Tag: Adaptation

Back to the Future: The Musical—27 June 2024

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Back to the Future: The Musical Show Poster

I’m not really a musicals person, especially in the West End/Broadway style of musical, so Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future: The Musical (with music and lyrics by Allan Silvestri and Glen Ballard) is not normally the kind of show I would seek out. I bought tickets because the movie version is amazing, and I was hoping that John Rando’s production at London’s Adelphi Theatre would turn the camp up to 11. I was hoping tents and an archery range would need to be set up on stage because of how camp it was.

Unfortunately (for me), that’s not really what happened.

By and large, the show (which we only ended up staying for the first half of) was fine. It followed the plot of the original 1985 film relatively closely, while adding in a set of musical numbers. Essentially, the show takes itself relatively seriously as an example of musical theatre, which simply wasn’t what I was hoping for. Yes, musical theatre is always camp to a certain extent, just by nature of the genre. But they didn’t play into that—with the exception of Cory English, who played Doc Brown. English was the only person I genuinely enjoyed watching, and whom I felt was having tremendous fun with the role. His responses, his vaguely suggestive song lyrics and dance moves, and the physical excessiveness of his reactions made English far and away the most exciting performer of the show. For instance, when Marty (Ben Joyce) tells Doc that they need to generate 1.21 gigawatts, English flings himself all over the stage in consternation, muttering about how impossible it is, and even ending up throttling a scarecrow that Marty had used to “camouflage” the DeLorean, asking the scarecrow if it heard what Marty said. English, more than any other performer, had his camping gear for this show.

An advertising poster

As far as Joyce goes, I wasn’t incredibly impressed. On one level, the standards may have been set unfairly because Michael J. Fox played such an iconic Marty McFly in the film, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever live up to that. And some of my disappointment with Marty was not Joyce’s fault, so much as the material he was given to work with. Certainly, in the film, Marty is occasionally saddened when people tell him that he’s never going to succeed at anything. But giving that part of Marty’s character several major musical numbers early on really makes that central to the character—instead of the cool, rebellious, Ferris Bueller-type person of the movie, we get a relatively depressed, hopeless sad sack for much of the musical.

Lorraine’s creepy line to her future son, used on an advertising poster

The other big issue with the addition of the music was that the 1955 versions of Marty’s parents were ten times creepier. George (Oliver Nicholas) gets a solo number during the bit where George is watching a girl through her window. This is not an ideal moment to really give that character the spotlight, if we want the audience to have any sympathy for him. Apart from this incredibly uncomfortable choice, I thought Nicholas was a very funny performer, who really went for it with George’s nerdy lack of confidence. Another issue where the musical numbers made the show more uncomfortable was with Lorraine Baines’ (Sarah Goggin) scenes where she’s aggressively pursuing Marty romantically. It’s temporal-flux incest-iness, which is always awkward, but having several songs in which she sings about her desire to have sex with the guy we know to be her future son just ramped up the creep factor exponentially.

My video review of Back to the Future: The Musical

William Shakespeare’s Richard III—8 June 2024

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Me with the Richard III poster at the Globe

As part of a Literary London study abroad course on crime and justice in British literature, I assigned William Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was a marvelous bit of serendipity that Shakespeare’s Globe was putting on that very show while we visited London. Even before the Globe posted their summer 2024 season, I knew we would visit the recreated theatre where Shakespeare’s plays debuted—but getting to see a world class production of a play we are studying in the theatrical setting the Bard would have known was an amazing educational opportunity.

The Globe’s production, directed by Elle While, was absolutely amazing. Michelle Terry played a Richard who was exceptionally funny—I don’t think my students realized from reading the play how witty and clever Richard actually is—while also being casual, energetic, conspiratorial, and irrationally unhinged at the requisite moments. She dominated the stage space, even for being a relatively smallish person, and drew eyes to her wherever she was on stage at any given moment. One element of her performance that especially stood out was the crowd work. The same was true of Helen Schlesinger, who masterfully played a city-trader style Buckingham. Between Terry and Schlesinger, they effortlessly engaged with the groundlings standing near the stage—from the time they noticed a man who had nodded off while leaning on the stage to the time when Schlesinger came down into the crowd and took someone’s beer. For modern audiences, trained by contemporary theatre conventions to sit silently and observe, rather than participate, this kind of crowd work gives a taste of what the theatre must have been like in 1593(ish) when the play was first performed.

