Shakespeare's Tribe

“Emotion and comedy are enemies,” wrote the great French philosopher Henri Bergson, in a famous essay on humor. Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s beautiful, but strangely heartless, production of The Liar (adapted by David Ives from French neo-classic author Pierre Corneille, who in turn had adapted it from Spanish Golden Age writer Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza) is a study in how difficult finding balance can be. There are some terrifically funny scenes in this very pleasant comedy, but the overall effect was oddly cynical about both love and honesty.

Neoclassic Comedy in “Transladaptation”

Since its premiere in 2010 at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., which commissioned this loose translation/adaptation, Ives’ version has become a staple of the Shakespeare Festival circuit. (In the Bay Area, Marin Shakespeare performed it in 2012, in a well-reviewed production I did not see. The following year Livermore Shakespeare Festival performed a version that, as I said in my review, I found charming.) Ives plays with language amusingly in a witty, anachronistic iambic pentameter version that tells the story of a young rake-on-the-make, Dorante, who is perpetually incapable of telling the truth and his hired servant, Cliton, who is equally unable to tell a lie.

Ives is, of course, a well-known playwright of absurdist-flavored comedies of his own devising, especially Venus in Fur – and his screwball rhymes, silly puns, and sly insertion of contemporary observational comedy explain exactly why the Shakespeare Theatre chose him to create this new version of The Liar.

It is Better to Look Good than to Feel Good (Or Is It?)

In Santa Cruz, Nina Ball’s beautiful set, essentially consisting of life-sized black-on-white architectural renderings, and David Mickelson’s elaborate period costumes created a gorgeous spectacle. (I saw an afternoon performance in the outdoor redwood glen SCS uses as its current performance site where Kurt Landisman’s lighting design was not readily discernible, but I have yet to see a design of his that I did not admire.)

Much of the action is farcically mechanical, and when that is the case (like the comings and goings of “a set” of identical twin serving maids with opposite temperaments, played to great effect by Melinda Parrett), Art Manke’s direction is meticulous. Fight choreographer Kit Wilder created a terrific mock duel involving imaginary rapiers that extended that precision from the ridiculous to the hilariously sublime.

More than a Farce

The play is more than a farce, however. Our lying hero, Dorante, is using his talent for prevarication to pursue a young woman who has caught his eye, and in the manner of romantic comedy that leads to an eventual love match. In this case, however, too much comedy becomes the enemy of emotion. It is hard to root for Dorante, or at least Brian Smolin’s chipper but strangely charmless rendition of him because, while his flippant self-absorption got the verbal antics right, it created little empathy. The young woman – or as soon becomes apparent, women – who so entrance him were played by Sierra Jolene and Mary Cavett with wit and verbal dexterity, but as so calculating that it is hard to identify with them, either.

As I observed about Santa Cruz’ other offering in the current repertoire, exploring the callowness of youth does not an evening make. In their outstanding production of Much Ado About Nothing, an engagingly emotional supporting cast provides depth that the youthful leads cannot. There is much less opportunity for such humanity in Ives’ play, but even Kurt Meeker, as Dorante’s long suffering and endlessly forgiving father, stays in key with the rest of the production by playing the part with an emotional distance at odds with the sentiment implicit in the script. The cumulative effect is chilly. When the clever resolution is finally reached, although amusing on a surface level, it is hard to care, and not even clear that it is a good thing.

This peculiar outcome is partially the result of the artificiality of the elevated playing style, partly because of the mask-like quality of the exaggerated make-up, but mostly because the emotional depths of the narrative are left unplumbed. The essential ingredients are all there, but as in a soufflé, it requires delicate handling to makes it rise. The good news is that there is plenty of time left in this run for this gorgeous production to find its emotional balance.

The Liar by David Ives

Santa Cruz Shakespeare

Playing through August 29, 2015

Seen on July 25

Tagged: Art Manke, David Ives, Nina Ball, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, The Liar