Tag: Shakespeare

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

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

Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare–2 Nov. 2019

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Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is, perhaps surprisingly for people who don’t know the play, not really about Caesar, it’s about Brutus and his struggle with the decision to be drawn into the conspiracy to murder the increasingly imperial Caesar in the hopes of restoring a free Roman Republic. And then once the murder is committed, he must stand by his decision and defend it, not only ethically, but on the field of battle. The Juniata College production, directed by Cosimo Sciortino, was a somewhat classical, but not necessarily inspiring, rendition of the play.

Julius Caesar begins with a parade in honor of Caesar who has become the most popular man in Rome, and who many Senators fear will try to become a king. Cassius, one of Rome’s leading men, draws Brutus aside and tells him of a plot to free Rome from Caesar’s dominance. Brutus is torn between his great friendship for Caesar and his dedication to the ideal of Roman freedom, but finally he agrees to join the conspiracy. As the plot comes together, Brutus repeatedly insists that only Caesar can be killed (not his friend Mark Antony) and that the killers must immediately proclaim their motives publicly. The appointed day arrives and a group of Senators kill Caesar. Mark Antony arrives and gets permission to speak at his friend’s funeral, on the condition that he doesn’t condemn the murderers. Brutus gives a funeral speech about liberty, then Antony gives a speech pointing to the many virtues of the slain man and implying—though carefully never stating outright—that the conspirators were fiendishly wrong. A civil war breaks out pitting Antony and Octavius against Brutus and Cassius, with Antony and Octavius in the ascent. Finally, there is a climactic battle, where the tide turns back and forth until Cassius, having heard (incorrectly) of his friend’s death, commits suicide. As the battle turns against his forces, Brutus finally kills himself as well, and when Antony and Octavius find his body they acknowledge his nobility and honor.

One of the big problems with Caesar from a performance perspective is that it’s so rhetorical. There are so many speeches that, while they’re well crafted according to the Classical principles of rhetoric, they lend themselves to simple recitation/declamation rather than the more naturalistic acting that contemporary audiences tend to expect. And I think much of the Juniata performance fell into this trap. While the actors knew the words, their intonation, inflection, and emoting often didn’t show that they understood the emotional timbre of the words they spoke. Will Shearer (Cassius) and Ashley Purvis (Casca) especially had this problem. Shearer did a fine job emoting when Cassius blames Brutus (Ben Josefson) for not trusting him, but throughout the opening portion it wasn’t clear what style Cassius was supposed to have. Was he a cunning manipulator, a concerned citizen driven to desperate measures, a sinister assassin? As Shearer was recruiting Josefson into the conspiracy, he was largely just flat. In some sense, this was a classical performance, as the lack of clear emotional display put the words front and center—which was very Elizabethan, as Shakespeare’s original audiences would have expected to follow the storyline verbally much more than through naturalistic action. Again, however, modern audiences don’t typically find this approach to performance engaging, and the play did seem to drag.

There were some bright spots, however. Mark Antony’s (Veta Piscitella) funerary speech praising—or, rather, burying him—Caesar was high energy and impassioned. But the standout for me was Josefson’s Brutus. He was not high energy, but the subtlety of the performance did an excellent job conveying the moral dilemma at the heart of Brutus’ internal conflict. Josefson was especially strong when performing alone, like in the soliloquies alone in his house the night before the assassination, or shortly before the final battle. These musings gave a great psychological depth to the character through the performance.

Julius Caesar Set
Set of Julius Caesar at Juniata College.

The other noteworthy thing is that the Juniata performance was in the round, which is always a challenging performance style because the actors need to try and divide their attention between the multiple sides of the space. Much of the action was actually performed around the outside of the stage proper (see the image above), which meant that it was occurring farther away from at least one group of audience members—a logistical problem. Thematically it made sense to have much of the conspiratorial discussion occur around the outside of the main area, but it sometimes made seeing the performers a challenge.

The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare–27 Mar. 2019

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Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is one of his oddest plays. It’s essentially divided between two halves, the one set in the court of Sicily and the other in the pastoral idyll of Bohemia. The first half is a psychological portrait of paranoia, violence, and oppressive patriarchy, and the second half blends rustic charm with redemptive reunifications.