The Globe theatre stage for Richard III

Stylistically, the play had an interesting blend of modernization and traditional elements, which drew out aesthetic and thematic elements. On the thematic level, one of the most obvious modernizations was the incorporation of direct references to Donald Trump. This included added dialogue, like Richard quoting the infamous Access Hollywood tape as part of his self-aggrandizement, and Richard’s supporters wearing red hats during one portion of the play.

On the visual level, there were blended costumes, with some characters having more traditionally Elizabethan inflected costumes and some having entirely modern costumes. Rivers (Em Thane) and Grey (Tanika Yearwood), for instance, were clothed in ruffs, doublet, and knee breeches, but wore modern sneakers. However, when Thane transitioned from Rivers to the Commissioner, she put on a modern British police commissioner’s uniform. Richmond (Sam Crerar) was costumed in boots, ripped jeans, a multi-colored shirt, and a worn brown leather bomber jacket with red rose patches on it. Very much a modern look. And for Richard, there was a blending, including an initial costume of black doublet, black jeans, and black cowboy boots. But this was replaced variously with white pleated shirt, black jeans, and gold boots; with a green feathered doublet and sculpted chest piece (which may have been sculpted in such a way as to suggest Richard’s scoliosis); or with an almost entirely gold royal ensemble.

Speaking of Richard’s scoliosis, this has been one of the controversies surrounding this play—that Terry is not a disabled actor, but was cast in the role of Richard, which is one of the most famous disabled characters in all of theatre. I’m not going to delve too deep into this controversy, though here are some links to articles about it:

One point of potential controversy that did strike me, however, was the choice of who was cast as Richmond. Crerar is a great actor and there was nothing inherently problematic about his performance as Richmond—on the contrary, he was quite good, as he was in his other role as Catesby. However, he is the only cast member who presents as male (though Crerar uses both male and gender neutral pronouns). Everyone else in the cast presents as female, and so one might be forgiven for reading the casting choice as reflecting the toppling of the tyrannical female (playing at being male) by the male as being some kind of implicit endorsement of cis-het patriarchy. I doubt that was an intended element of the play, but the triumphant defeat of a female Richard by a male Richmond could be read as signaling support for traditional gender hierarchies. And the glorious defeat of the female coded body “pretending” to be male, even using prosthetics (i.e., Terry’s chest plate) to appear more male may, without too much stretching, be read as the destruction of a transman by a “real” man. Again, I don’t think the production team purposefully sought out these thematics, but I do find troubling the choice of casting the single male-presenting member of the cast as Richard.

Video review of Shakespeare’s Richard III by Andi Stout and I

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin—14 June 2023

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The big draw of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin, was undoubtedly Richard Thomas in the role of Atticus Finch. Thomas, famous as John-Boy in The Waltons, was certainly a big factor in my mother’s excitement to see the production—and considering that many of the other people in the audience were older, I imagine that most of them had grown up with the Waltons as well. However, a celebrity lead was far from the only worthwhile element of this show.

The play itself is obviously an adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which is one of the most widely read and influential pieces of American literature. This can make adapting a piece like this challenging, because audiences are likely to be primed by knowing the story and may expect it to be treated in certain ways. Sorkin treated the novel extremely effectively by, on the one hand, maintaining all of the crucial elements of the plot itself, while, on the other, not merely putting the relatively linear plot of the book on stage. Tom Robinson’s trial is broken up throughout the play, being narrated and contextualized by Scout, Jem, and Dill. This non-linear structure works well for creating tension around the movement of the play while at the same time giving audiences the elements of the story that make Lee’s novel such an impactful story.

While Thomas was the main attraction—and his performance was without question extremely good, as were all the performers—the show was stolen by Jacqueline Williams, playing Culpernia, the Finch’s maid/nanny to the kids/friend of Atticus. This is a supporting role, but every time Williams spoke she got a consistent audible response from the audience. Throughout the show, the audience regularly responded with laughter, gasps, or other verbal responses. But Williams was most consistently able to draw out audience reactions with her sassy Black maid character, speaking truth to white men in the racist south. Another performer who consistently got these kinds of audience responses was Steven Lee Johnson, playing Dill Harris. He perfectly combined a kindly insight with a charming naivete that made his performance deeply endearing. Again, every actor was impressive, but Williams and Johnson took their supporting characters and went above and beyond with them.

