Hamlet - American Players Theatre - 8/28/2022

The natural amphitheater up the hill at American Players Theatre uses the open sky as its canopy. The brave o'er-hanging firmament is a blessing when weather is tame. When rain strikes, all bets are off. Seeing APT's production of "Hamlet" demanded my viewing the first two-thirds of the show before a rain-out, then a rescheduling of tickets to be able to see the entirety the following week. A curious experience occurred: during the performance where I witnessed only a bit more than three of the tragedy's five acts, my engagement came easily. The second time around, less so.

During that first performance, I found many items in James DeVita's production that resonated. In terms of the cast, Triney Sandoval excels as the blue-collar monarch Claudius, whose man-of-the-people charm helps explain why he managed to gain the kingdom of Denmark and its widowed Queen Gertrude (Colleen Madden) without any official crying foul. Chiké Johnson has numerous fun moments as a less buffoonish than paternal-to-a-fault Polonius; his interaction with his servant/spy Reynaldo (Gabriela Castillo) is the best version of that usually-cut scene I've ever witnessed, with beats excellently mined by actors and director. Alys Dickerson brings a striking militancy (and gorgeous singing vocals) to Ophelia's mad scene, with a crazed furor that almost seemed aimed at uncovering political corruption. Even Jennifer Vosters, doing understudy-duty as Horatio, brought buoyancy and verve to a role seldom associated with either. 

Not that those features were absent on the second viewing, but the pleasure was diminished. The whole affair seemed less driven, with each scene treading non-urgently upon each other's heels. Both times Nate Burger brought fine clarity and a genuine sense of amiability to his own rendition of the Prince of Denmark, but on the whole, I found myself strangely unmoved. I could say Burger's Hamlet, however intelligently performed and affably presented, is a little too tidy and well-behaved for the madcap ruffian, but I suspect that's unfair. On the whole, the weakest element of productions DeVita directs are their pace. As was seen in his "Romeo and Juliet" (2014) and "Cyrano de Bergerac" (2017), he has a tenuous relationship with the drama's narrative engine, and his shows often languish in overly-relished feeling at the expense of drive. While "Hamlet" is the least guilty of that fault, it isn't free from sag, and thus pure enthusiasm for its star is hard to muster.

In between both outings to Spring Green, I also saw Amaka Umeh as Hamlet in Peter Pasyk's production at the Stratford Festival, which, simply put, blew the doors off the place. Such a comparison (like my dual viewing) is as unjust as it is unavoidable, and APT's performance looks less favorable in comparison. While DeVita and Burger give us a sturdy and capable "Hamlet," the emotional experience is simply not extreme enough to be truly memorable. However light on its feet ("Hamlet" after all is the funniest tragedy), the devastation one feels at the death of a Hamlet should be palpable, and this production embodies that idea though not the fact. Burger has never disappointed me onstage, whether as Troilus, Mercutio, James Joyce, or a Vietnam War POW. He continues that tradition here. I just find myself wishing he hadn't heeded the Dane's own advice to the players so well, as DeVita's production could stand a few more passions torn to tatters, and a little less attention to the modesty of nature.

All's Well That Ends Well - Stratford Festival - 8/26/2022

Director Scott Wentworth's production of Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well," currently running on the Tom Patterson stage at the Stratford Festival, manages several impressive feats. First, it's incredibly funny. The humor derives from thought and character, and is earned via a deep understanding of the ridiculousness and irony of the actions we are watching. (For a play not known for its yuks, there are way more than "The Miser.") Secondly, on a dialogue level, it's sparklingly clear. The actors communicate the stealthily knotted language of this late middle-period problem play with grace and ease. The production is a great listening experience. Thirdly, through a primary combination of these two elements, plus many others, it's likely as good as any -- if not better than every -- "All's Well That Ends Well" you've ever seen. The play is staunchly hard to love, but Wentworth and Co. manage to create as ideal an "All's Well..." as the imaginative reader could envisage. He gives us a mature, nuanced tale of age versus youth, with palpable discomforts and deep autumnal pleasures. I'd grown wary of the play, particularly in light of the recent milquetoast production at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, but Wentworth has me singing the gospel of "All's Well..." and ready to follow the fold and stray no more. 

