King Lear - American Players Theatre - 08/21/2024

The midwestern theatre doesn't tend to produce directorial auteurs. Okay, I know reviews that begin with grandly general pronouncements are a little gaggy but I sorta think I'm onto something here.

It would be pretty weird if we found out that Ivo Van Hove was from downstate Illinois, or that Peter Sellars' childhood was spent in the school districts of Hennepin County. Sure, Joanne Akalitis may have been born in Chicago, but you wouldn't say her artistic voice exactly flourished in the Land of Lincoln. 

I bring this up by way of another generalization. In the contents of this blog, I often find myself saying things like "this production favors clarity of Shakespearean communication over radical new interpretation" (I usually phrase it just that clunkily). I know I've had such a thought at places like the Guthrie, American Players Theatre, the Stratford Festival, Michigan Shakespeare, Illinois Shakespeare, the Milwaukee Rep, etc etc etc. Obviously this is a geographical byproduct of an individual's attendance biases, but you're reading these words for some reason. 

Of course you'll get into arguments over a subject like this: "why is Sean Graney an auteur but not Barbara Gaines? where does Michelle Hensley land? why is Robert Falls an auteur when he's directing Shakespeare but not Rebecca Gilman*? is David Cromer my personal friend???" But so it goes as Billy Pilgrim said. My point here is that Tim Ocel's production of King Lear at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI is just such a piece of evidence: fluid, clear, unflashy, if ultimately non-devastating. 

Really, the ideal version of King Lear should not be sad, but heartbreaking on a debilitating level. To that specific end, Ocel's production is a failure, but that's a tough bar to clear. The production is a lean and stable rendition of Shakespeare’s Everest, that leaves you reasonably sad, if still able to feed and bathe yourself.

If you were diagnosing particular rhetorical strategies that make the APT actors easy to understand when speaking Shakespeare's language, you could do worse than to say they really hit their verbs (big deal in Shakespeare, verbs). Brian Mani's Lear is in fact "a man more sinned against than sinning"; a foolish father, but not a cruel one. His choice to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, and the tumult that ensues, does in Mani's case come from a sturdy, stalwart man of state, whose mental and physical faculties diminish until he is paradoxically allowed an extra dose of sanity once he has as they say in Shakespeare "gone mad." 

The rest of the ensemble is uniformly unoffensive, and the choice to have Regan (Jessica Ko) and Cornwall (Ronald Román-Meléndez) be sexually excited by the blinding of Gloucester (an understated James DeVita) is a useful example that in this production their ultimate corruption stems from power and its sadism, rather than inherent personal evil. The vulnerability La Shawn Banks summons as Kent in realizing his service to Lear, even after his patron's death, is not yet over, and he has a spectral "journey" to which he "must not say no" is genuinely moving. Josh Krause does noble service as Lear's fool, attempting to forge a performative arc in a character that so staunchly resists clinical text analysis. And I'd love to see Sam Luis Massaro in more starring roles, as the moral earnestness he brings to Lear's Gentleman counts as (the generous kind of) scene-stealing. 

Jeb Burris's fight direction is clunky and automated (knife fights shouldn't have parries), but other than that the production's visual components serviceably allow the language to take front-and-center in the way you expect to hear in Spring Green. Ocel's no-frills aesthetic is best exemplified in the  elegant simplicity of the storm scene, where he and sound designer Gregg Coffin show admirable restraint in not attempting to shout down Shakespeare's text with ambient downpour: they let Mani and his Lear ask for the storm, and refuse to drown the words with reverb. 

At its best, Ocel and his actors let you sit in immediate proximity to the language. In the scene when the mad Lear meets the blinded Gloucester, Lear tells his old friend: 

"If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.

I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester.

Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air

We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark...

When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools.—This’ a good block."

Maybe it's trite but the words really do catch your soul. Hearing them spoken clearly in the natural amphitheater up the hill at APT on a beautiful August night is a pleasure unto itself. Maybe the Midwestern audience has endured too many winters to demand a continental style of high-concept directing. Perhaps that’s the reason we seem to value clarity over flash.

