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Henry V, Seattle Shakespeare Company, 2010

2010-04-26T21:26:08Z

A few years back I was in Dublin, and I’d heard of a production of Macbeth that was supposed to be very edgy and getting fantastic reviews. I booked tickets and was subjected to probably the worst bit of Shakespeare, scratch that, the worst bit of theatre I’ve ever seen. Well, let’s be kind - the set design was rather clever. I won’t sport with you by giving a play by play of that train-wreck, but the witches actually rapped out ‘Double... double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.’

The Dublin debacle had an ominous beginning - the director stood up in front of the curtain and gave a rather lengthy discussion on how to be a good audience, along with instructions for how to listen to Shakespeare, advising us not to worry if we don’t understand all the words, etc. etc. Looking around me, I realized I’d booked tickets to the wrong production, and this was a travelling troupe that specialized in bringing Shakespeare to schools - apparently so that when students complained about having to read Shakespeare the teacher could then threaten them with having to actually watch it. I left the show swearing that if I was ever subjected to a lecture at the beginning of a performance again, I would get up and run for the exits, never looking back.

So you can perhaps imagine my dismay when Stephanie Shine, Artistic Director of the Seattle Shakespeare Company, after the obligatory announcements and requests to turn off all cell phones, launched into a description of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. The Prologue in Henry V, you see, begs us to “pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that hath dared, on this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth so great an object. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casques that did afright the air at Agincourt?” My blood began to boil as I imagined that the director felt we simply wouldn’t get it if we weren’t subjected to a history lesson first, and I was about ready to make my dash for the door.

Well, my discretion got the better part of my valor, and I’m mighty glad it did, as it soon dawned on me what Shine was really doing. By asking us to imagine what the Globe might have been like, Shine was starting the Prologue early, gently waking up our minds to the power of mere words to fuel our imagination. Shine continued on to give a brilliant performance as the Chorus, filling her soliloquies with a sense of wonder at the magic of words. I’ve long appreciated the poetry of the Chorus in Henry V, but this was the first time I’ve been moved by it.

Some of the credit for the success of the Chorus belongs to director Russ Banham. Whether portrayed (even used) as a piece of nationalistic propaganda, like in Olivier’s film, or presented as an anti-war commentary, like Branagh’s, Henry V is often liberally sprinkled with magnificent fight scenes. Here, save for a humorous bit with a Welshman and some leeks, there wasn’t a single fight on stage. Whatever else one might think of Branagh’s film, it strikes one as ridiculous to see Chorus striding through the fields of Agincourt, asking us to imagine the unshowable while behind and around him the film is doing a righteous job of showing everything. In this leaner production, Chorus becomes a necessary and valuable part of the production.

King Henry himself, played by Evan Whitfield, came across more as a politician than the warrior-king I’m used to: the great man giving great speeches. We never see him with the sweat and grime of war upon him. (The real Henry V was no REMF: at 16, commanding troops in Wales, Prince Hal continued to fight after taking an arrow six inches into his face, just to the left of his nose.) But even though Banham’s director’s notes inform us that he reads Henry V as an anti-war satire, Whitfield delivers Henry’s speeches in a stirring manner, completely without irony. I think on some level, in the Obama-era, the arts community in general (along with a sizeable slice of America) has some renewed faith in the idea of the great man and his great speeches.

Shakespeare’s history plays were written and staged out of chronological order, so he could safely assume that his audience knew that, despite the triumphant success of Henry V, everything goes to hell shortly after with the War of the Roses, and so the last Chorus soliloquy provides a transition from the victory over France to the loss of everything achieved. Feeling a bit like the end of Das Boot, it’s hard not to read that as a bit of an anti-climactic nod to the futility of war, and SSC punctuated that moment with disturbing war footage and one of those musical cues that immediately bring Vietnam to mind. As the play was set in the early 1960s, our modern audience could reasonably be expected to know that Vietnam is up next, so the parallel was clever.

Here in 2010, when we see lawyers and churchmen present a brief describing how Henry V has a legitimate claim to the throne of France based on a bit of legal wrangling over ancient laws, it really doesn’t take much work to get modern audiences asking ourselves, “Yeah and where ARE those WMDs?” But there’s some buried irony that modern audiences might miss. Shakespeare’s audiences would have already heard Richard, Duke of York justify his attempt at Henry VI’s crown using the exact same logic. If we grant that Henry V has a legitimate claim to the French throne based on succession through the female line, then Henry shouldn’t be King of England at all!