The play begins in the court of Leontes, king of Sicily, who is hosting his childhood friend Polixenes, king of Bohemia. Polixenes insists he must go home, but the pregnant queen Hermione (Leontes’ wife) entreats him to stay and Polixenes agrees. This raises Leontes’ suspicion who rapidly convinces himself, despite the testimony of the entire court and Apollo’s oracle, that Hermione cheated on him with Polixenes, and that she’s pregnant with the Bohemian’s baby. Polixenes is warned of Leontes’ plot to murder him and heads home, but Hermione is arrested and tried for treason. She has her baby in jail, and Leontes orders a courtier to take it out and expose it in a deserted area. During Hermione’s trial, it’s reported that their son has died, whereupon Hermione dies of grief, and Leontes promptly repents his tyranny seeing the deaths of all his family members as Apollo’s punishment for doubting the oracle. In the following scene, we see the courtier leave the royal baby, named Perdita, in Bohemia (then immediately get eaten by a bear, in a bizarre twist), where she is found by two shepherds who decide to raise her as their own. Sixteen years go by, and Florizel, prince of Bohemia, has fallen in love with a shepherd girl, much to the chagrin of his father. After Polixenes threatens to disinherit Florizel if he goes through with the marriage, the two lovers flee to Sicily to try and find sanctuary in Leontes’ court, but Polixenes follows them, bringing along the two shepherd who had raised Perdita. When they all arrive, it is promptly revealed that Perdita was the royal baby left to die, therefore, the living daughter of Leontes, making her both his only surviving family and a fit match for Florizel (because she’s royal and the marriage will restore amity between the two estranged kings). Paulina, one of Hermione’s fiercest champions, reveals that she’s had an incredibly live like statue of Hermione made, and Leontes and Perdita decide to go see it. After some musing about how awesome Hermione was, Paulina “casts a spell” and the statue begins to move, revealing that it wasn’t a statue at all, but Hermione herself, who didn’t really die but has just been hiding with Paulina for sixteen years hoping her daughter would turn back up.

The ASC production, directed by Kevin Rich as part of their Hand of Time tour, did an excellent job blending these two different styles/aesthetics into one generally coherent play, in part by not trying too hard to smooth over the contrasts. The aesthetics of the Sicilian court were definitely different than the visual aspects of rural Bohemia. In Sicily, the costumes were very Renaissance-inspired, with rich tapestry type patterns in heavy fabrics. In the Bohemia scenes, the costumes were more Germanic, with simpler solid colored fabrics, sashes for the men, and kroje-style dresses (a Czech style, similar to the German dirndl) for the women.

While the costuming distinguished the two portions of the play, the performances often echoed one another between the two portions. In particular, Kenn Hopkins Jr. (Polixenes) took his cue from Ronald Román-Meléndez (Leontes) when he raged at Florizel (Josh Clark) over the prince’s plan to marry Perdita (Constance Swain). The two performances of tyrannical jealousy/domineering were very similar. The tendency to tower over others and shout down any attempt to offer explanations, justifications, or alternative perspectives really showed a thematic links between the two otherwise very different kingdoms.

However, the most distinct and moving performance of the night was Ally Farzetta’s Hermione. During her trial scene, Hermione’s speech is a rhetorical tour de force, and Farzetta’s delivery was perfect. Hermione masterfully generates arguments based on the violent but unfounded distrust Leontes bears for her, and Farzetta played that speech superbly, blending a kind of retiring introspection with a passionate desire to get back her husband’s love and her position within the family, and with a deep despair at having lost her husband’s love. The emotions of the speech are a good part of its power, and Farzetta matched the emotions precisely to the rhetoric.

The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare–3 Dec. 2017

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The American Shakespeare Center’s travelling troupe is consistently excellent, and their production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Jemma Alix Levy, lived up to that high standard. The ASC’s distinctive performance ethos is one of the major factors in their success. Their performance style is a blend of the modern and the Elizabethan, as they perform in fully lit spaces and incorporate music (both Early Modern conventions), but give the plays a distinctly modern twist with modern music and attitudes.