My one issue with the production is with the dialects. Personally, I don’t like fake accents on stage. I think they’re often done poorly. And while there were elements of the dialects here that were very good, there were also lines that didn’t strike my ear as correct for an Alabama accent. Part of the challenge is for an actor to project their voice while doing an accent, which is much harder than speaking at a normal conversational volume, but I am just overall not a fan of stage accents. One thing I definitely want to give the dialect coach credit for is Joey Collins’ (playing Bob Ewell) pronunciation of the word “white,” which he distinctly pronounced “hwite,” with an audible haich sound at the beginning. This is a pronunciation that was cultivated by white southerners after the Civil War, which was meant to mark them as true southerners and true white people. So, when the racist Klan member Bob Ewell pronounces a strong haich sound at the beginning of the word, this is spot on in terms of the dialect of the time and place.

My video review of Aaron Sorokin’s Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less—13 May 2023

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Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less (IOGM from here on out) has to be an incredibly taxing play to perform, as each of the five actors plays a multitude of roles, each demanding its own character. The actor with the fewest number of distinct characters plays seventeen, while the top two play thirty characters each. The actors in the State College Community Theatre (SCCT) production, directed by Tom McClary, met this challenge exceedingly well, putting on an incredibly funny show that moved—as it says on the tin—through Homer’s epic poems and through much of Greek mythology.

The content of the play is reasonably straightforward given the name. The show opens with one of the actors setting a timer, to the chagrin of the rest, who protest that they’re still rehearsing and haven’t even learned all their lines yet. But the timer has begun. Act I and II each begin with various mythological stories told through a series of styles—talk shows, game shows, dating shows, etc. before moving to the major Homeric works: The Iliad in Act I and The Odyssey in Act II. The performance moves at a breakneck pace, hitting the key info from each mythological element and putting a humorous spin on it, often through word association, caricature, or situational irony. Each of the characters is brought to life through the small five-person cast, playing between them a total of 130 different characters.

For the SCCT production, important or recurring characters had distinctive props or catchphrases to help distinguish them. For instance, when Rob Arnold played Zeus, he wore a crown of gold leaves, and when he played Achilles, he carried a Greek soldier’s helmet. When Heidi Cole played Aphrodite, she wore a red feather boa. Andy Ogrinc probably had the most notable catchphrases, between Hermes’ “That’s how I roll” and Diomedes’ “Diomedes rules!” With such a whirlwind of characters, these recurring elements helped audiences keep some of the characters straight.

However, there were also individual characters that stood out in particular, such as Margaret Higgins’ Semele, lover of Zeus and mother (partially) of Dionysus. When Hera (Ian Dargitz)—whose prop cycled through several household cleaning implements—convinced Semele to demand Zeus show himself in his true godly form, she got an elaborate death scene, which Zeus urged her to perform so well it would be mentioned in the reviews (goal: achieved). The beauty of this scene was the build-up by Zeus, seating the confused looking Semele in a chair centerstage and gathering the rest of the cast around, before her (purposefully) somewhat awkward death scene.

While most of the characters kaleidoscoped back and forth, either appearing only for very short periods or returning for repeated short bits, the one lengthy amount of time spent with a single character was during Act II’s telling of The Odyssey, when Dargitz spent much of that section in character as Odysseus. The performances were just as solid and hilarious as they were in Act I, but the shift from continually shifting character focuses to an extended focus on a single character slowed down the pace of the IOGM as a whole. This is, of course, a pretty accurate reflection of the difference between The Iliad and The Odyssey, as the latter is much more singularly focused on Odysseus. But that singular focus meant the production didn’t feel like it had the frenetic energy during the Odyssey portion, which had contributed so much to the humor and power of the first Act.

My video review of Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less

The Women of Trachis: New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, by Theater of War Productions—27 July 2022

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Theater of War Productions is one of the most exciting companies in the performance of ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays because they tie each performance to a particular social issue and use the performances as a jumping off point for discussions of the issue. Their recent version of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis was performed with the support of the New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, and featured nurses as the Chorus and in two of the main roles. The connections between the performance, the audience members who responded, and the play itself is one of the elements that makes a Theater of War performance so sensational.