Now comes the time in my review when I’m terribly unfair and single out a few excellent performances while ignoring others: David S. Hogan’s Bedford was a pleasantly understated performance filled with a quiet dignity I found compelling. With all the cross-dressing and gender-blind casting I’ve seen, Jerick Hoffer’s Mistress Quickly might be the first time I’ve seen an experienced drag performer at work, and that was fun, but Jerick’s performance out of drag, as an effeminate Alice, was hilarious and scene stealing (in a good way). The scenes in French between Alice and Alexandra Tavares’ Katherine were the funniest in the play and well-delivered.

My tech nod goes to costume designer Pete Rush: the American, I mean British uniforms had an authentic feel, Katherine’s dress in Act 5 would have made Jackie O proud, and the French uniforms looked like I’d image the Canadian Mounties might look, if they ever turned Communist.

The Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Henry V presents a fresh look at a well-loved classic. The show runs through May 9th.

[Photos by John Ulman. James Lapan as Canterbury, Evan Whitefield as Henry V, and David S. Hogan as Bedford. Alexandra Tavares as Katherine and Jerick Hoffer as Alice. James Lapan as Gower, Tim Hyland as Fluellen, Russell Hodgkinson as Pistol.]

Equivocation, Seattle Rep/Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2009

2009-12-08T22:27:09Z

If you have not seen this play, stop reading this blog. Go to this website. Order tickets immediately for yourself and all your loved ones. You can do it now; I’ll wait for you to come back.

Got your tickets? Great; you can thank me later. If you’re so inclined, try the spicy hot mulled wine they’re serving at intermission; it’s based on a 16th century recipe. The rest of this blog post can only spoil some miniscule amount of the great theatrical experience you’ve just lined up for yourself, so you’re excused. For the rest of you...

Equivocation is a new play by Bill Cain, wherein King James the First of England (the Sixth of Scotland) commissions Master William Shagspeare (Is this an inside joke on the authorship debate? All the known signatures of Shakespeare look rather different from each other and include different spellings. Or is it more likely that the playwright couldn’t resist making a crude joke out of the very name of the man who has had us playing ‘spot the double-entendre’ for four hundred years?) to write a ‘current events’ play about the Gunpowder Plot. If you’ve never heard of the Gunpowder Plot, I can safely assume that you never a) were an English schoolboy, nor b) saw the movie V for Vendetta. You can still correct one of those lapses. On Blu Ray, even.

Shags and his fellow actors quickly come to the conclusion that there is little dramatic potential in the official version of the Gunpowder Plot, and that there are some holes in the story as well. What follows is a play about the relationships between the artist and the state, between theatre and truth, faith and grief, and, not least, fathers and daughters. Like Shakespeare’s own history plays, the grander historical themes are all presented as intimate, family stories.

The language of Equivocation is modern, but the bits of verse written for the Gunpowder Play, where they are not cribbed from Shakespeare, sound rather as good as if they were. Part of the fun of the play is how it makes many Shakespearean footnotes come to life. Anyone who’s wondered ‘what’s so funny’ about the porter’s speech in Macbeth, welcoming an ‘Equivocator’ to hell, can read the footnote in their Riverside about how a certain Father Garnet, accused in the Gunpowder Plot, wrote a treatise called ‘On Equivocation’ and just take it on faith that it would have been funny if we’d heard it 400 years ago. But in ‘Equivocation’, Shakespeare is given a crash course on ‘How to tell the truth in difficult times’ by Father Garnet himself.

Cain’s script is one of those rare, near-perfect creations with the power to rip laughter and tears from me in equal and abundant proportions. The acting was exquisite as well. Except for Shags and his daughter Judith, the actors all played both a member of the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s acting company, and one or more historical characters involved in the political events transpiring outside the theatre’s walls. This allowed dizzying scene transitions that flowed from depicting historical events (interviews, trials, executions and the like) to actors struggling with portraying these same scenes on stage. This diversity of roles had the added benefit of guaranteeing that there were no small roles in the play, and so every member of the cast is one of the best actors the Oregon Shakespeare Company could provide from their talented pool.

Equivocation runs through Dec. 13th at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. It was easily one of the very best plays of my 2009; make it one of yours, too.

[Photos by Jenny Graham. Actors vote their support for Sharpe remaining in the company, outnumbering Richard’s complaints. Judith (Christine Albright), Shag’s daughter, soliloquizes about her father’s plays. Shag (Anthony Heald) embraces Tom Wintour, one of the king’s prisoners (John Tufts) and has a moment of revelation and pain.]