Taming can be a really tough play to do well because the performance needs to navigate how the anti-feminist elements will be presented in a way that works for a modern, post-feminist audience. The high plot focuses on Katherina (whom Petruchio insists on calling Kate), known throughout Padua for being a fearsome and tempestuous woman who will endure the company of no man. The problem is that her beautiful and agreeable sister Bianca is being courted by several suitors, but their father Baptista has said Bianca cannot marry until Katherina has found a husband. When Petruchio arrives in town looking for a wife—any wife, as long as she’s rich—the suitors ask and Petruchio agrees to marry Katherina (to get her father’s money). Against her will, she is married off, and Petruchio begins the process of “taming” her, which essentially involves depriving her of food and sleep until she gives in absolutely to his will. While this is going on, a young nobleman named Lucentio has also come to town and fallen in love with Bianca. In order to circumvent both the existing suitors and the suspicious Baptista, Lucentio dresses up as a tutor to teach Bianca Latin and Greek. Through the strategic use of love poetry, Lucentio wins Bianca’s heart. When all parties involved come back together at the end for Lucentio and Bianca’s wedding feast, they make a wager on the submissiveness of their wives, and Katherina is the only one who obeys, at which point she makes a speech scolding the other wives for not looking upon their husbands as lords, masters, and gods.

Obviously the anti-feminist element is a major problem for contemporary audiences, which are unlikely to be all that sympathetic to a figure like Petruchio who essentially tortures his wife until her will is broken, or even to Katherina’s closing speech in which she declares an ethic of slavish subservience. In order to counteract this problematic subject matter, it’s crucial to have a strong comic performance.

In the ASC production, many of the funniest moments actually came from supporting characters. The funniest performance of the night was Calder Shilling, who played Petruchio’s servant Grumio and Lucentio’s father Vincentio. As Grumio, Shilling was all that one could want from a bumbling comic servant—he vacillated between terror that Petruchio (Ronald Román-Meléndez) would beat him, exhaustion after walking back to Petruchio’s estate, drunkenly attempting to defend his master with various foodstuffs, and trying desperately to lift a suitcase that every other character picks up with ease.

Another particularly funny performance came from Kyle Powell, playing the elderly suitor Gremio. Powell would laugh raucously at others’ misfortunes, particularly when the other husbands lose their money betting on the obedience of their wives, and his slow shuffle to get anywhere was comically over-performed. Similarly hilarious was the pairing of Constance Swain, who played Tranio, Lucentio’s servant who takes his master’s clothing and place to allow Lucentio to go undercover, and the slow-witted Biodello, played by Topher Embrey. As Lucentio’s servants, Tranio and Biondello needed to keep their master’s true identity a secret, which proved unusually difficult with a series of comic mishaps, including Biondello’s continual inability to remember that Tranio was pretending to be Lucentio and the arrival of Lucentio’s father (Shilling) after Tranio had employed a decoy (Hilary Alexa Caldwell) to pretend to be Vincentio and give permission for Lucentio and Bianca to marry.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, by William Shakespeare and George Wilkins–17 Mar. 2017

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Shakespeare’s (and Wilkin’s) Pericles, Prince of Tyre is one of my favorite plays, but it doesn’t get performed that often, so it was an absolute treat to see the play not only done, but done fantastically well by West Virginia University’s Theatre Department. The production, directed by Cornel Gabara, was well acted, visually stunning, and an overall success.

Pericles is a romance, following the fortunes of prince (later king) Pericles and his family as they travel throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Pericles runs into a number of rulers—some really bad, some moderately bad, some good—as well as a few average people like the fishermen in Pentapolis, and all of these encounters ultimately help shape Pericles into a good ruler himself. But the main focus of the play is his personal life. Pericles marries princess Thaisa, who “dies” giving birth to their daughter Marina, whom Pericles fosters with a “friendly” ruling family until she gets kidnapped and sold to a brothel whereupon the ruling family (who tried to kill her anyway) tells Pericles she died. These are the tragic downturns of the romance—that Pericles believes both his wife and daughter are dead. However, as he travels in despair, his ship happens to put in at Myteline, where Marina has managed to talk her way out of the brothel and into a kind of domestic service. She is brought on board to see if her singing can cheer the despairing king, and after a lengthy recognition scene they are reunited, whereupon Pericles has a vision from the goddess Diana to go to Ephesus and make an offering, whereupon he finds Thaisa, though by him to be dead, living as a devotee of the goddess. The family is reunited, and long-story-short, they end up controlling an empire throughout the eastern Med.