Sophocles’ Women of Trachis takes place at the end of Heracles’ life. He has been off fighting, and he sends word back to his wife Deianeira and his son Hyllas that the battle is won and he’s coming home. He also sends back Iole, his war bride/concubine/sex slave. This does not sit entirely well with Deianeira, who decides to try and win back Heracles’ affection with a love potion given to her by the centaur Nessus, who made the potion from his blood while dying because of Heracles. Perhaps predictably, Nessus tricked Deianeira, giving her a horrible poison rather than a love potion, but she did not begin to suspect that until she had already sent the robe soaked in the fatal draught. Deianeira expresses her fears to the Chorus, and shortly afterwards her son Hyllas arrives accusing her of murdering Heracles. Rather than defending herself, Deianeira accepts her guilt and commits suicide. Hyllas realizes his mistake and takes back his condemnation of his mother. Heracles is then brought on for an extended scene where he complains of the agony he’s experiencing, condemns Deianeira and expresses the wish to brutally murder her, recounts his great deeds, and then essentially uses emotional blackmail to convince his son to build a funeral pyre and set him on fire and then to marry Iole.

The Theater of War performance, done over Zoom, included the portion of Sophocles’ play in which Deianeira (Elizabeth Marvel) begins to fear she may have accidentally poisoned her husband, Hyllas’ (Craig Manbauman) condemnation then repentance, and Heracles’ (David Denman) experience of his painful demise. This show cut the first portion of the play in order to focus more specifically on the section relating to Heracles’ death, which is much more relevant and connected to the experience of hospice and palliative care nurses with whom the company collaborated for this project. The experiences of Deianeira’s grief and guilt, Hyllas’ difficulty processing Heracles’ suffering, and Heracles’ anger, pain, and trauma all resonated with the lived experiences of these nurses—points they made eloquently in the discussion after the reading of the script itself.

The three members of the Chorus (Angie Meraviglia, Dawn Fort, and Sharon A. Campbell) are all nurses, as is Manbauman and Charlaine Lasse, who played the Nurse. For me, the strongest performance of the night was actually Lasse. In her post-show comments, she said that as a post-natal care and NICU nurse—dealing with newly born babies who need immediate medical attention, often intensive care—she has to balance between loving her patients, but not being in love with them. That tension between being devoted to helping them, but not being so devoted that when patients do inevitably die she is unable to cope. Lasse was able to bring this tension to the Nurse’s role, which is essentially that of a messenger in this portion of the play, reporting Deianeira’s suicide to the Chorus. Her performance was natural and her reading of the lines crisp and clean, giving the impression not of saying lines written millennia ago, but of speaking from the heart as someone who has lived this experience of loss.

The other really strong performance was by Manbauman, who did a masterful job shifting through Hyllas’ competing emotions within the play. Manbauman was able to effectly portray the anger of a son who feels betrayed when he thinks he mother murdered his father, then the remorse of a son who knows he has helped drive his mother to suicide, then the tensions between his own desire to do what’s right and his (emotionally abusive) father’s demands of him.

Denman’s Heracles was probably the weakest of the performances, in large part because the role doesn’t lend itself to be played on Zoom. The performance was over-the-top, with a lot of roaring, excessive facial expressions, and an intensity that didn’t translate well over Zoom.

Again, though, what makes Theater of War Productions truly a unique company is that their performances are the catalyst for discussions among people immediately impacted by the issues raised by the plays. Following the performance itself, the floor was opened to the nurse-performers to discuss what resonated with them in the play, or what struck them as most important. Then the floor opened up to comments from the audience. And it is this approach to active engagement that defines Theater of War. They try not just to present the ancient plays, or even just to make them relevant to modern audiences, but to create spaces of discussion—a kind of Athenian democracy inspired approach—in which members of a community come together to collectively make meaning of these plays.

My video review of Theatre of War Productions’ Women of Trachis

Sonnetfest ’21: 4th Annual Shakespeare on the Bluff Festival—23 July 2021

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Sonnetfest ’21, directed by Kevin Wetmore, introduced Shakespeare’s sonnets as fourteen-line plays, and that promise was borne out. The performance consists of several sonnets read (not in numerical order) and acted out by Loyola Marymount University’s College of Communications and Fine Arts. I watched the final performance, which was streamed over YouTube– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsHyQUA0hK0 (this link may or may not work as the video is unlisted at time of writing).

