical.

Space does not permit me to go into the detail I would like about Kelley Curran (Imogen), Scott Coopwood (Cymbeline, Philario, 1^st Lord and Captain), and Danny Wolohan (Pisanio, Frenchman, Caius Lucius, Guiderius). Together they all created an amazing and believable fairy tale world and wove a complex story into a beautiful tapestry – no mean feat for six actors.

But I would be totally remiss if I did not mention the costumes (designed by Jeff Cone), and the amazing work everyone did with the quick changes from character to character. One might think that all the changes and doubling of characters would be distracting, but the whole thing was so artfully done, that I found it rather enhanced the experience than otherwise – for me, at least.

The production runs through April 8^th, and I’d highly recommend going, if you can. It’s in the studio theatre way down in the depths of the Armory, so it was a nice, intimate space. I had forgotten that it was general admission… but even so, we managed to get front-row seats. The show is in the round, and actors are entering just about everywhere. I doubt that there were any “bad” seats. Ours turned out to be particularly good, however. And it was definitely worth the money.

NWCTC's Hamlet (5 January 2012)

How does one take what could very well be the best-known play in the English language and make it fresh and vibrant and vivid?

By sticking to the script.

Hamlet doesn’t need gimmicks. It doesn’t need innovation or concepts or rediscovery.

It needs actors who know it and love it, actors who breathe life into those incessantly quoted lines as if they were speaking them for the very first time, actors with passion and deep emotion, but who aren’t afraid of blending humor with heartache.

All this is present in Northwest Classical Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet. Director Alana Byington has assembled a wonderful cast whose generally spot-on performances reminded me of how I got sucked into Shakespeare in the first place.

Butch Flowers was brilliant as Hamlet. He was totally believable in every facet of the Prince’s complex personality. He had just the right balance between brooding and energy, and what’s more, he gave the character consistency throughout, which is saying something.

Byington peopled Elsinore with a great supporting cast, too. Glen McCumber played Horatio with gentleness, simplicity and sincerity – the perfect friend for someone in the middle of a family crisis of epic proportions.Almost as soon as Dave Bodin (playing Polonius) started talking, I knew he had nailed the part. He drove me nuts. But then, Polonius is supposed to babble on incessantly and get under everyone’s skin. Polonius is obviously a dad who identifies with and really loves his son, but has no idea what to do with his daughter. Dave Burnett and Robert Wylie as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were delightful. The interaction between Claudius (Jason Maniccia) and Gertrude (Deanna Wells) helped explain Hamlet’s frustration at the situation he finds himself in. Chris Porter, Bibi Walton and Tom Walton did a fantastic job as the players. In fact, the whole staging of the bits with the players (the monologue when they first arrive, the “speak the speech” scene and the play within a play) was spot-on. Usually I find the players tedious… but especially the interweaving of the “speak the speech” monologue with the player (Tom Walton) “practicing” his line had me in stitches.

The only real downside for me was I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere, sometime, there has to be an Ophelia who can keep her clothes on. But I suppose it’s a tradition by now to show Ophelia’s insanity is not through her strange songs and odd fancies, but by having her lose all sense of decorum.

The pacing of the whole thing was masterful. Obviously, since the production was not four hours long, some parts were trimmed. But even though I know the play quite well, I didn’t find the missing bits distracting; I barely noticed them at all. Nowhere did the story get bogged down. The moments where things did slow down to emphasize something or let us catch our breath were earned and judiciously used.

Overall, the production was thoroughly enjoyable. To a theater geek like me, part of the fun is watching the cast operate in such a small space – which they do expertly. There’s nothing quite like live Shakespeare; and even if you’ve seen as many movie versions of Hamlet as I have, this production is still totally worth the time and money – as long as you’re the type who doesn’t mind mixing your laughter with tears, and leaving the stage covered with bodies at the end of a play.

Review of Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant and Catherine Tate

Epic win on the Christmas present front: my friends surprised me with a viewing of the Much Ado About Nothing "movie" last night. Complete and total surprise, because I didn't even know that it was released. But on to the review:

The first thing you should know is that it's set in the 1980s... which gets quite overpowering sometimes. The short shorts on guys, the stone-washed jeans, the obscene amount of pink on everything, the Lady Di reference, the Indiana Jones costume, the world's puffiest wedding dress, the Rubiks Cube, the cigarettes everywhere, the Thriller dancing, the cross-dressed costume... 'Nuf said.