The WVU production did this rollicking and wide ranging adventure full justice. The acting at WVU Theatre is almost always good, and the Pericles cast brought great energy to their roles, which helped the play move both rapidly and amusingly. For me, the best performances were from Andra Ward Jr. as king Simonides, Lonnie DeVaughan Simmons as the choric narrator Gower, and Josh Clevenger as Pericles. Ward and Simmons are fantastic actors, with masterful commands of inflection, gesture, and utilizing stage space. For instance, Simmons played up the comic aspect of Gower’s (often poorly written) narration through small additions, such as the request for applause near the beginning, by mocking Dionyza’s (played by Taylor Morgan in a grotesque mask and fat suit) southern accent and girth as he reads Marina’s funerary inscription, and through the improvisation at the plays end where the rest of the cast abandons the stage relieved that the play is over, and Gower remarks “I thought it was a good story.” Clevenger gave an interesting take on prince Pericles, making him part romantic hero, part comic buffoon. While many of the monologues showed Pericles to be a chivalrous man, Clevenger’s propensity for getting knocked over—by the storm that shipwrecks him on Pentapolis, by other kings, etc.—ensures that the character always seems human.

I wanted to like Thaisa (Cassandra Hackbart) and Marina (Stefanie Lemasters), but—like many of Shakespeare’s female characters, especially in romances—there doesn’t seem to be much meat on those bones. Thaisa spends much of her time being rather submissive to her father then in love with Pericles, while Marina spends much of her time being virtuous and virginal. There just isn’t much to do with those characters to make them really compelling. That being said, both actors did a fine job with what are, in my opinion, not super-inspiring parts.

The other big triumph of this performance was the mise-en-scène, with both the costuming and the stage design. The stage design was a complex and mobile set of scenery, with moving walls, a ship that turned into castle ramparts, a screened backdrop that allowed parts of Gower’s narration to be acted out in shadow, and a giant statue of Diana.

What really impressed me though were the costumes (Mary McClung was costume director), which were complex, beautiful, and varied. This last point is important, because the WVU production embraced—in costume, music, dance, and performance styles—a cosmopolitan aesthetic, drawing from a ton of cultural and temporal reference points to show both the wide variety of peoples populating the eastern Mediterranean, but also the continual cosmopolitan intermixture of those cultures. I identified visual, musical, or performative influences from early modern Europe, medieval Europe, Greece, Persia, India, Africa/the African Diaspora, Jewish ritual, Japan, Spain, fascist militarism, and 1990s pro-wrestling. Especially scenes like Simonides’ court in Pentapolis were sumptuous visual buffets, as characters in a wide range of costumes joined together in dances (and I don’t usually care for dancing in theatre) or a flurry of activity.

Ironically, I was worried early on about the costuming because the play opens in Antioch with the evil king Antiochus (Ward), who is sleeping with his daughter and having her potential suitors killed. This scene saw Ward and his courtiers dressed as a kind of voodoo witchdoctor/pagan warlord, in contrast to Clevenger’s early modern European doublet, trousers, and boots. From a postcolonial standpoint, the decision to aesthetically identify the evil Antiochus with an African (diasporic) style represents a problematic associated between Africa and evil, while the virtuous Pericles is visually marked as European and therefore as good. However, this potential dichotomy of evil Africa and good Europe is undone by the overall cosmopolitanism of the play’s mise-en-scène, which blends so many styles that the blending itself becomes an admirable political gesture of cultural embrace and equality.