*It's called "the public domain" 

Cymbeline - Stratford Festival - 08/16/2024

 Me considering William Shakespeare's late-period romance, Cymbeline: 

Some have called Cymbeline a narrative "feast," though really it's more of an Old Country Buffet. We all have the Shakespeare titles we treasure and keep dear, a few we hold at arm's length, some we're embarrassed to admit we don't know as well as we should, and often one for which we reserve our total ire. My general frustration with Cymbeline (I claim) lies in how much it asks of us not being in consort with how little it rewards: understanding why this formal audacity had to be married to this particular story is tough to fathom. The pyrotechnics of the plot and its ultimate revelations are so folkloric [derogatory] and wild in their soap-operatics that the ideal outcome seems to be me Shaking My Damn Head at all the hijinks on display; maybe I'm just not easily endeared by Shakespeare at his most plot-y. 

But then again, to quote Harold Bloom (Shakespeare studies' most useful punching bag), we underestimate Shakespeare at our peril. Thinking about various past productions of the play I've seen, more than once I've come away convinced that the play's goofy engine can run well if treated with the proper sentimental irreverence: Fiasco Theater's stripped-down take with 6 actors served the drama splendidly, and the characterizations rendered by Milwaukee Shakespeare (RIP) remain laugh-inducing even some 15 years on. 

So know that my issues with Esther Jun's production currently running on the Tom Pattterson stage at the Stratford Festival are not sour grapes related to a title-based grudge. Shakespeare's play tells the story of the princess Innogen (Allison Edwards-Crewe), who runs afoul of her monarch parent Cymbeline (Lucy Peacock) after she marries the non-royal Posthumus (Jordin Hall). The story takes so many twists and turns on its road to something like 27 revelations (that the audience already knows) in the final scene that Shakespeare seems to be wilfully disregarding the causality of drama, and reveling in what people who like the play refer to as fairy-tale logic. 

This Stratford production takes a noble stab at the material, and you can tell the text personally means a lot to Jun. The issue here is it's taken so damn seriously. Of course the actors are going to have to truthfully inhabit the given circumstances of their world, whether comedy or tragedy. But the way Jun frontloads the spiritual dimensions of the play, both in the choreography and the design elements, weights the production in a direction that isn't conducive to being able to laugh at itself. She even begins the first act with a big ol' movement piece, with the ensemble larking about ponderously over the deep thrust stage. The costumes are gorgeous (designed by Michelle Bohn), and they strike so regal a tone that discourages the world having any sense of being light on its feet. Similarly, the set, with its illuminated tree (lights and scenic by Echo Zhou) takes the play as seriously as a heart-attack, in a tale that cries out for a little more self-conscious theatricality. Placing Cymbeline in a more-or-less actual world (however peppered with magical elements) feels like the wrong way to wring fun and revelation out of this curiously wacky item. 

The actors may always have to take it seriously, but not necessarily the director. The mystical elements of characters like Jupiter (Marcus Nance) and the Soothsayer (Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks) are employed to grave and mighty ends, in a manner that belies the ridiculousness of the story in which they appear. Jun's severity also doesn't serve Edwards-Crewe well, whose Innogen seems only capable of dire earnestness, and rarely humor, imperiousness, or the ability to spark terror. Christopher Allen as the comic villain Cloten is very entertaining, though in about 10 variations I don't know that I've ever seen a Cloten I didn't enjoy: his insufferability combined with his eventual malice is apparently an irresistible cocktail. 

To the production's credit, Tyrone Savage as Iachimo is incredible. Dastardly, delightful, and sparklingly clear, his appearance on the stage elevates the entire operation. 

Cymbeline can work marvelously onstage, but if the director asks the play to carry a burden it's not prepared for, you come away asking that most dreaded of audience questions: "why are you telling me this?" This production is not a bad one by any means, it's just not the best version of Cymbeline that Cymbeline can be. 

Jun's rendition certainly has its heart in the right place. All in all, I just think, though it surprises me to admit this, Cymbeline should be more fun than that.

Twelfth Night - Stratford Festival - 08/16/2024

Is it possible to overdose on Shakespeare? Imagine that was the top text posed by the following image:

Ok jokes are over. More on this later.

Seana McKenna's production of Twelfth Night on the Festival Stage in Stratford, ON is a highly amiable affair. Noted Canadian actor (and first-time Festival director), McKenna lightly sets the action in 1967, though the placement is a far-cry from that one As You Like It you're thinking of right now. If all actors who've played Hamlet can be classified either as "to be" Hamlets or "not to be" Hamlets, all Twelfth Night productions can justifiably be dubbed either "basically happy" or "basically bittersweet," and this one is certainly the former. The cap is nodded in the direction of Sir Toby's rejection of Sir Andrew (Scott Wentworth and Rylan Wilkie, respectively), and the highly convincing Laura Condlln renders Malvolio's speech of rage upon his release from imprisonment absolutely as striking as it needs to be. However, this is no Twelfth Night where you feel like Malvolio is going to seek his revenge "on the whole pack" of the assembled via a 3-D printer and an AR-15. This is staunchly a "basically happy" Twelfth Night, and the alternative is starting to feel like a relic of yesteryear (maybe people just seem to be over the idea of an incel Malvolio).