The play tells the story of Helena (the rigorously excellent Jessica B. Hill). Helena is an orphan under the care of the Countess of Rossillion (Seana McKenna). She is in love with the Countess's son Bertram (Jordin Hall, making as much human sense as is possible of one of Shakespeare's toughest assignments), but fears her lower social rank means such love could never be. When Helena cures by mystical art the ailment of the King of France (Ben Carlson), she is offered her choice of husband and lights on Bertram. Sadly, Bertram may have tolerated Helena as something like an adopted sibling, but finds the idea of deigning to marry a woman of her class repulsive, and promptly runs away to war. Helena is thus set on her task of winning her intended back, by hook or by crook. 

Much ink has been spilled in the designation of "All's Well..." as a "problem play," but such an academic judgment has more purchase in the classroom than the theatre. Rarely does one sit in one's seat and ask "what genre of the Bard's will I be watching tonight?" The play Wentworth uncovers certainly has its attendant problems, but in this production, those problems feel baked into the fabric of the drama, not exterior to it. The ultimate coupling of Helena and Bertram is a definitively conflicting event: he for numerous acts of chauvinism, she for bed-tricking subterfuge (Helena appoints the virtuous Diana to have an affair with Bertram, then in the dark of the bedroom, finds her own way to the marriage-bed in Diana's place). But, what Shakespeare has joined together, let no soul put asunder. Perhaps these two idiosyncratic, socially-challenged individuals really are made for each other after all, whatever issues an outside eye may have. 

An unexpected star turn comes in the form of Andre Sills' singular interpretation of the servant/clown, Lavatch. Lavatch is sometimes cut entirely (as he was in American Players Theatre's 2010 production), or turned into a senile old man (Great River Shakespeare Festival, 2018). His humor-ish witticisms perpetuate the oft-repeated notion that Shakespeare's so-called jokes are often less funny than your average eye-gouging. Sometimes the best you can do is say "I guess this was funny back then?" But Sills, through good-natured roguery, and impressive depth of feeling, turns Lavatch into someone who is in fact quite pleasant to be around. The humor reads, and his role as a commentator in the play's class-based dialogue rings true. 

Every ensemble member pulls their weight. McKenna as the Countess brings her customary zeal for clarity, as well as a rich spring of maternal feeling for Helena. In the play's finale, Helena is revealed as alive after a ruse she started claimed her deceased. The transposition of lines that allows the Countess to find the resurrected Helena standing in front of her at journey's end and utter a joyfully stunned "do I see you living?" brings tears to your eyes. A similar textual addition that has the King offer Diana (an excellently stalwart Allison Edwards-Crewe) her choice of husband, and Diana's subsequent avowal to live chaste, packs a one-two punch of hilarity and contemporary righteousness. Rylan Wilkie walks an intelligent tight-rope as the cowardly Parolles: both scoundrel enough to laugh at, but familiar enough to pity. We may laugh at the plot that reveals Parolles as a coward and potential traitor, but most of us weren't born to hold up well under interrogation, and the delights of Parolles' function come from our own recognition of ourselves in him. 

RSC director Trevor Nunn described "All's Well That Ends Well" as "Shakespeare's most Chekhovian" play, and while such a designation could feel like either a cop-out or an invitation to melancholic wankery (on the production team's part, not Anton's), Wentworth's wonderful production renders the idea fitting and fruitful. Most of us don't grow old in the vein of King Lear, or experience our decline as a titanic battle between cosmic forces of nature and nurture. Most of us simply go quiet into that goodnight without much fanfare. The Countess, the King, the artful Reynaldo (Nigel Bennett) and the sage Lafew (Wayne Best) are not Cordelia's father, nor were they meant to be. Their journey into the sunset rings true by its familiarity, not its intensity. The Countess says when she finds out to her delight that Helena is in love with her son Bertram:

"Even so it was with me when I was young:

If ever we are nature's, these are ours; this thorn

Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;

Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;

It is the show and seal of nature's truth,

Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth:

By our remembrances of days foregone,

Such were our faults, or then we thought them none."

The Stratford "All's Well..." earns that bittersweet contemplation, and successfully makes the case for the play's spot in the repertory. See it and be convinced. 

The Miser - Stratford Festival - 8/25/2022

If "Richard III" demonstrates the general strengths of Antoni Cimolino's directorial skill (and by extension his larger vision for the festival as Artistic Director), "The Miser" finds him at his worst. In this update of Moliere's farce (adapted/translated by Ranjit Bolt), we witness wacky antics in the household of Harper (Colm Feore), the titular miser whose tight-fisted nature causes his son Charlie (Qasim Khan) and daughter Eleanor (Alexandra Lainfiesta) to rebel and seek love in unmonied places. This places them under threat of losing their trust-fund inheritance. Eleanor loves Victor (Jamie Mac), Harper's yes-man butler, and Charlie loves the humble Marianne (Beck Lloyd), but for various reasons Marianne is about to be engaged to none other than the aging Harper, throwing a wrench in Charlie's quest for both love and money.