David Tennant is brilliant as Benedick, of course. He handles Shakespeare's words so naturally that you forget that the language is supposed to be "old" and "hard to understand." (Side note: Shakespeare's language is not hard to understand or highbrow when done right... but with some actors you have an easier time remembering that than with others.) But perhaps his best moments comes when he pauses from the words themselves and just looks. The man speaks volumes with his facial expressions. He doesn't tend to go over the top, either. Benedick delivers one monologue entirely while sitting propped against a pillar with a soda (beer?) can and a funky straw. And it's brilliant.

Catherine Tate doesn't have a problem with the language either, but there are moments when her Beatrice lacks sparkle. She's good at the biting, sarcastic Beatrice of the beginning, but once she falls in love with Benedick, she starts acting rather Valley-Girl... which seems too young for her. As the story progresses and things start to get more serious, her Beatrice comes across like an emotional train wreck. In the scene where Benedick and Beatrice talk after Claudio has renounced Hero in front of the whole church, Beatrice goes from heartbroken and sad to giddy and girly when Benedick tells her he loves her, and then back to almost hysterically sad when she tells him to kill Claudio. To me, this feels more like the response of a 16-year-old than an adult. 

Even so, there are priceless moments with Catherine. Beatrice's "sick" scene -- where she comes to talk to Hero right before the wedding -- was hysterical. The sneezing every time someone said "Benedick" was perfect. And the bit towards the beginning when the Prince asks her to marry him is no end awkward, which is what it should be.

On top of all that, David Tennant and Catherine Tate obviously have chemistry. In their scenes together, their timing is delightful.

The best moment of the play (as seems to be the case with any production of Much Ado) is the bit where Benedick "overhears" the Prince, Claudio and Leonato talking about how much Beatrice loves him. The staging -- there's a rotating stage with three columns, and in this scene painters and buckets of paint -- was amazing. Benedick, while trying to listen in, ends up covered in paint, which is so amazingly funny that it almost detracts from the funniness of his lines at that part. But David, ever the showman, doesn't rush the lines. 

There are many other amazingly wonderful moments. But. But there's also enough costume issues and uncomfortably inappropriate bits that I can't recommend this to anyone, really. Catherine Tate always seems to be falling out of her top. At the costume party at the beginning, Benedick comes as... I don't know what. A hooker? Miss Piggy? It hides who he is all right, and as the audience you can totally believe that Beatrice didn't know who she was talking to... but I never really wanted to see David Tennant cross-dressing. The night before the wedding turns into a bachelor party and a bachelorette party, and even though they showed everything when Claudio "overhears Hero talking to a guy out her window," because of the setting, I wasn't convinced that there was enough motive there for Claudio's reaction. (My brain automatically went to "And the bachelor party was OK for you...?") (And because I'm trying to keep this blog family-friendly... I'm not even going to mention some of the other stuff.) Something else that could be a bit of a turn-off was the amount of "drinking" and "smoking" going on.

It's tragic that something with such potential has to be so raunchy. The casting for the whole thing is solid. Elliot Levey plays one of the best Don Johns I've ever seen -- totally believable, straight-laced, uptight, but a nasty piece of work. Claudio (Tom Bateman) is just the insecure, gullible type who would (a) fall in love with someone he doesn't know, (b) believe the worst of her, and (c) go off the deep end about it. John Ramm makes a great Dogberry, although the officers of the watch almost outshine him at times.

Here's hoping that someday good actors will do Shakespeare brilliantly without all the added junk. It can be done, and it should be done. Shakespeare deserves it.

Saint Crispin's Day...

OK. I'm a couple days late. But I love Harry's St. Crispin's Day speech too much to wait for another year to roll around. Enjoy....

Earl of Westmoreland. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

Henry V. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow 
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight, 
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian: 
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, 
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. 
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; 
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

I wish I was this articulate...

A friend sent me a link to a review of Anonymous... which is too lovely not to pass along. I was really quite surprised by how long it is... but it's worth every word.