In McKenna's production, the justifiable stars are the central coupling of Viola (Jessica B. Hill) and Orsino (Andre Sills). As the lovelorn woman disguised as a boy in love with the Duke she serves, Hill is customarily excellent. While the production sometimes encourages her into cheaper laughs than she need truly ask for, Hill has emerged as one of the outstanding current talents of the Stratford Festival. Especially after her Lady Capulet and her Helena in All's Well That Ends Well two seasons ago, it comes as no surprise that her Viola shines via a unique portal of rhetorical clarity and emotional generosity. She is one of those performers who get dubbed things like "compulsively watchable," and with her onstage, you know Shakespeare will be done total justice as Hill takes accountability for her part of the story. 

Also, you gotta hand it to a guy who can do both Coriolanus AND Duke Orsino. Andre Sills' physically imposing presence onstage should not belie the fact that the man can suggest bizarre neurotic psychosis at the distance of a country mile. His Orsino is both a commanding potentate and a huge weirdo and asking for more would be unreasonable. 

Vanessa Sears as Olivia fares as well as she did as Juliet, though here with a stronger production backing her up: her joy at learning the newly-discovered Viola is going to be her sister is infectious. And seeing Emilio Vieira as Antonio, a vessel of earnest caring, not rejected but included in the play's ending festivities, is a welcome turn from a typical Twelfth Night shibboleth (Vieira is also a notably feeling Tybalt this year).   

Condlln's Malvolio treads the journey of the pseudo-puritan in a manner that's totally satisfying: watching her "box-tree" scene where she's spied on as she reads the letter Maria (Sarah Dodd) has forged to appear like Olivia's handwriting, you are struck with the impression that Shakespeare's innate understanding of a fun character journey was preternaturally intuitive. Ok ok I know I know yes "Shakespeare was really great" but somehow I do feel he's still kinda underrated as a dramatist. Michael Spencer-Davis here serves a useful function as Fabian, particularly when articulating that the course of revenge against Malvolio was taken out of injury, not inherent cruelty (which helps to lighten the play's finale). 

Which brings me back to the overdose. Nary through a fault of the Festival, or of the Bard himself, I largely find myself really Twelfth Nighted out. Between the two fundamental poles of happiness and bittersweetness, I feel like I am several decades removed from a surprise in Twelfth Night viewing. With surfeiting the appetite hath sickened and so died. That being said, even if the play doesn't mean as much to me as it did when I was fifteen and felt the poetry was a force for cellular manipulation and basically wanted to consume the comedy intravenously (I probably identified with Malvolio a little too much tbh), McKenna's production leaves you warmed and beguiled. Maybe the era of hyper-dark Shakespearean comedy is over, or maybe it was just self-imposed all along. 

Romeo and Juliet - Stratford Festival - 08/15/2024

Some plays work really well in the time-period in which they're set. I mean, for most viewers, even assuming the absolute best of conditions, the first ten-to-fifteen minutes of any given Shakespeare play are going to be a pretty tough plunge in the deep end. Therefore, when you're not attempting to simultaneously decode the author's 400 year-old dialogue, as well as an additional directorial "concept" that is also telegraphing that "certain Things" in fact "in this world" actually "mean Other Things," playing Shakespeare in more-or-less early modern garb has obvious virtues.

But no such notion can clear every hurdle. Sure, by not giving the characters modern clothes, or coming up with some justification as to why they're referring to their guns as "blades," you avoid certain barriers that make Shakespeare hard to understand for a contemporary audience, but one should never back into such a choice. Ideally, the director would have a burning passion as to why the drama needs placement in the Italian renaissance in order to sing, because the inverse is also true that simply transplanting the action into some land of suits and ties will never inherently convey "relevance" to any specific play.