The only critique I would make of the WVU production was the brothel scenes. They were so slow. Painfully slow. One problem was that the lines simply weren’t delivered quickly enough, especially between Lemasters and the Bawd (Brianna Leigh Bowers)—though Boult (Zach Powers) was somewhat quicker both in delivering lines and moving about the stage—but I think the bigger problem was the absence of other people. Most of the brothel scenes were just Lemasters, Bowers, and Powers, and sometimes Adam Demopoulos (playing the Pandar). The empty stage and the cathedral style window lit in red on the floor (which was a good effect) were supposed to signal the contrasts between Marina’s virtue and the brothel’s degeneracy, but the fact that there was so much stage space with virtually no one in it meant that the scenes dragged. Especially in contrast to the whirlwind of activity in Simonides’ Pentapolis, there simply wasn’t anything developed in the brothel—which is, of course, a setting rife with possibilities.

The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare–9 Oct. 2016

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This is the fourth, maybe fifth show I’ve seen the Rustic Mechanicals perform, and this is the first one I would say was really good. My major critique of the Mechanicals has been the tendency to painfully overact, but with this cast and for this show, they (largely) resisted that tendency. For the first time that I’ve seen them, virtually all of the cast let Shakespeare’s do the work, which made for a strong show.

The Merchant of Venice is one of those plays that I think is difficult for audiences today, and it certainly is for me (being half-Jewish). The play tells the story of Shylock, a Jewish money-lender, who loans money to Antonio, a man who has humiliated, insulted, and degraded him. The bargain trades Shylock’s money for a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the debt is not repaid. When Antonio’s ships sink it seems as though he cannot repay. At the same time, Bassanio—Antonio’s friend, for whom Antonio borrowed the money—has wooed and wedded Portio through the elaborate trial her father set up for potential husbands. Now Bassanio comes to Antonio’s trial, and Portia disguises herself as a lawyer to come speak for her husband’s friend. Shylock demands his pound of flesh, his revenge for a lifetime of oppression, but through legal trickery Portia argues that he can take the flesh but may not spill a drop of blood, and then that since Shylock threatened the life of a Venetian his goods and property are forfeit, half to Antonio and half to Venice. In short, the ‘happy ending’ of the play involves the long suffering Jew Shylock losing all his property, as well as his daughter whose run off with the deadbeat (though Christian) Lorenzo.

The principal actors of the Shylock plot—John Fallon (Shylock), James Matthews (Antonio), and Josh Brooks (Bassanio)—gave excellent performances, as did the principal actor of the Portia plot—Gretchen Ross (Portia). All of these actors brought a seriousness to their roles that is often lacking in Rustic Mechanicals performances; they put the language of the play at the center of the performance. For instance, Fallon’s performance conveyed Shylock’s stoic suffering at the play’s opening when Antonio spits on him in the street, the bloody revenge he demands in the court, and the abject brokenness of a man whose had everything he loves stripped from him (including his religion) simply for being a Jew. Matthews matched that performance by shifting between anti-Semitic arrogance, humble submission to the knife, and the gracious geniality of the man saved at the last moment from death. Brooks and Ross were similarly strong, showing the complexity of their characters as they move through the marriage plot.

While most of the supporting actors were also good, the one performer who didn’t transcend the Mechanicals’ tendency to overact was Isaac Covey (Balthazar, Lancelet Gobbo, Gaoler). For whatever reason, Covey seems unable to deliver a line without thrashing his body around, modulating his voice for ‘comic’ effect, or gesturing wildly. In an otherwise strong show, Covey’s performance was the only dark spot.

Romeo & Juliet, by William Shakespeare–17 July 2016

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As everyone knows, Romeo & Juliet is the greatest love story ever told. Officially. Of course, the reality of the play is slightly less romantic and more teen suicide-y, but such is life. Or death, in Romeo and Juliet’s case.

One of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Romeo & Juliet tells the story of two young people from feuding families—the Capulets and the Montagues—who fall in love. They are married in secret to avoid their families’ enmity, but when Romeo is banished for killing Juliet’s cousin in a duel the romance takes a turn for the worse. In (rather hyperbolic) despair, both young people contemplate suicide, until Friar Laurence comes up with a plan to reunite them: he will give Juliet a potion to simulate death, and then he and Romeo will pick her up from the Capulet family tomb. But messages go awry and Romeo only hears that Juliet has died, so he goes to the tomb and poisons himself, and upon waking to find her husband dead, Juliet stabs herself.