Sonnets are short love poems—though they sometimes deal with love only tangentially, perhaps focusing more on themes like death, nature, art, etc.—with fourteen lines in iambic pentameter with a set rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG for English/Shakespearean sonnets. Iambic pentameter means each line has a regular rhythm of five metric feet (two syllables) with unstressed-stressed pattern to each foot. In other words, the sonnet is an extremely regular form, which means the rhythm and the sound of the poem is consistent and should, therefore, be relatively easy to read aloud, since poetry was traditionally an oral form, only transitioning to widespread silent reading relatively recently. Shakespeare wrote a sonnet sequence, which was quite common during the English (and European more generally) Renaissance era. The 154 sonnets of the sequence were largely dedicated to two enigmatic figures, the Dark Lady and the Fair Youth, both of whom the poet persona—which does not necessarily mean Shakespeare himself, though some try to infer biographic information from the sonnets—desires, admires, loves, and suffers for. In addition, many of Shakespeare’s plays include sonnets. Taken as a whole, the sonnets provide much dramatic material.

Indeed, each sonnet in Sonnetfest ’21 was given by a single actor/reader, and through their location, props, and performance, each sonnet really did become a short play. Considering the relatively limited amount of material provided by each sonnet—only fourteen lines—and the strong associations of some sonnets—like 18 or 116—with specific themes or contexts, the actors showed amazing creativity in finding ways to bring new life into the poems.

For instance, Sonnet 18, which begins “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful love poems of all time, with its promise to immortalize the beloved through literature. This production, however, tied the sonnet to the California wildfires and climate change by opening with an image of a news article about climate change. Instead of the beloved being immortalized, the immortal subject becomes the devastation of climate catastrophe. Similarly, Sonnet 116—”Let me not to the marriage of true minds”—is one of the most commonly used marriage poems, often being read at weddings as a signifier of the couple’s devotion to one another. Challenging this standard use, the speaker in this performance seemingly addressed her daughter, therefore changing the focus of the love promised by the poem. Other performers used their poems to show they are thinking of relative across the globe, or stalking an ex’s Facebook page, or aligning the words with drawing from an artist’s model, or a texted conversation keeping the speaker from falling asleep, or addressing the band KISS. The range of approaches the actors brought was incredibly impressive, and the limited materials they had to work with makes the way these stories were told all the more impressive.

My video review of Sonnetfest ’21

Antigone in Ferguson, by Theater of War Productions–9 Aug. 2020

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Theater of War’s Antigone in Ferguson adapts the Sophocles play in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and its specific history in Ferguson, MO following the murder of Michael Brown by police in 2014. Organized and run by members of the Ferguson community working with professional actors and singers from New York and Los Angeles, the show is a powerful re-situating of a Classical drama for contemporary political purposes.

Antigone in Ferguson is a staged reading of Sophocles’ play, translated by Theater of War’s Bryan Doerries, with a major emphasis on the chorus. The chorus combines BLM activists from Ferguson with professional singers from New York, with music composed by Dr. Philip Woodmore. The music is reminiscent of a gospel choir, with a complex blend of choral harmonies and soloists who create emphasis. The soloists—John Legette, Gheremi Clay, De-Rance Blaylock, Marcelle Davies Lashley, and Duane Foster—brought a massive amount of vocal talent to the production, lifting the songs to the heavens. Some of the songs, like the closing one in the performance I saw through Zoom draw directly from the gospel traditions, while others had clear jazz influences. It was also a treat to see Dr. Woodmore conducting on Zoom, because he brought an amazing energy to conducting his music.

The individual performances were strong as well, which is especially impressive for a dramatic reading over Zoom—media that eliminate much of the ability to play off of other performers and to use stage space to create meaning, which are key elements of acting on stage. Creon (Oscar Issac) was probably the most evocative performance, playing the role like a mafia don by turns menacing and mercurial. Antigone (Tracie Thoms) embodied the character’s righteous rage against Creon, against patriarchy, and against the city she accuses of abandoning her. Tiresias gave a really interesting performance, wearing dark glasses reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, but inflecting his prophecies like a revival preacher. He effectively emphasized crucial words by drawing the syllables out and then cutting them off abruptly. And, although he is a supporting character, the Guard/Messenger (Jumaane Williams) actually gave a great performance. When he reported Haemon and Antigone’s deaths, his speech was powerful and full of foreboding.