All is wrapped up happily in Moliere's comedy, and where the laughs are genuine in Cimolino's production, they come from the soap-operatics that ensue when a highly improbable case of mistaken identity is revealed to ludicrous effect. Not unlike the King's messenger appearing at the end of "Tartuffe," sometimes Moliere reveled in a deus-ex-machina so bad you simply gotta respect it. Other than that, the jokes here are pretty tortured. Much is made of updating the text to include references to Jeff Bezos, Ryan Reynolds, Brangelina, and most egregiously, varying social media apps and Millennial/Gen Z vocabulary. The result is not a funky-fresh spruce-up but instead a pained example of the most embarrassing style of Boomer condescension; the references feel like the theatrical equivalent of your dad embarrassing you. 

The actors did not seem wholly at home in the play in the final preview I saw. Their relationship to the story's characters and humor feels perfunctory, not lived-in. While the text (especially as adapted) is no example of high comedy, even the cheap laughs the show received from its audience felt obliging, rather than earned. Particularly with a post-Trump theatre audience, it's rare to blatantly ask for a laugh or cheer and not get one. So much did that man wreck our international psyche, he even made theatre audiences dumber (and I know I'm not excluded from this). 

In genres other than blank verse drama, particularly comedy, Cimolino's sensibility feels chaste and painfully innocent. All the bits of business clearly staged to garner laughs feel manufactured and inorganic. What good is a crowd-pleaser if it feels like the director thinks he's doing the audience a favor? At best "The Miser'' elicits laughs that can be found elsewhere, and at worst inspires contempt for its elderly cribbing of youthful slang. Maybe the text isn't quite the comedic perfection of "Tartuffe," but surely there's more real fun to be had. 

Hamlet - Stratford Festival - 8/24/2022

The joy of feasting oneself on a repertory theatre's offerings is the hope that, if you are lucky, amidst a plethora of shows of varying quality, you will see something that you will remember. Like, at all. Any part of it. In my judgment, if I remember a single unique line-reading from an actor, and that line-reading stays with me, due to possessing what others have called "the flash of new ideas" and "the charm of an uncommon personality," then that show in my book is a win. Productions in my brain have come and gone, but individual lines spoken by intelligent and caring actors, whose utterance has somehow yielded insight into their reason for being spoken and unlocked previously hidden meaning, those are the burs that stick. They seem to be the touchstone by which my brain judges quality.

An attempted example: Hamlet is speaking with incredulity about how the Player can summon so much grief for a fictional character when he's acting, while Hamlet himself cannot begin to appropriately revenge his actual father's murder by his uncle. Hamlet derides the Player's passion: 

"And all for NOTHING*. [well**]. for Hecuba***."

*said with belittling disdain

**not spoken so much as its first syllable touched on before being withdrawn

***with condescension as the eyelids squint through feigned sympathy

Such is a small diagrammatic example of the greatness Amaka Umeh brings to the role of Hamlet. The Nigerian-born actor takes the Stratford Festival stage as the first woman of color to play the melancholy Dane in a repertory tradition that goes back to 1953. While the inclusivity of the casting is momentus at an historically white institution, I'll let others address the social implications of the event, if only because the remarkability of Umeh's performance is so demanding, it necessitates all ink be directed to its cause.  

Is Umeh the best Hamlet I've ever seen onstage? Probably (Matt Schwader at American Players Theatre also comes to mind). Different times call for different measures, and Umeh's performance, in director Peter Pasyk's thrilling production, is a perfect Hamlet for the "not okay" generation. Umeh brings an acrobat's physicality to her role, which lends eloquent credence to Hamlet's words, and illuminates his intellect through tactile expression. Umeh's use of Shakespeare's language is a style without obvious precedent: she manages to speak both trippingly yet with total feeling, never sacrificing pace for emotion, or vice versa. 