The West Virginia Public Theatre did an excellent job bringing the play to life, under the direction of Jerry McGonigle. The acting was good, the aesthetic was consistent, and the performance was engaging. The Neoclassical setting of the Metropolitan Theatre felt right at home with the production.

Despite the play being a tragedy, I felt the most memorable performances were actually the comic pairing of the Nurse (Mya Brown) and Peter (Mark Combs), and Romeo’s friends Mercutio (Joe Bussey) and Benvolio (Lonnie Simmons). Brown gave an especially strong performance as the Nurse, presenting her with a slight Mammy flavor, which worked really well for the garrulous Nurse. For instance, when relating the story of Juliet falling face first as a child, Brown’s timing was perfect as she repeatedly cut off Lady Capulet to laugh and repeat the story joyfully. And Brown’s interactions with Peter provided a wonderful comic relief that for me ended up overshadowing much of the tragedy of the play. Combs played the uncomprehending servant Peter delightfully, conveying his confusion and uncertainty through both body language and facial expressions.

Bussey and Simmons also gave strong supporting performances as Romeo’s companions. Bussey presented Mercutio as a kind of swaggering, over-sexed, combative frat boy, which perfectly conveyed the character’s inherent mercurial quality. Often loud and vulgar, Bussey’s best scene was during the fatal duel with Tybalt (Rick Mugrage). In that fight he combined the joking irreverence of his earlier scenes—instead of drawing his parrying dagger Bussey gives Mugrage the finger—with a deadly seriousness that combined both sides of the character’s personality. Simmons played a different role as Romeo’s friend Benvolio, but his compassion and concern for Romeo was performed just as compellingly. Especially early in the performance, when Benvolio tries to raise Romeo’s spirits, Simmons conveyed how much Benvolio cares for his friend.

The performances of Romeo (Gareth Marsh) and Juliet (Margaret Dransfield) were strong, though I feel overshadowed by some of the supporting characters. I have mixed feelings about Dransfield’s performance of Juliet. She was vivacious and actively engaged in pursuing Romeo, but I didn’t get a sense of aristocratic dignity or the softness often associated with Juliet. There were times when this more assertive Juliet worked really well, and times when the inflection or performance style fell wide of the mark. Marsh played a good, though conventional Romeo. He was dominated by melancholy, and one problem with the way Marsh played the role was that it erased any distinction between Romeo’s initial (ostensibly false) love for Rosalind, and his later (ostensibly true) love for Juliet. There’s an interesting argument to be made that Romeo doesn’t really love Juliet (whether she loves him is a different matter whatever), but loves the melancholy of thwarted love. I’m willing to buy that reading of the play, but I’m not sure the Public Theatre presentation did enough to suggest that reading in this performance. Instead, Marsh’s performance conveyed the same quality of love for Rosalind and for Juliet, which undermines our belief in Romeo and Juliet’s true love and ultimately in the tragedy of them dying for love.

The only real shortcoming of the performance were a few lighting issues. There were times when a character stood to one side of the stage and cans were used to light that side, but the lighting missed the character (or, more probably, the character missed the mark to stand in the lighting). At the end of the balcony scene, for instance, Romeo stood stage center right, but the lighted area was to his right, so Romeo delivered several lines from the dim edge of a lighted area.

One major technical success, however, was the stage fighting. The production involved extensive, multi-person stage fights, which were beautifully choreographed and performed. Considering how difficult and dangerous stage fighting is to choreograph, Darrell Rushton (fight director) and the cast did an excellent job.

Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare–10 July 2016

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This review starts with the same disclaimer as my last Rustic Mechanicals review: I really like the project of a dedicated Shakespeare touring troupe for West Virginia. I find their mission basically admirable.

Their performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was better than their productions of The Tempest or Much Ado About Nothing, so I was pleased with that. I think one of the reasons this show was more successful is that the clown scenes—with Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Feste, Maria, and to a certain extent Malvolio—make up a much larger proportion of Twelfth Night than they do in the other shows, and based on the three shows I’ve seen so far, clown performances seem to be the Rustic Mechanicals’ strong suit. My speculation would be that this is because clown roles can better withstand overacting because of the natural rambunctiousness of the characters. Clowns can get away with being less polished if the performances are enthusiastic, whereas more serious characters look doubly bad if they compensate for an unpolished performance by overacting.