I couldn't say why director Sam White chose this particular brand of generically period, Bard-cosplay costuming for her production of Romeo and Juliet on the Festival Stage at the Stratford Festival, here in charming Ontario. Certainly, her production last year of Wedding Band (in the Tom Patterson Theatre here in Stratford) worked excellently in its grounded, domestic intricacies, though the canvas of Alice Childress' theatre has different demands than Shakespeare's. Only in a few performances does what made Wedding Band special shine in this most heated of tragedies, and the saga of two children finding connection across a barrier of hatred never quite finds its burning zeal. 

Jessica B. Hill creates the most conflicted, emotionally mature Lady Capulet I've ever seen. The way White concocts the conversation between Hill, the Nurse (Glynis Ranney, hokey but effective) and Juliet (Vanessa Sears) to show how Lady Capulet realizes she is less of a mother to her daughter than the woman who actually nursed her, and proceeds to attempt to establish intimacy via the route of presenting the idea of Juliet's marriage, is a route through that group dynamic that is absolutely revelatory. Hill is terrifically served by Graham Abbey as her husband Capulet, and the wails the two impart over the body of what they believe to be their dead daughter is the closest the production has to a tear-jerking moment. Abbey in general is a delightful conduit of dad energy, and until Capulet turns into the ultimate domestic tyrant when he rages at Juliet for her unwillingness to marry Paris (Austin Eckert), he is really quite pleasant to be around.

Attention must also be paid to Scott Wentworth as Friar Laurence, who manages two remarkable feats in his first scene on the stage: he conveys just how much the flora and fauna of the natural world mean on an emotional level to this Franciscan father, and then uses his metaphors about good and evil commingling in all living beings to show why he believes the covert marriage of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet may actually bring about something positive out of something negative. Also, Wentworth's shift from judgmental in the scene where he's about to marry Juliet to Romeo, when he first looks askance at their easy PDA, then becomes tearful after hearing their verbal protestations of love, perfectly highlights how people should encounter this story: for all the para-critical talk of them just being dumb kids, if you actually spend time in the young lovers' company, you realize their genius and remarkability are self-evident.

Steven Hao provides easy joviality as Benvolio, and Sears lives each line of Juliet's with impressive honesty and emotional commitment (though you wish she had a stronger foil in Jonathan Mason's undefined Romeo). Andrew Iles' Mercutio stands uncomfortably between comic-relief and predator with no directorial commentary on why people seem to find him so irresistible (you get the sense White doesn't like the character much). Iles' delivery adds a roadblock to rhetorical communication: "O, then I see Queen ["who?"] hath been with you"; at the performance I saw, many verbal details on the part of the overall ensemble got swallowed.   

The elements of White's production that reach most towards inventiveness stumble in the attempt. The idea to have Juliet serve as the opening Chorus ("Two households...") and be dressed as a physical embodiment of the dust from the stars that crossed her and Romeo, is a terrific idea, but at the performance I saw something was clearly amiss with the the sound mixing or the microphone or the mic placement or something or another, and thus Sears' singing of the speech as an aria was rendered so tough to understand it began the production on a wildly shaky and unfair note. The doubling of Mercutio and the Apothecary was similarly almost intriguing: a noteworthy idea executed with no real perspective; which was also true of the doubling of Balthazar and Friar John (both John Kirkpatrick), the two dudes who bring news that is both wrong and bad. The suggestion of a sexual encounter between R&J at the top of Act 3, Scene 5 was timid and unnecessary, and Anita Notoly's fight direction of the various duels was so flashy as to render any character-driven story within the violence unintelligible. 

While the bare adornment of the festival stage is a feature of many Stratford productions, here the stripped-down choice feels ill-advised, as the romantic passion of the titular star-crossed lovers doesn't mix the fire and powder enough to consume the theatre solely on linguistic bases. One feels White could have taken more extreme advantage of the thrust stage's benefits, as, in an ideal world, scene-changes could be shrouded with dark while another scene is going on, and thus you wouldn't have to wait for the inevitable "lights change, actors enter with furniture, put it somewhere, leave, beat, lights change, new scene begins" tedium. (And I won't even pretend to understand why Juliet's bed needed so many exits and entrances on its way up and down from the trap door.) The thrust stage's potential for poetic fluidity is largely unused. 

All in all, the production is uninventive, earthbound, and unable to carry you on what should be a heartbreaking journey. Whatever the virtue of certain performers, you leave the production cold and nonplussed. Hopefully White can have more chances to bring her personal zeal to Shakespeare at the festival. As it stands, this R&J loves far too moderately.