Horrible Histories and Richard III

And while we're on the subject of Richard III....

PAE's Richard III (21 October 2011)

Despite the fact that I found Horrible Histories’ song about Richard III running through my head during about half of the production (and contradicting most of what I saw on stage), I really have no problem with Shakespeare’s failure to stick with historical fact in his play. Granted, it’s pro-Tudor propaganda. But it has a compelling story line and powerful characters and plenty of drama. And Shakespeare was writing drama, not textbooks.

Portland Actors Ensemble did what they do best: clear, simple, minimalistic (set-wise), good Shakespeare. The fact that they were performing indoors instead of in a park somewhere changed the game a little – giving us sound and lighting cues. The sound cues were ever so slightly too loud or, in most cases, ended rather abruptly, but I’m a sound snob, and most people probably wouldn’t care.

For some reason, this production of Richard III reminded me a lot of Macbeth. There’s even a bit where Richard says that he was fated to do what he did, and we think, “Fated or not, you’re still going down for it!” Richard’s duplicitous actions and side comments to the audience (especially at the beginning) also reminded me of Edmund in King Lear – “Look, I’m a horrible person and I’m OK with that. Just watch this!” Interestingly, Shakespeare wrote Richard III 14 years before both Lear and Macbeth.

Despite the questionable historical accuracy, the Richard in the play is a baddie, no doubt there. Nathan Dunkin does a fantastic job giving us the villain that we love to hate. He’s cruel, ruthless, bloodthirsty, manipulative and disgusting. How he worms his way into Lady Anne’s graces after he has killed her husband and her father is a bit of a mystery still. Sure, Richard is charismatic… but the scene where he woos her over her father’s dead body didn’t quite convince me. I wonder, though, if there’s any way to play it convincingly.

For a cast dominated by men, the women’s parts stood out exceptionally bright. Linda Goertz’s Margaret was chilling and tragic. Since I didn’t bother to even read a synopsis of the play before I came, and since my only previous knowledge of it was from the Ian McKellen movie, I started out at a bit of a loss as to who everyone was and where Margaret fit in to the whole thing. But it didn’t take long for me to catch on. And even without knowing her exact motivation at the beginning, there was no doubt of her complete hatred for everyone in the royal family. Allison Rangell was brilliant as Lady Anne; Margaret Darling played an amazing Queen Elizabeth; Paige Jones’s mother to Richard, Edward and Clarence was intense. Tons of props, too, to Kate Belden, especially for her very convincing job as the Prince of Wales.

The play was full of great moments. Matt Smith’s Clarence recounting his dream in the Tower was heartbreaking. The scene where the murderers (Arthur Delaney and Mark Rothwell) come to kill Clarence was funny, and yet deadly serious. It also brought up the theme of conscience, which reappears at the end when Richard dreams of the ghosts of all his victims. The dream sequence was wonderfully and disturbingly done. Dunkin slow progression from overconfidence to sheer terror might have been one of the best moments in the play. The scene in the chapel with Elizabeth, Margaret and the Dutchess (Richard’s mother), though subdued, still had an intensity that makes it hard to forget. And the pre-battle speeches of Richmond and Richard, set so closely together, sent shivers down my spine. Special props to Ty Boice, whose Richmond at the end was so completely good and wholesome and just what we want to root for to end Richard’s tyranny, but whose Tyrell (who Richard sends to kill the princes in the Tower) was so completely rotten. Brilliantly done.

I’m still pondering what exactly I walked away with when the evening was over (other than the dopey smile I usually leave the theater with). I think there was something significant about conscience in the whole thing… how conscience ignored or twisted for so long deserts you when you need it the most… something like that. A second (or third) viewing will help me sort that out. But that’s the wonderful thing about PAE’s productions – I can go as often as my schedule allows. Thanks, PAE!

Do yourself a favor and get to see this play. It runs through the first weekend in November at Concordia University. (Click here for dates and times.) There were only about 45 people in the audience the night I went, which is really tragic for the time and energy and effort everyone involved put in. They recommend a $5 donation to Boxy… but seriously, folks, $5 for that caliber of Shakespeare is a steal!

As usual, nicely done, everyone!