Twelfth Night, Seattle Shakespeare Company, 2009

2009-12-06T09:56:47Z

Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night, directed by Stephanie Shine, was a rollicking good time. The promotional materials made much about the holiday theme of the play, but being totally disconnected from the Elizabethan tradition of Twelfth Night revels, I never saw much in the play that was particularly seasonal; I was looking forward to seeing what SSC would come up with here. Setting the piece in Dickens’s London, with Victorian costumes (complete with bowler derbies and some rather shady facial hair), and imitation gaslights festooned with Christmas greenery immediately recalled that other seasonal play, The Christmas Carol. But more delightful than all that was the cast invading the lobby before the show to kick the party off with games and carols (lyrics provided).

The officious Malvolio kept the play on schedule, but once in our seats, the games and singing continued, long enough for us all to learn the round “Hold thy peace, thou knave” so that later in the play we could all join Sirs Toby and Andrew in their carousing. A brilliant device: my personal Ghost of Shakespeare Past reminds me of several painful audience participation moments, that awkward ‘do I say it? will anyone else say it? maybe I should just move my lips’ and so you just kind of whisper the first few words to see who else is with you, only gaining confidence in numbers, so that what really comes out is “mumble mumble Richard mumble royal KING!” I always wondered what would happen if some of the audience would just boldly own the line from the first word, and gave it a go, loud and clear, in Act 1 of a recent Titus Andronicus, “Long live our Emperor Saturnine!” And there I was, falling off the cliff, but none of the lemmings followed.

After the show, the lobby party continued with tables full of Dickensian delicacies such as mincemeat tarts, roasted chestnuts, and other more exotic edibles. I enjoy exploring cuisines from different cultures and historical periods and have put together Elizabethan menus for Shakespeare movie nights, so to me this was a perfect treat and much appreciated.

The play itself was a fine representation of the strong ensemble work I’ve come to expect from the Seattle Shakespeare Company. I’ve seen many a pretty Olivia, but Brenda Joyner was the first Olivia I’ve actually liked - played with both warmth and comedic timing, she’s not some cold, heartless creature, but a woman who knows what she wants and, unfortunately for Orsino, does not want. Carol Roscoe’s Maria had moments of ‘authenticity’ that seemed to transcend mere acting. When she rushes onstage to draw a crowd to witness Malvolio’s downfall, she’s not an actress pretending to be having difficulty breathing. Chris Ensweiler’s Feste the Jester, played as a gypsy troubadour, combined saucy wit and musical talent (more on that later) with just a bit of vulnerability that comes from relying on the goodwill of others for one’s bread. John Bogar seemed so perfectly cast as the self-important Malvolio that I was having a hard time picturing him playing any other role. I was startled when I read in his bio that John had played Marc Antony in a show I saw just a year ago. The transformation was so complete that I still feel the need to check if there wasn’t an understudy on for him the night I was at the Harlequin. I know transformation is what actors do, but I’m still impressed when it takes me in completely.

This production took a bold risk with José A. Rufino’s Duke Orsino: all the absurd heights of romantic infatuation were played out to a clownish level, with the Count alternately writhing in agony/ecstasy to his minstrel’s music to literally leaping through the air like a gazelle imitating out the line “That instant was I turn’d into a hart”. This interpretation was both fresh and funny, as I’m more used to the role being played with somber dignity, but I think it also gave Viola very little to fall so deeply in love with, and the buffoonery denied Orsino and Viola-as-Cesario many moments of tension and chemistry that would add satisfaction to the conclusion. Susannah Millonzi’s Viola had enough passion for both of them, perhaps.

It’s always a bit distracting when Shakespearean look-alike twins look nothing alike, but I’m sure this is the first time I’ve seen Sebastian/Viola so well paired as to take half the audience by surprise.

Music director Sean Patrick Taylor, who also appeared onstage as the guitar-wielding Curio, along with fellow minstrel Carter Rodriquez and Feste deserve a special nod for wrapping the whole play in a great live soundtrack that ranged from dueling Spanish guitars to gypsy/flamenco dances. It seems particularly fitting for a play that begins (at least typically) with ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ to have music and dance so well incorporated into the vision of the play.

Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night is playing through Dec. 27th at the Center House Theatre at Seattle Center. Tickets are cheaper than your cable bill.

[Photos by Erik Stuhaug. Carol Roscoe as Maria, Darragh Kennan as Sir Andrew, and Ray Gonzalez as Sir Toby. John Bogar as Malvolio, Darragh Kennan as Sir Andrew, Frank Lawler as Fabian, and Ray Gonzalez as Sir Toby. José A. Rufino as Duke Orsino and Chris Ensweiler as Feste.]

Romeo and Juliet, Tiny Ninja Theater, 2009

2009-11-10T21:07:11Z

What’s better than Romeo and Juliet? I’m glad you asked. Answer: Romeo and Juliet performed by a troupe of one inch ninjas. Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of experiencing the Tiny Ninja Theater with 10 of my closest acquaintances, courtesy of my employer. Yes, my boss is cooler than your boss.