Jason Young (Sir Toby) and Kaici Lore (Maria) probably had the most convincing pairing of the play, with Michael Vozniak (Malvolio) and Isaac Covey (Sir Andrew) in strong support. Young and Lore made Sir Toby and Maria the lively heart of the show, presenting them as intimate, conspiratorial, vivacious, and jolly. In particular Young’s predilection for song gave Sir Toby a distinctive swagger and liveliness that suited the character extremely well. Of course, without the straight man Malvolio, much of the humor of the clown scenes would be lost, and Vozniak did an admirable job playing the sneering, social climbing, quasi-puritan. Although weaker in his more serious scenes with Olivia (Gretchen Ross), Vozniak’s facial expressions were hilarious when he was surrounded by the singing and dancing Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste (Doug Seckman), as well as during his attempts to bend Malvolio’s puritan scowl into a smile. This is the first performance I’ve seen where I liked Covey’s work, though the timing of his lines continues to bother me.

But nothing in the clown scenes bothered me as much as the more serious scenes. Ross is a good performer, and her portrayal of Olivia effectively combined the dour haughtiness of Olivia’s mourning and the flirtatious desire of her love for Cesario. But the other serious characters—Viola/Cesario (Celi Oliveto), Orsino (Jeremiah Smallridge), and Sebastian (Steve McElroy)—didn’t sell me. There was no real chemistry between any of the lovers, though there were moments when Oliveto and Smallridge were clearly trying to act chemistry. But it didn’t really play. Their moments of looking deeply at one another and then turning suddenly away came across more as stagy melodrama than genuine emotion or desire.

The biggest disappointment of the production was Oliveto’s performance as Viola/Cesario. Now, to be fair, this is a challenging role and two of the three times I’ve seen Twelfth Night it’s been done badly. Oliveto’s primary facial expression was a kind of shocked anxiety. The performance hovered between worry about Olivia being in love with Cesario, sorry for Sebastian’s ostensible drowning, and anxiety than Orsino didn’t love her—all of which were conveyed with virtually the same facial expression. This performance collapsed Viola from a clever woman establishing control of her own situation to a scared girl paralyzed by fear (we know she’s clever because she matches wits with Feste, and we know she exercises a certain degree of control because she positions herself close to Orsino).

The other problem with the serious portions of the play—and the same problem occurred the first time I saw Twelfth Night years ago—is the desire to stand center stage and look out to the audience for every speech. For both Oliveto and McElroy, the bulk of their speeches were delivered as direct addresses to the audience. With a humorous aside it’s fine to address the audience. Give them a wink and a nudge if the mood takes you. But a soliloquy loses much of its power when spoken as though it’s in conversation with the audience. If your character is pondering something or working something out for themselves, don’t act like you’re reporting it to the audience. Consider it. Be speculative. Wander the stage space contemplatively. And if there’s other characters on stage with whom you’re having a conversation, don’t ignore them to talk directly to the audience. It looks weird.

My last critique is of the space itself. This production was hosted by MT Pockets theatre company, in their new performance space. The space needs better lighting. Right now, all the lights are set up behind the audience and shine generally toward center stage. Even putting aside the problem of not having can lighting above and to the sides of the stage, the existing lighting isn’t properly oriented. The sides of the stage are in semi-darkness, meaning that whenever a character delivers lines as they are leaving the stage, we lose the tail end of their scenes in the darkness.

Finally, I think the Rustic Mechanicals made one excellent choice with their production of Twelfth Night, which was modernizing the songs. Twelfth Night has a number of musical numbers that connect thematically to the events of the play, but because they are renaissance tunes modern performers often seem to struggle with them. To surmount this difficulty, the Rustic Mechanicals substituted modern songs played and sung largely by Seckman as Feste. The songs were well chosen, because, like the originals, they reflected the thematic concerns of particular moments in the play. For instance, Feste’s famous closing song in which he declares “The rain it raineth every day” was modernized into Blind Melon’s 90s classic “No Rain,” a song with similar themes about alienation, apathy, and yet a strange kind of hope.