Probably the most powerful aspect of the performance, however, was the emphasis on community and the drive to build a better world. This was demonstrated through the very fact that the chorus was made up of Ferguson residents, many of whom had been active in the BLM protests after Michael Brown’s murder. But this commitment to community was also established by the framing of the performance, with opening remarks given by Cori Bush, who recently won the Democratic primary for Missouri’s 1st House district. Bush was active in BLM after Brown’s murder, and she represents a powerful progressive voice for equality and compassion. Having Bush speak before the performance is actually a great Classical reference, because in ancient Greece a politician would traditionally make opening remarks before plays were performed at the City Dionysia. The other framing element was a post-show discussion where community members who have lost loved ones to police violence responded to the performance, and then the floor was opened for discussion from general audience members. This kind of community engagement aligns with Theater of War’s ethos and dedication of building a better world through collective engagement, dialogue, active listening, and empathy.

My video review of Theatre of War Productions’ Antigone In Ferguson

The Duchess (of Malfi), by Zinnie Harris–28 May 2019

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The Duchess of Malfi was originally a Jacobean play by John Webster—one of the best early modern plays, in my opinion. But what Zinnie Harris has done with her new version is amazing. She has kept the dark, violent, misogynistic themes of the original, but updated it to feel fresh, contemporary, and even (perhaps surprisingly) empowering. The performance at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, directed by Harris, was a fantastic example of making an old text relevant to the contemporary world, without sacrificing either Webster or Harris as distinct voices and perspectives.

IMG_20190528_191122.jpg
The set from the Royal Lyceum production of The Duchess.

Harris largely maintained the basic storyline from Webster’s version. The play begins with the widowed Duchess of Malfi ignoring her brothers’ advice and deciding to marry her steward Antonio in secret. The brothers—Ferdinand and the Cardinal—put their cynical henchman Bosola into the Duchess’ house as a spy to find out if she is entertaining any potential suitors, and when Bosola determines that she’s pregnant, Ferdinand loses his mind. He imprisons his sister and psychologically tortures her, including making her believe that Antonio and her son have been killed. Finally, on Ferdinand’s orders, Bosola murders the Duchess, but he is so touched by her purity and selflessness even at the point of death that he foregoes his cynical allegiance to the brothers and vows revenge. Antonio and Bosola agree to kill the Cardinal and Ferdinand, but during the assassination attempt, Antonio is accidentally killed and Bosola is grievously wounded.

Many of the changes Harris has made are cosmetic, though they effectively modernize the play. For instance, in Webster’s version Ferdinand shows the Duchess waxworks figures which he tells her are the corpses of Antonio and their son. But (as Harris said during the postshow talkback), that wouldn’t really work for modern audiences, so the substituted video projections of her family being shot. By projecting this image across the entire back wall, the show put the audience in the uncomfortable position of being shown the images used to torture the Duchess—we, in a sense, became the tortured. Similarly, Harris expands more on some of the minor characters, principally Julia and Delio, who are relatively minor characters in Webster’s version. Harris gives them each complex emotions and develops them as individuals, including Julia’s ambivalent relationship with the Cardinal, who is both her lover and her rapist.

One of the most significant and moving changes is that after their murders, the Duchess, her daughter, and her servant Cariola don’t leave the stage, but remain as ghostly presences haunting the living. This is a great embodiment of what is, in Webster, merely thematic. The Duchess, in particular continues to interact with people, largely on the level of whispering to them—like when she repeatedly disturbs the Cardinal by whispering “Murder.” Having these murdered characters on stage also provides a great way of staging the scene where Antonio has a significant conversation with an echo, with the specific words it repeats convincing him that the Duchess has been murdered. The echoes are performed by the Duchess, Cariola. The choice to keep these women on stage also helped produce the strange hopefulness of the end of the play—despite male violence and the attempts to limit the Duchess’ choice and sexual freedom, she continued to assert her power, even after death.

The premier run at the Royal Lyceum was fantastically performed, with excellent acting from everyone. Kirsty Stuart was a fantastic Duchess, vivacious and self-confident in the first portion, then stridently defiant as she tried to maintain her composure and dignity in prison. Ferdinand was played by Angus Miller, who did an excellent job portraying the incestuous obsession of Ferdinand for his sister, and the dark menacing insanity that eventually leads him to lose control entirely.