Tiny Ninja Theatre is the brain-child of visionary director Dov Weinstein, who dared to question whether live actors, with their egos and guilds, were worth the expense and hassle, when little plastic ones could be purchased from vending machines in strip malls for a fraction of the cost.

Running about 40 minutes, Romeo and Juliet was condensed to its emotional core. Opera glasses provided the audience a close up view of each actor’s every (single) facial expression.

Seasoned theatre-goers might question the costuming choice of a production where most of the actors’ faces are hidden behind masks, but Dov compensates by imbuing each character with a unique voice. My personal favorite was Escawus, the Pwince of Vewona, played with an Elmer Fuddesque articulation. The Pwince’s elevated social status was maintained by always having him enter with an entourage of ninjas glued to the bill of Dov’s baseball cap.

While on the whole, Tiny Ninja Theater is a comedic venture, it was not without moments of pathos. It’s a credit to Dov’s skill as a voice actor that Mercutio’s death was still moving when performed by a piece of plastic from a gumball machine. In the climax of the play, the line between puppet and puppeteer was crossed as Dov himself quaffed the various potions and enacted the suicides with dramatic effect.

If you have the chance, check out Tiny Ninja Theater. It’s an enjoyable experience of classical theater re-imagined.

[Photos by Xina Nicosia. Chris Head as Romeo, Melanie Hipchikz as Juliet and Ninja as Paris.]

Othello, Bard on the Beach, 2009

2009-09-14T19:40:20Z

Othello at Bard on the Beach stands in sharp contrast to the Intiman performance of my last review. Where the latter began with Iago racing through his lines while insidiously hanging on Rodrigo, this production plodded through the opening painfully slowly with the principles standing rigidly across the stage from each other. My fear that I would be suffering a rather stoic four-hour rendition was, thankfully, unfounded with the pace and animation increasing as the show progressed. But even as the tempo increased, the brilliant language of the play was crystal clear throughout - a claim I couldn’t make for the Intiman show.

I don’t know whether to credit the difference in the reading to the training and experience of a cast that spends more of its time doing Shakespeare than modern theatre, or whether it represents a contrast between actors who think that their job is to make Shakespeare sound ‘normal/natural’ or ‘modern’ and actors who embrace the heightened language and allow it to be different. But whichever, I felt that the power of the text really came through in this rendition. In particular, Bob Frazer’s Iago was a very literate take on the role, reveling in the language as much as the scheming.

Iago’s motivations were played fairly straight - as if Iago believed his own lies, and was only so skilled at engendering jealousy in Othello because he suffered from an advanced case of the same disease. Frazer only once really descended into the mustache twirling melodrama that often accompanies the role. His Iago was somehow harder to hate, but I think this was in keeping with director Dean Paul Gibson’s goal (stated in the program) of providing an Othello that was more shades of grey than black and white.

I liked Frazer’s Iago very much, but I’m going to be totally unfair and pick on one moment that struck me as ‘actorish’ because it seems instructive to me, and it’s my blog. Sorry, bud. In II:1, when Iago’s soliloquy turns to his wife’s suspected infidelity, the line is: “For that I do suspect the lusty Moor / Hath leaped into my seat, the thought whereof / Doth like a poisoned mineral gnaw my inwards...” After Frazer said the line, he curled inward like he was struck at that moment by a bad ulcer. It reminds me of the crack that ‘Method Acting is where you say your line and then you act a bunch’. Dan Donohue played the role last year at Ashland, and made a similar choice, but let the physical reaction happen at the thought of admitting his fear and disgust, so that he was crumpled while forcing the line out. I found acting on the line was far more effective here.

Naomi Wright was the most dynamic Desdemona I’ve seen yet. She brought a variety of reactions and emotional levels to a part that is often played on one note. Her performance was believable and tragically heroic. Desdemona is more courageous if she feels the fear of her situation than if she floats through the finale in total denial.

Before she misplaces it, Desdemona dangles the rather large love-token handkerchief limply from her hand during the first half of the play, turning it into a more significant set piece. I thought that decision makes Cassio’s claim to not know whose handkerchief he found in his lodgings disingenuous. But Cassio has always been a little suspect to me anyways (“that Cassio loves her I do well believe”, indeed). Side note: the handkerchief was invented by none other than King Richard the Second, and Shakespeare’s tragedy about the fall of that monarch is also playing this season at Bard on the Beach. Knowing how artistic directors live for these little inter-textual connections, this pairing of plays can hardly be a coincidence.