A moment that deserves to be remembered for its heartbreak comes in the "closet scene," the emotional confrontation between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude (Maev Beaty) immediately after Hamlet has killed the spying Polonius (Michael Spencer-Davis). As the Ghost reappears to Hamlet to remind him not to neglect his mission of revenge, Hamlet can see the ghost but Gertrude cannot. Thus, Gertrude is completely convinced of the reality of Hamlet's madness, and Hamlet is sent even further down his contrary route of trying to convince his mother of the exact opposite. The more he tries to appear sane, the crazier he looks. Umeh crawls over to the couch where Gertrude is sitting and takes her hand as she tries to get her to see their former father/husband. Then Matthew Kabwe's Ghost sits on the couch, placing Hamlet in the midst of his living mother and dead father. In an attempted act of comfort, the Ghost takes Hamlet's other hand. In dialogue form, Gertrude and Hamlet square off: 

GERTRUDE

To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET

Do you see nothing there?

GERTRUDE

Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET

Nor did you nothing hear?

GERTRUDE

No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET

Why, LOOK YOU THERE! 

Throughout the quoted passage, Umeh's Hamlet desperately pulls her mother's hand towards her father's, attempting to reconnect her parents over the gulf of death. The Ghost ultimately leaves. rendering Hamlet unsuccessful, but never has Hamlet's grief at the dissolving of his parent's marriage been staged more clearly or with stronger feeling. 

Other actors in the cast bring their own miniature revelations. Kabwe's Ghost:

"The serpent that DID* sting thy father's life..."

*Highlighted due to its antithetical function, since the Ghost previously mentions an imaginary serpent that supposedly (but did not actually) cause his death.

Spencer-Davis as Polonius:

"I have a daughter, [have while she is mine*]."

*Communicating that the bracketed clause means Ophelia will remain Polonius's daughter until she marries; no Polonius ever makes sense of this parenthetical. 

Spencer-Davis again:

"And 'my young mistress,' thus I did bespeak:

'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy* star**: this must not be'."

*Ophelia's

**Social rank/orbit. Another instance of an actor rendering the true and clear meaning of a line this reviewer's ear had something heard but not intentively for over two decades. 

Pasyk's production demonstrates innumerable smart conceptions. The Ghost of Hamlet's father appears nearby the Stalinesque state funeral mausoleum where the corpse of Hamlet's father is interred. The see-through coffin of King Hamlet gets covered by flowers and a white cloth to become the royal wedding party's dinner table: this leads to an eerie moment when Umeh yells "methinks I see my father" and upends the setting to attempt to find the dead king, only to see, magic-trick-style, a replaced wooden table (the moment is usually played for laughs). The first speech of the recently-crowned King Claudius (Graham Abbey) is delivered as if the wedding toast at his marriage to Gertrude. Hamlet and Laertes (Austin Eckert) are presented as earnest friends, with a meaningfully-secret handshake to boot. Laertes' "this is too heavy, let me see another" ends up not being a ruse to make his rapier-choosing more believable to an unsuspecting Hamlet, but a futile attempt to not go through with the deadly plot against his once-friend's life (his request is ignored by Claudius). Hamlet's love for Horatio (Jakob Ehman) is so palpable you smile to see them hug for the first time, and don't begrudge Hamlet giving Horatio a peck on the cheek after he tells him that he wears him in his heart's core, yea, in his heart of hearts. While Hamlet also has a secret-handshake with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Norman Yeung and Ijeoma Emesowum), theirs is far too over-elaborate to demonstrate real friendship, and their extensive bits and riffing belie a group of friends whose intimacy is often touted though never felt. Abbey's Claudius is rendered more of an empathic figure by the summoning of R&G even before Hamlet's so-called "madness" begins, simply as a balm to his nephew's grieving spirit (a directorial decision that demands a textual reshuffling of scene order). "To be or not to be" works well when moved to be Hamlet's first soliloquy of act 2, and Claudius's prayer speech is deepened by being turned into a conversation with Polonius, his trusted friend and advisor (Abbey displays desperate, if fruitless, remorse). The banter between Polonius and Hamlet about the elder having played Julius Caesar in college ends with Hamlet serving as imaginary Brutus, and Polonius hamming up a death following's Hamlet mimed coup-de-grace; this bit is darkened when Hamlet shoots the hiding Polonius behind a curtain, and Polonius attends to his neck-wound in the exact same manner as demonstrated in the Caesarian comic business.