Adam Best’s Bosola was an interesting, dynamic portrayal, highlighting the complexity of the character. Bosola is a kind of chameleon, able to change his skin to blend with his surroundings. In his first appearance, Best’s Bosola was a shuffling, downtrodden mess, but as he became established in the Duchess’ household his entire demeanor changed, becoming more refined and standing straighter. However, Harris’ Bosola is somewhat less complex than Webster’s, which is one of the few issues I have with Harris’ version—though that probably reflects more that I find Webster’s Bosola one of the most interesting characters in all of drama. Harris has kept the misogynist diatribe against women wearing make up, and Bosola’s philosophy about loyalty. But one of his most important attributes in the Webster is that he follows the Cardinal and Ferdinand out of a cynical belief that all the world is corrupt, and therefore he must equally be corrupt to succeed. This is the belief that is shaken by the Duchess’ willingness to sacrifice her life with dignity, and for me it is a fundamental element of what makes Bosola so fascinating. But Harris has cut his early speech establishing the cynical philosophy that will motivate him throughout the first roughly 2/3 of the play. However, Best’s performance ensured that Bosola was still an amazingly complex character, particularly through his interactions with Cariola (Fletcher Mathers), who challenged his misogyny, his philosophy, and his whole outlook.

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, Adapted by Sterling Sax–2 July 2018

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Few modern plays are more widely known, read, or performed than Oscar Wilde’s comedic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. Premiering in 1895, I believe it was the most performed comedy of the 20th century. Given that repute, it is a daunting task to adapt the play, as Sterling Sax did for Nittany Theatre at the Barn, in a production directed by Dave Saxe. Cutting the play down from nine characters to five was an interesting choice, which had a mixed effect.

While most of the characters cut from the show—Lane, Merriman, and Dr. Chasuble—could easily be done away with, cutting Ms. Prism produced a very odd effect at the end of the play. Of course, Algernon’s conversations with an off-stage (and non-responsive) Lane, or Jack’s conversations with a similarly absent Dr. Chasuble were slightly awkward, but they weren’t detrimental to the show itself. But eliminating Ms. Prism, who ultimately leads to the unravelling of the entire conflict, made for an ending that moved very awkwardly. It doesn’t make much sense to keep Lady Bracknell’s demand that Ms. Prism be brought at once, then to immediately move on and have Lady Bracknell and the others supply the entire story of Jack’s origins and the mix-up with the handbag, baby, novel, and pram. It’s possible that the ending could have been written in such a way as to make this a smooth resolution, but because Ms. Prism is the missing element in revealing Jack’s origins (which allows the play’s happy ending) it feels like we haven’t quite gotten there if she is called for but then never appears.

Although some of the cuts and revisions to the play were questionable, the performances by the actors were generally quite strong, especially by the female members of the ensemble. Each of these actors brought their own distinct style and strengths to the performance, but each in her own way evoked British performance traditions of melodrama or music hall, which really played up the camp humor of Earnest. Lady Bracknell (Laura Ann Saxe) is one of the most delightful roles—in my opinion—in all of theatre. She is a haughty aristocrat with a finely developed sense of irony and a superiority complex only matched by her dedication to the arts of society. Saxe’s performance was more energetic than I typically picture Lady Bracknell, with more gestures and a raised voice, but she brought a dynamic energy to the character which balanced the kind of hoity-toity looking down one’s nose that I associate with the character with occasionally flying off the handle to keep Gwendolyn (Jocelyn Kotary) from being close to Jack (Tim Billiett).

Kotary’s performance was smaller than Saxe’s, with less big gestures, but she did a masterful job using facial expressions to generate humor. Kotary’s performance really reminded me of British music hall or of early silent films, where performers relied on facial expression. There isn’t much substance to Gwendolyn—out of all the major characters, she is most an object acted upon, as opposed to acting for herself—but she has some great commentary. One thing Kotary did to really stand out in perhaps the weakest major role of the play would be to deliver one of Gwendolyn’s lines and then look at the audience in a mix of confusion and self-satisfaction, which said “this character knows she’s supposed to be witty, but doesn’t fully know why.”

Courtney Witmer also gave a great performance as Cecily Cardew, blending a kind of wide-eyed innocence with a clearly controlling hand designed specifically to assert her will. Cecily, being associated with the country, is supposed to be a send up of stereotypical simplicity and purity, and Witmer conveyed that through her facial expressions, which were often wide expressions of astonishment or hope, especially when dealing with Algernon (Jeff Buterbaugh) in his guise of Earnest Worthing. However, we also saw the opposite component of Cecily’s personality, when she skillfully manipulates Algernon, and then wins Lady Bracknell’s approval. Watching Lady Bracknell’s inspection of Cecily, one had the not entirely comfortable sensation of watching something like a dog show, where the winner knows exactly what must be done to win and tries her best to fulfill that expectation. For instance, the way Witmer held her hands, turned up at the wrists, with arms slightly out from her body, suggested a studied poise—a pose meant to convey delicacy, sophistication, and good manners, but which also faintly suggested the country denizen trying too hard to fit the grace she thinks society expects.