Michael Blake’s charismatic Othello made me think of a young Laurence Fischburne. (No, I haven’t seen Fishburne’s feature film of the role yet, so if the comparison is awful, mea culpa miserere me.) He played the role with a sort of stiff legged swagger that gave me the impression of a warrior more accustomed to the deck of a ship than a more pedestrian existence on land. I particularly enjoyed how he concealed his feelings from Iago, only admitting his growing jealousy to the audience in soliloquy after Iago had left the room in the middle of III:3. This allowed the second half of Iago’s ‘wooing’ to be played out in sharper contrast to the first, and I can almost believe his claim to be ‘one not easily jealous, but being wrought, perplexed in the extreme’ (V:2). Of course, since Shakespeare takes Othello from innocent bliss to murderous rage in a single, albeit long, scene, Othello is perhaps not the most self-aware of protagonists.

Mara Gottler’s costumes were beautiful, a sort of modernized doublet-and-hose look with less poufiness and more pleather. The sound design of Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe was well conceived, using music to signal the shift to Cyprus, with a nice variety of Middle Eastern instruments and textures. The alarum of II:3 was so perfectly annoying that Othello’s command to ‘Silence that dreadful bell’ got a hearty laugh from the audience. That being said, the tent did have one technical flaw in the sound: there was a high-pitched ringing emitted from the system through-out the entire play. To my ear, the noise was often as loud as the conversations on stage, particularly during any quieter moments. Discussing this with my fellow play-goers at intermission, they were concerned that I must have been suffering from tinnitus. But once alerted to the problem, they too were unable to ignore it and thanked me after for ruining their second half. The ringing was also present during Comedy of Errors, the other play in the big tent, but that show was generally so much louder, that the buzz was quite easier to ignore.

The set was rather Spartan, but that seems to be typical for Othello. I’m not sure I liked the robo-bed that slid out on its own during the final scene change. It was a little spacey and took me out of the moment just as the play was leading to the climax. Maybe that effect worked better at night if they dimmed the lights during the transition, but in the bright matinee sunlight, it was unusual.

For the most part, I was not impressed by the fight choreography. On occasion people would run past each other with swords, and someone would get hurt, but I couldn’t see how it happened. Othello’s slight slap of Desdemona surely must have hurt her pride more than her cheek. There was, however, one bit of fight business I really liked: In every production I’ve seen of Othello so far, Iago stands idly by glowering as his wife Emilia reveals the depths of his treachery, and then, when it is too late to do anything but satisfy his vengeance, he kills her. This time, Iago makes his move much sooner, but is restrained by the Venetians. After Emilia tells all, Othello rushes in to execute Iago. The Venetians prevent this, but in doing so allow Iago to slip their grasp and murder Emilia. The blocking is simple enough to seem obvious, but since many other productions have failed to solve this problem satisfactorily, I felt it deserved a nod.

Ultimately I think this play succeeds because of the great ensemble work at Bard on the Beach. The play never devolved into the Iago Show or the Othello Show, but rather the whole cast worked well together telling a compelling story. The play runs through September 25.

[Photos of OTHELLO 2009 by David Blue. Michael Blake as Othello, Bob Frazer as Iago, Naomi Wright as Desdemona and Jennifer Lines as Emilia.]

Othello, Intiman Theatre, 2009

2009-07-20T18:32:43Z

Theatre for a New Audience’s Othello at the Intiman Theatre is a relentless, fast-paced staging of one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. Most modern audiences need a few lines to let Shakespeare’s language and rhythms sink into their ear. Director Arin Arbus denies us this luxury and kicks off the play with Iago ripping through his opening lines at breakneck speed warning us to hold on to our seats; it’s going to be a wild ride.

John Campion’s Iago was for me the highlight of the show. I’ve only ever seen Iago played by young, ambitious men (Act I scene iii has Iago give his age: “I have looked upon the world for four times seven years” - of course, Iago is a consummate liar). Campion’s Iago is grey-haired and bearded, with a world-weary look that puts him well into middle age. This changes the dynamic of his relationship to Othello, Roderigo and Cassio - Iago comes across as a father figure, which heightens both the sense of trust that everyone places in him and the horror of Iago’s abuse of that trust. The scenes where Iago cautions Othello against rash judgment and green-eyed jealousy even as he works Othello into a frenzy were particularly powerful.

Campion speaks with a vaguely Eastern European accent, evoking the impression that Iago was being played by Shylock. Indeed the text gives some clue that Iago is Jewish (“Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend from jealousy!”, III:iii). Playing up Iago’s Jewishness creates a play not about one outsider, but about two. Iago’s drab brown uniform, in contrast to the blue satin garb of the other Venetians, increases Iago’s otherness with an economic disparity as well. These nuances add depth to Iago’s jealousy as he sees the Moor achieving far greater success in his career, his marriage and society in general.