The Tempest, by William Shakespeare–20 Apr. 2016

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First, I want to say that I am a bad reviewer of The Tempest because I have very definite ideas about how it should be performed, particularly how Caliban should be portrayed. Second, I want to say that I genuinely believe in the project of the Rustic Mechanicals, which is to bring Shakespeare’s works to West Virginia. Keeping those things in mind, I am going to try and keep my claws in as much as possible in this review, because while there were bright spots in the recent Rustic Mechanicals production of The Tempest, overall I was disappointed.

Beginning with the good, this was one of the few productions of the play I’ve seen where I actually liked Prospero (played by Jim Matthews). Generally I dislike the character but Matthews played the part well, especially in Prospero’s solo portions and interactions with Ariel (Sarah Young). The silent opening scene worked really well, bringing out some of the best elements of physical performance, as Matthews conjured the storm and sent Young out to sink the ship. The rhythmic and ritualistic movements evoked the swirling maelstrom of the tempest much more convincingly than the scene chewing of 1.1—the mariners and nobles of the ship itself. One of the things that worked particularly about Matthews’ performance was the dignity he brought to the character, and the almost patriarchal good humor. This balanced really well with Young’s dancer-like portrayal of Ariel, with the fluid movements around stage evoking a lightness that reflects Ariel’s airy quality.

But for the most part overacting was the order of the day. I know there’s a school of actor training based on the go-big-or-go-home approach, but seriously, this production needed to be pulled back. When the overacting interrupts any possible suspension of disbelief it compromises the enjoyment of the theatrical experience. The most grating performance was Gonzalo (Samantha Huffman), who felt the need to talk loudly in an odd, old man accent (I guess, though on its own it didn’t particularly sound old manish to me). The voluminous white beard and the character’s dialogue would have been sufficient to signal that this was an elderly councilor. Another really odd performance—though I’m not sure whether this was properly overacting or just an odd performance choice—was Antonio (Celi Oliveto). The performance was oddly sexual, as though Antonio was trying to seduce Sebastian (Michael Vozniak) into murdering Alonso and Gonzalo. It’s hard to describe, but the performance came across as a “half way through murder the king and chill…” in a way that seems uncharacteristic of Antonio. Perhaps this was another performance where the stage beard, dialogue, and male costuming should have done the work without an additional accent.

There were times when the overacting either worked (or could have worked in a different production). In particular Stephano (Justin Grow) and Trinculo (Steve McElroy) were able to effectively overact because their characters are clowns, so going to the end of those performances work. Grow in particular—who, along with Matthews and Young, gave one of the best performances of the night—was able to play the excess of the clown without feeling like he had lost control of the overacting; the overacting felt purposeful and effective.

In a different show—one less run through with overacting—Miranda’s (Madison Whiting) vivacious bubbliness could have been an interesting interpretation of the character. Whiting spent most of the production with her eyes wide open, and moved with a ton of energy. In a more balanced overall production, this energetic performance would have been an interesting interpretation of Miranda, conveying her as the naïve, devoted daughter, who follows her father unquestioningly—there was no potentially rebellious edge to this Miranda, as many contemporary performers play her. But in the sea of overacting, Whiting’s performance blended into the general overdrawn quality of the production as a whole.

On the tech front, the performance was similarly divided. The musical selections were really lovely choices, matched extremely well to the actions going on on stage. During the silent opening scene, for instance, the swelling romantic music echoed Prospero’s conjuring of the storm with its rising winds and increasingly choppy waves. However, one of the biggest failures of the production was the lighting. The stage space of the Mon Arts Center, where I saw the play, is very wide but not very deep, so most of the dynamic action of the show ran stage left to right, with little up and down stage movement. This in itself isn’t a problem. But the lighting was all directed toward center stage, and the only light that filtered to the sides of the stage was what travelled all the way across the stage, dimming as it went. A good number of speeches were performed in the near darkness at the sides of the stage, which made it hard to see the characters (actors standing behind the pillars holding up the ceiling didn’t improve matters). Angling a few lights toward the sides of the stage could easily have solved this problem.