My one critique of the performances is of the decision to perform using fake English accents. Many people, even actors, do not do accents well, and do not sustain them well. It’s just rough to hear a play done entirely in what are clearly fake accents.

Argonautika, by Mary Zimmerman–30 Oct. 2017

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Mary Zimmerman’s Argonautika straddles a number of boundaries—between ancient epic and modern drama, between comedy and tragedy, between poetry and theatre. Following the tale of Jason and the Argonauts, this modern adaptation based on the tale recounted in the Greek by Apollonius and in the Latin by Gaius Valerius Flaccus. But this is certainly no dry, creaking scholarly representation of the tale. Zimmerman’s play is defiantly modern, drawing on not only Greek mythology but hip hop, a smart, contemporary humor somewhat in the vein of a Tyler Perry comedy, and puppetry/costumes reminiscent of Disney’s Lion King. Although the hip hop numbers don’t do much for me personally, they seem strangely in keeping with the sassy Greek heroes, almost frat boy camaraderie of the Argo, and celebratory ethos of this swashbuckling sword-and-sandals play.

The Penn State Centre Stage production, directed by Steve Snyder, brought the play to vibrant life, with an effective blending of high energy celebrations, absurdist comedy, and rather ironic solemnity. Broadly speaking, these three categories break down as follows: the Argonauts spend much of their time celebrating, cheering, and dancing; many of their adventures are played out with a keen sense of the dramatic; and the relationship between Jason (Brandon Gregory) and Medea (Sadie Spivey) is a love story constantly overshadowed by the violence that will inevitable come between the two.

The first half of the play moves much quicker, as it is largely filled with the Argonauts various adventures prior to landing in Kolkhis—the land where the golden fleece, the object of their quest, is kept. In this first half, the stand out performers are Zuhdi Boueri as King Pelias and Zack Wold as Hercules. Boueri plays the fickle and temperamental tyrant to perfection as the elderly Pelias. His sassy and irreverent dismissals of his blundering servants suggest simultaneously the potential for immediate fits of rage and the impotence of that rage. Wold’s Hercules is equally comic, as the buffoonish strongman whose very enthusiasm for himself and for his own feats often leads him into trouble. But it is only with the loss of his beloved companion Hylas (Timothy Lewis) that Wold’s performance really becomes spectacular. Hercules’ mad grief for his friend pushes the character and the performance beyond the clownishness of the strongman, and shows the real range a skilled actor can bring even to a relatively one-dimensional character.

In the second half the pace slows dramatically, as the focus becomes Jason and Medea’s relationship, and Medea’s moral conundrum about whether to follow her heart and betray her family and city for Jason, or to betray her heart and remain true to her family and home. As the relationship between Medea and Jason develops, we have constant visual reminders of the violence upon which the relationship is built and which will ultimately destroy it. After Aphrodite (Julia Chereson) bribes Eros (Lewis) to fire an arrow into Medea, she continually appears with an arrow through her stomach and a widening blood stain across her dress. When first introduced, Medea’s dress is green, but by the time she escapes with the Argo it is entirely red. This suggests visually the ominous nature of the Jason-Medea relationship, and indeed while it is a passionate relationship it is also a relationship doomed from the start and deeply imbued with a fundamental violence.

Throughout the play, Gregory was a strong lead, and Johnique Mitchell played a strong and compelling narrator role as Athena. Gregory’s ease as the leader of the Argonauts was a delicate balance between quiet strength and a subtle willingness to stand apart from much of the crew’s raucous misbehavior. And Mitchell was a commanding presence guiding events, both as the principal narrator who helped orient spectators within the story of the Argonauts and as one of the principle goddesses, along with Hera (Jordan Cooper) protecting the sailors on their voyage.

The production was visually appealing, with Greek inspired costumes with modern touches, unique lighting techniques and shadow performances, and Lion King-esque puppetry. The two fire breathing bulls that Jason has to yoke, for instance, were two person puppets consisting of several articulated body portions and two back legs run via poles. Or the dragon which never sleeps was created by perhaps eight actors holding portions of a giant dragon face and moving them rhythmically to give the appearance that this was one creature feeling and expressing emotions.