Campion’s Iago was rounded out with a hunched back and occasional moments of sinister, melodramatic glee that gave him a touch of Richard the Third as well.

Sean Patrick Thomas gave us a smooth, confident Othello. In contrast to the aged Iago, this Othello is younger than the text implies - Thomas certainly gives Desdemona more to fall in love with than old war stories. Thomas never quite thunders - he doesn’t reach the levels of bombast we normally associate with the General. Indeed, the most commanding voice in this production belonged to Stevie Ray Dallimore’s Senior Brabantio, who shuns the reading of a begrudging acceptance of his daughter’s marriage in favor of dismissing the couple with unrelenting cruelty. But cannot a senator be powerful and a warrior, after a rest of ‘nine moons wasted’ and newly married, be gentle? Thomas’ Othello was fresh.

Desdemona has a difficult role. She acts as a sharp contrast to Othello, not only in the obvious ways (man vs. woman, dark vs. fair, differences in social class), but more importantly: where Othello is too, too quick to believe the worst in her at the thinnest of evidence, Desdemona refuses to believe that Othello is capable of murder, even as Othello is plainly stating his intentions. This is a dramatically interesting contrast, but often Desdemona just seems to be in denial. Another challenge to the role, most of Desdemona’s lines involve pleading: pleading for her father to accept her marriage, pleading for Cassio to be re-instated, pleading for Othello to return to his senses, and finally pleading for her life.

Elisabeth Waterston’s Desdemona fell into some of these traps, often sounding plaintive, ending lines on a rise in pitch where our ear expects a fall, and so on. But she did manage a great deal of warmth and humor when flirting with Othello over Cassio’s fall from grace, and her singing of the willow song was moving. Indeed that last scene between Desdemona and Kate Forbes’ Emilia was quite touching - a calm before the storm. Desdemona’s death was rather vivid - with Desdemona face down and Othello mounted on top. The image evoked one of Iago’s first insults, that the Moor and Brabantio’s daughter were ‘making the beast with two backs’. Here after so many false accusations of infidelity we finally see a marriage bed truly defiled.

I didn’t so much approve of what Arbus did with Bianca’s role. Bianca is brought into the drinking scene with Cassio and the other soldiers where she dances about, carousing with the men, even pressing one besotted old soldier into her breasts in an attempt to inflame Cassio with jealousy. In later scenes, Cassio talks rudely of Bianca and her love for him (“I marry her! what? a customer! Prithee, bear some charity to my wit” - I love the ambiguity of this line: who precisely is the customer, and who the whore?), and Iago is quick to jump on that and accuse Bianca of harlotry towards the play’s conclusion. But all of those barbs lose their sting if Bianca is actually played as a common whore, rather than a courtesan - who is at least Cassio’s ‘kept woman’, if not of higher social standing as a ‘courtier’.

Bianca is an important foil to Othello. She has just as much evidence against Cassio as Othello does (i.e., nothing but a strawberry handkerchief), but Bianca is willing to let Cassio prove himself true or false by his actions, rather than being ruled by supposition and fear. I felt her dramatic value was decreased by playing her so rudely - I don’t believe her when she cries “I’m no strumpet!” - we suspect she is just a prostitute who shouldn’t watch Pretty Woman quite so often.

Directors often have Emilia die on the floor. I suppose they’re shooting for a Romeo and Juliet finish, with the two lovers taking center stage, while Paris/Emilia are just corpses in the background. But the dying Emilia asks to be laid at her mistress’ side, and Lodovico commands Iago to “Look on the tragic loading of this bed”. In a play that revolves around insinuations of adultery, a tangle of three bodies might leave a stronger impression. By minimizing the tragedy of Emilia’s death, directors miss the dramatic irony - Iago has often accused Emilia of sleeping with Othello, and finally he’s made it so.

To finish things off, the costume design was modern without being contemporary, the stage a bleak square of worn down planking, the lighting stark - the simplicity of the technical elements kept the focus on the actors. The fight scenes were well choreographed and had an element of danger often lacking in this safety-first, block before the blow has even started era of stage combat. (This is the first time I’ve heard an audience member scream during a fight scene.) I appreciated the live musical elements - kudos to Lucas Steele’s strumming his lute with a feather for a pick.

All in all, Theatre for a New Audience’s Othello was a fresh, energetic interpretation. The Intiman has extended the run of Othello through August 9th.