Andrea Rankin makes a noble stab at coloring in the missing pieces of Ophelia's character, and it's refreshing to actually see Hamlet and her have a positive relationship at story's beginning, and not have to take it on faith that something special once existed there (seeing a loving if awkward Polonius family is also a nice touch). Rankin makes us believe Ophelia's compliance in the nunnery scene espionage is born out of genuine worry for Hamlet's mental state, and we in the audience worry for Hamlet in the same way. Even if the antic disposition is fake, Umeh clearly takes Hamlet to some unhinged places that no amount of make-believe can account for. The grief at her father's death is extreme enough, and finding out it was murder definitely doesn't help (see Umeh's silent arrival upon Ophelia with "his doublet all unbrac'd"). Umeh doesn't shy away from Hamlet's misogyny in her play-within-the-play scene interactions with Ophelia, using her actor's status as a woman playing a man to make no apology for the Prince's crude sexual comments. 

Pasyk's missteps are minor. I wish Ophelia's songs (sound design and composition by Richard Feren) had sounded more of a piece with the production's contemporary setting, and not generically Elizabethan (less Greensleeves, more Phoebe Bridgers). And hopefully continued outings on the Festival's thrust stage will make Pasyk more aware that actors facing off to each other center stage results in a stacked look for house right and house left, even if it may look fine from the centrally-placed stage management table in the rehearsal room. Let's hope he has many, many more opportunities for his work to be staged in this venue and others of its caliber.  

While I've been occasionally referring to Umeh's Hamlet with she/her pronouns, Pasyk's production doesn't alter the ones given by Shakespeare (still he/him after 400 years), and we go along with it just fine. Only the snootiest of Bardolators could have an issue with such a decision. Umeh's physical appearance allows her to effortlessly inhabit her own version of a prince while never playing at or winking in the direction of masculinity. She creates a Hamlet who has characteristics of both and neither sexes. Her Hamlet is an invention that could only come via her and spring from within her individual actor's body. Her performance commands the Festival stage with a dynamism that should be the envy of classical theaters everywhere. She has given us the Prince of Denmark for our time. While every actor who plays the role believes themselves to be portraying a hyper-eloquent version of their own autobiography, this cliche may be more true in Umeh's case than many. She makes the words live and walk around. She serves up the poetry from deep within her nervous system. She inhabits the inky cloak fluidly and you never catch her acting.

Umeh, like Hamlet, has that within which passeth show.

Richard III - Stratford Festival - 8/24/2022

How fun to have orthodoxy in the afternoon and heterodoxy in the nighttime. Antoni Cimolino's production of Shakespeare's "Richard III" at the newly-reopened Tom Patterson Theatre is hardly Peter Pasyk's radical updating of "Hamlet," currently running down the street at the Festival Theatre. Nor need it be. The Stratford Festival is an ecosystem, which allows multivalent approaches to the classics, even if the company's general bias is towards a more conservative style of Shakespearean performance. That style, in no way disagreeable, is capably exemplified by Cimolino's production.

The framing device of the fifteenth-century action takes us to a modern-day car-park in Leicester, England, where, out of the bowels of the asphalt, Canadian superstar Colm Feore emerges as Richard to implicate the audience on his odyssey of murder and mayhem. Then we are back to the land of cloaks and tunics, as we see the final installment of the Wars of the Roses. The device uses the finding of Richard III's skeleton underneath a parking lot in 2012 as a springboard for the action of Shakespeare, a dramatist who had a much more Machiavellian view of Richard than scholars now find fashionable.  

As is often the case with his Shakespeare productions, Cimolino's gives us a solid, starter-"Richard III": not the final say in conceptualization by any means, but, like his 2014 "King Lear" (also with Feore in the lead), the production is a clear and unpresumptuous intro to the wicked ways of Richard Plantagenet. Feore gives us a less gleefully villainous Richard than some have been wont to see. In a moment more concerned with ableism and discrimination in performance practices (Feore himself is not an actor with disabilities), playing the wicked king for morbid laughs feels like a relic of a bygone era. Feore's command of the thrust stage is unquestioned: he knows just how to present his body so the 270-degree vantage-points of the Tom Patterson audience will feel included. As seen in his Lear and his 2006 Coriolanus (also directed by Cimolino), Feore puts clarity and simple communication first; despite his various characters' physical differences, you wouldn't describe him as a chameleon. As a performer, he takes to heart that the audience only has one chance at understanding these words, and thus extended layers of characterization tend to stay closer to his own actor's energy. 

Where Feore's skills are most rewarded is in Richard's Act 5, Scene 3 soliloquy, where a moment of self-realization hits our bloody adventurer:

"What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:

Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?

Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good

That I myself have done unto myself?

O, no! alas, I rather hate myself

For hateful deeds committed by myself!...

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;

And if I die, no soul shall pity me..."