The Taming of the Shrew, Wooden-O, 2009

2009-07-17T08:47:32Z

Wooden-O’s production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Aimée Bruneau, wins my vote for best play of the 2009 Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival. They could move it indoors, slap a few lights on it and charge admission; the show would still be a success.

The show opens with Lucentio and his servant Tranio, dressed like backpackers fitted head to toe from the latest REI catalog, complete with the obligatory Lonely Planet guide, arriving to explore Padua - a dilapidated trailer park somewhere deep in the redneck South.

Many years ago I saw a production of The Visit at Theatre in the Round that used a similar set device. The Visit makes constant reference to the great contribution a character made to the town, and in that staging a small outhouse was built in one corner of the space which everyone would glance at when remembering the ‘great contribution’. When Mama Baptista offers ‘half her lands’ as dowry for Katherina, we laugh at the paucity of the offer. But when we see that Petruchio lives in a shabby campground, we’re reminded that wealth is relative. To a guy living in a tent, half a trailer, or an outhouse, looks like a pretty good thing.

Petruchio’s tent is used to give the audience a nice little Shakespearean in joke as well. A Winter’s Tale contains one of the most obscure, seemingly random stage directions ever - one that is has been omitted from every production I’ve seen of that play so far. In lieu of describing in detail how Petruchio means to deny Katherina sleep, he simply invites Kate into the ‘bridal chamber’. Then his servant arrives wearing a big bear mask and chases her out of the tent and off the stage. I for one was greatly amused that I finally got to see someone

Exit, pursued by a bear.

You know when Katherina (played with ample wit and vigor by Kelly Kitchens) comes on stage wearing a Hooters shirt and guzzling Pabst Blue Ribbon, you’re in for something different. The play is still in performance, so I don’t want to give away all the gags. However, John Ulman’s Hortensio deserves a mention. In addition to his humorous turn as a redneck, Hortensio’s disguise as a music teacher for Bianca is turned into a passable Elvis impersonation. That and some attention given to developing the relationship between Hortensio and the widow he eventually marries turned a part that is often a throw-away into a memorable interpretation.

Two of my more socially conservative friends came along for the show and their only question afterwards was, “Is Shakespeare always so lewd?” Tough question to answer. Shakespeare was no prude, and there are some fairly bawdy lines in that play (“What, with my tongue in your tail?” etc.). On the other hand, sometimes there is a temptation to play a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” game of “Spot the Double-Entendre”, or perhaps better named “Where’s Willy?”. Then, once the phallic reference is found, whether it was in the text or not, the actor must execute a rude gesture to make sure the audience spots it, too. I used to think that this was just a symptom of the American theatre’s Shakespearean inferiority complex, but in Ian McKellen’s recent King Lear, on the line ‘Every inch a king!’, we were treated with a crotch grab that was particularly crude since a few scenes before we’d actually seen those particular inches.

During the scene where Petruchio’s servant taunts the famished Katherina with meat, with or without mustard, Grumio steps in, plants on foot up on a some prop, and thrusts his pelvis forward as if insinuating that there is some sort of invitation to perform fellatio going on. My objection is not to the rough humor; rather it’s the violence that does to the intention of the scene. Grumio ought to have enough fear of his master not to treat his new mistress like a common whore. Such treatment has no part in Petruchio’s taming scheme, and can only result in increased shrewishness. Indeed, this blocking is, of course, just a set up for Kate to violate Deuteronomy 25:11-12. Now I find getting punched, kneed, or grabbed in the groin precisely as funny as the next man does, but if I thought that was the height of comedy, I’d stay home and watch reruns of Jackass.

The ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ performances are often abridged a bit more than you’d normally see in a stage production - in the case of the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, none of the plays went longer than 2 hours. But even so, I did feel that Act IV was edited with a rather heavy hand. I think Act IV is really the heart of the show, where we see Petruchio’s taming program in action. Theatre-goers in Elizabethan England would have already seen many examples of how to handle a froward wife: you beat her. Contrary to the misogynistic reputation this play is sometimes saddled with, Shakespeare shows a more humane way. I would have liked to see more of that Act remain intact.

But besides Act IV, I never got the sense that the redneck gag was replacing the inherent humor of Shakespeare’s play. Turns out iambic pentameter works just fine with a southern drawl, and even if Shakespeare never wrote the words “Beer me!”, I think he would have approved. So the comedic whole was more than the sum of its parts. Combine that with an ensemble cast who all pulled their own weight and a willingness to play the more sentimental lines free from irony, and this was a show worth the watching.

(Photos by Erik Stuhaug and Jacklyn Walsh.)

The Tempest, Seattle Shakespeare Company, 2009

2009-07-13T18:20:42Z

Perhaps it’s an inauspicious beginning to this blog to post a review of a production that is already closed. Nevertheless, the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Tempest was an enjoyable experience with an imaginative staging.

The night began with the ticking of a heart monitor and an ailing Prospero (Michael Winters) hobbling onto the stage in a hospital gown aided by a four-footed walking cane (I admit to being nervous that this prop would be used as his magic staff throughout, but my fears were unfounded). Though Prospero shortly after changes into more wizardly garb, this framing element recurs throughout the play. In the scenes where Prospero is typically most wrothful, our Prospero doubles over and clenches his arm or side and grits through his lines as through a heart attack. It is only after Prospero decides to forgive his brother that his voice is free to vent his full passion. When he commands his spirit-servant Ariel (Hana Lass, veiled in black like a bride at a Goth wedding) to dress him in clothing that his former companions will recognize, we expect Ariel to bring out magnificent robes of state; instead she tenderly dresses him in his original hospital garb, almost as if preparing him for burial. The play ends again with the heart monitor, and the vivid image of Prospero stepping into the light, as it were, with eyes widening on a sudden, indrawn breath.

The Tempest is one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote, and it shares with many of the late Comedies or Romances a great interest in forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s somehow touching to think of Shakespeare the man working through these concepts in his winter years. Turning Prospero into a dying man incorporates these semi-biographical ideas into the play, which becomes an extended dream sequence.

While I would never dare to criticize the Bard, I do think The Tempest presents some difficulties for the director. To ratchet up the stakes, Prospero needs to be ambiguous on at least two points. We have to believe that he might indeed harm his brother, who usurped his Dukedom. And we have to believe that he might not release Ariel from servitude. It’s the ambiguity that makes the eventual reconciliation and release dramatic and moving. But early in the play Shakespeare gives Prospero a speech to his daughter, Miranda, assuring her that no one has been harmed in his storm, and if delivered too convincingly, we don’t feel that Prospero is capable of harming anyone. Prospero is also given several lines assuring Ariel that he will set the spirit free. I felt that the sickness motif clipped Prospero’s anger so much that we lost much of the danger and suspense.

The last Caliban I saw (Bard on the Beach, 2008) was far too pretty and erect - they seemed to take the idea of a ‘noble’ savage quite literally. The audience was left wondering if it would have been such a bad thing if he’d succeeded in mating Miranda; they’d have made beautiful children together. So I enjoyed Peter Dylan O’Connor providing a creeping, vindictive little Caliban we could all despise. Seeing the commoners, Stephano and Trincula, tame the savage beast with their fire water and then pretend they could throw off the shackles of serfdom and rule the island seemed such a great parody of the conquest of America that I wonder if Shakespeare wasn’t a little prescient. (If any directors are reading this, you can have that idea for free. Let’s see a Tempest set in the New World with Wes Studi as Caliban. Ready? Go!)

I hate to insinuate that Hana Lass isn’t all the sprite a guy could wish for, but I have to admit missing all of Ariel’s airy spirits. I appreciate that casting a troupe of actors who have few lines might seem irresponsible in this economic climate, but they always provide such great opportunities for physical comedy that their absence was felt. Likewise, after Miranda and Ferdinand are married there is a masque scene when Prospero shows off his magic powers to the young couple, and all we got was a few colored lights projected on the floor and a Ferdinand swaying like a besmitten mooncalf over the appearance of Ariel making me suspect Ferdinand was already regretting his choice of bride. A cadre of airy spirits would have been useful there, as the scene, once abridged of its dense, mythological elements, serves no purpose but to be a grand spectacle. (In all fairness, halfway through the masque the other supporting cast members joined Ariel’s singing from behind the audience, and I could see a ripple of appreciation at the surprise from the first few rows, but it is an intimate space, and those of us towards the back could see the actors line up. This simple staging may have worked better depending on where one was seated.)

I question the strength of Sebastian’s choices. On Antonio’s entreaty to “draw together” to advance their fortunes by slaying Gonzalo and Alonso in their enchanted sleep, Antonio has to first draw Sebastian’s sword for him. Sebastian is neither shocked by the request nor very committed to it, and during the grand reconciliation at the end, he looks vaguely bored, as if none of it has much to do with him.

The rest of the supporting cast performed admirably, with a suitably tedious Gonzalo, a sulking, scheming Antonio and a delightfully charming Miranda.

The Seattle Shakespeare Company can always be counted on for a solid night of theatrical entertainment, and their Tempest was no exception. If you missed their Tempest, take heart, their 2009-2010 season promises to be exciting, full of crowd favorites Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Henry V and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

(Photos by John Ulman.)