This speech has been derided as weak writing by Shakespeare scholars from Harold Bloom to Stephen Greenblatt (or maybe varying New Haven buildings isn't all that far a range). Some find this Gollum/Smeagol version of interiority crude, and a far-cry from the greater subtlety of solo-expression the Bard showed later in his career (Brutus, Hamlet, Iago, etc.). However, it feels like part of their antipathy towards the speech is its naked emotionality; however blunt, it hits at something very raw in the psyche. Shakespeare shows us here that, even at the furthest reaches of monarchical power, most people's ability to express their desire to be loved is not going to be terribly suave. Feore serves this speech up ably and arouses an appropriate amount of audience discomfort. 

"Richard III" is a reliable if unrevelatory production that maintains Stratford's ethos of digestible Shakespeare presented in fittingly period dress. While I can't say how it may fare for the uninitiated, for the devoted theatre-goer it renders its nourishment as comfort food. The greatest pleasure is that Stratford makes its business to train and maintain classical actors of a bent rarely seen anymore. That flame is worth preserving.

Love's Labour's Lost - American Players Theatre - 8/20/2022

This one is a delight. 

Brenda DeVita's production of Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost" at American Players Theatre is the best live stage-play I've seen since the COVID shutdown. The show is sparkling, hilarious, and manages to have every quality you could want out of the pedantic yet heartfelt treasures of the Bard's early comedy.

The King of Navarre (Nate Burger) has invited his friends and comrades-in-arms (Marcus Truchinski, Jamal James, Ronald Roman-Melendez) to study with him for three-years'-time, and in that space to have no truck nor consort with woman-kind. No sooner is such a hubristic vow proclaimed but four young women of France, including its Princess (Phoebe Gonzalez) and her three besties (Melisa Pereyra, Samantha Newcomb, Jennifer Vosters) arrive on flimsy geo-political business and turn the boys heads away from their studies and attendant vows. 

"Love's Labour's Lost" is what might have occurred had James Joyce written a blank-verse rom-com: the simple plot is married to extreme verbal pyrotechnics, as a romantic battle-of-the-sexes ensues which brings all the characters' powers of rhyme and reason to bear in its trenches, as love blossoms in the geographically dubious kingdom of Navarre. Rather than a detailed picaresque, we are instead treated to a more nebulous, emotional odyssey, wherein the characters embark on a journey of growing-up via falling in love, as youthful callousness eventually gives way to the emotional intelligence of adulthood. That journey is rich and tangible in DeVita's first Shakespearean outing as a director, and in no way nebulous at all. 

No member of the four-brides-for-four-brothers octet is a slouch. Truchinski blends cad and sentiment to create a hilariously rakish Berowne. Pereyra as Rosaline brings her customary fathomless reservoir of feeling to the proto-heroine. Seeing Burger let loose and be goofy is a joy, and Vosters turns the potentially anonymous Katharine into a memorably ribald creation. The passion and love the cast feels for the play and this telling of its story is palpable. 

Particularly with its comedic character parts, discussing the full ensemble of productions of LLL can often feel like taking your life in your hands, as the jokes are so intellectually dense as to sometimes feel impenetrable. But the broader cast of roles such as Holofernes the tutor (James Ridge), Sir Nathaniel the curate (David Daniel), and the servant Costard (Jeb Burris) render their archaic humor sparklingly clear and serve it up with tasteful physical business. Triney Sandoval as the Spanish academic Don Armado is a revelation: Sandoval displays indomitable spirit as the lovelorn windbag, whose rhetorical flights of bombast belie the soul of a classical warrior-poet. Hopefully Sandoval remains a regular on the APT stages. Both in LLL and as Claudius in Hamlet he is nothing less than excellent. 

Minus a few unwise excisions from Berowne's lengthy Act 4 speech on the nature of love, DeVita's production has few flaws (though, to my mind, a curtain call is no place for foolery). On opening night, a presumably COVID-based shuffling of the cast resulted in a few understudies venturing onto the boards, including a very assured Kailey Azure Green as Moth, and Nancy Rodriguez filling in for Sarah Day as a gender-swapped Boyet. Rodriguez fared well on opening, though did go onstage with script-in-hand, a concrete reminder that many theaters don't begin paying their understudies until the tech process, and by opening night, many understudies will likely not have had one single rehearsal. Fortunately the show could go on with the aid of such able performers, and nothing was lessened from the overall enchanting experience DeVita has helmed up the hill in Spring Green.