AS YOU LIKE IT, but like you’ve never seen it… at CalShakes
May 31, 2017 § Leave a Comment
Desdemona Chiang’s smart, contemporary production of As You Like It for CalShakes turns the play inside out, resulting in an extraordinarily moving and revelatory performance.
(L to R, front) Jomar Tagatac (seated) as Charles the Wrestler, Patrick Russell as Orlando and Jessika D. Williams as Rosalind photo by Kevin Berne.
Chiang takes everything we have come to expect from this pleasant (if usually light-weight) comedy and stands it on its head. From arrival in the auditorium until the curtain call, she finds unexpected depth and intensity by reimagining the setting, the period and the context of the show.
From Green World to Cityscape
The first glimpse of Nina Ball’s evocative set (waiting on the open stage of CalShakes’ beautiful outdoor location in the foothills just beyond Berkeley) is of a gorgeously manicured ivy-covered wall and topiary garden. Reversing the usual trope, this particular “green world” proves to be the unhappy home of the heroine, rather than the expected idyllic wood to which she will later be forced to flee.
Nina Ball’s beautiful “green wall” in the pre-show sunset.
When that heroine, Rosalind, is spitefully banished by her malicious uncle, she adopts male disguise and decides to seek her exiled father in the Forest of Arden. Ball’s set revolves and suddenly… we are in a dark, industrial back-alley, where the homeless and dispossessed occupy deserted loading docks stacked high with abandoned shipping containers. It is an apt contemporary analog for the dangerous backwoods of Shakespeare’s era, but unlike any design choice I have previously seen.
On the surface level, this resetting is not an easy fit. The rustics in the “woods” retain their pastoral concerns from deer hunting to sheep herding, while Rosalind (along with the cousin and court jester that agreed to accompany her) speak admiringly of the beauty of the place. The urban jungle we see and the idyllic pastoral vista we hear described are jarringly at odds.
(L to R) James Carpenter (Duke Senior), Craig Marker (Amiens), Lisa Hori-Garcia (Second Lord), William Thomas Hodgson (First Lord), Patrick Russell (Orlando) and Jomar Tagatac (Jaques) on Nina Ball’s urban jungle set.
Chiang’s genius lies in slowly seducing us into an even-greater-than-usual suspension of disbelief so that we might look past these surface discordances and discover the play’s deepest core. Her allies in this are her exceptional design team, which in addition to Ball includes costume designer Melissa Torchia, lighting designer Masha Tsimring and sound designer Sharath Patel. They build a world that looks nothing like what is said to be their location, but feels exactly right for a place that is “uncivilized,” and therefore at once dangerous yet freeing.
Finding Ganymede
It is the performance of Jessika D. Williams as Rosalind that pushes the production to truly remarkable heights. In this dangerous new environment, her version of the protagonist has good reason to disguise herself as the male Ganymede, but in Williams’ interpretation what begins as a disguise becomes a discovery. Freed from social constraint, her Rosalind is not so much “performing” the part of a man as she is giving up “performing” the role of a woman. She finds a less-limited, stronger version of herself inside her disguise, and she likes it!
(L to R) Jessika D. Williams (Rosalind), Maryssa Wanlass (Celia), and Patrick Russell (Orlando), photo by Kevin Berne.
Patrick Russell plays her love interest, Orlando, more conventionally, but he has the courage to play his character as being as attracted to Rosalind’s male alter ego as he is to the “absent” Rosalind. Where he especially shines, however, is in a small scene usually played with a light touch where, penniless and hungry, he demands food at knife-point from a group of homeless people enjoying a communal meal. Rather than make fun of the character’s ineptitude at bluffing, Russell plays the scene with believable, fearful recklessness. Even while bringing sympathy to his character’s desperation, he nonetheless seems genuinely dangerous when holding Jacques hostage.
All the World’s a Stage
The high point of the evening follows quickly upon this moment. As a man who genuinely believed only moments earlier that he was going to die at Orlando’s hand, Jomar Tagatac delivers the famous “seven ages of man” speech with an immediacy and specificity that made it integral to the play and indescribably moving. As the melancholic Jacques, Tagatac is extraordinary all night long, which is little surprise to anyone who saw his unforgettable turn in Life Is a Dream at the same theatre two summers ago. His performance, alone, is worth the price of your ticket.
(L to R) William Thomas Hodgson (Silvius), Lisa Hori-Garcia (Phebe), Patty Gallagher (Audrey), Warren David Keith (Touchstone), James Carpenter (Duke Senior) and Jomar Tagatac (Jaques), photo by Kevin Berne.
Company stalwarts James Carpenter as both the usurping and deposed dukes, Patty Gallagher as the unsophisticated country- (or in this case, city-) bumpkin, Audrey, and Warren David Keith as the jester, Touchstone, are uniformly wonderful in their supporting parts. Maryssa Wanlass as Celia, Craig Marker as Oliver, William Hodgson as Silvius and Lisa Hori-Garcia as Pheobe complete the cast, in which there is no weak link.
Ending by Not Ending
The denouement of the play is always a little odd, as the text prominently features a deus ex machina for which we are even more than usually unprepared, but Chiang makes her most deliberate textual changes of the night to this ending by simply eliminating most of it. It is not just her Rosalind who has no desire to change back into a woman. The whole production is most comfortable in the transformative “green world,” and in the end it stays there. After the curtain call, Rosalind’s super hetero-normative epilogue is retained, but so peppered with gender-queer and LGBTQ-friendly asides from the rest of the cast that it ends by meaning exactly the opposite of what it says on paper… thank heaven.
CalShakes is the largest and most sophisticated of the Bay Area’s summer Shakespeare festivals. Its new artistic director, Eric Ting, seems determined to maintain and extend the company’s progressive reputation. In his own directing debut for the company last season, he produced a notable – and notably controversial – Othello, which was pointedly political, via a hyper-Brechtian performance style. As You Like It goes about making its social commentary in a more indirect way, but is every bit as revolutionary. What a great start to the Shakespeare season!
Production Information
AYLI, viewed on May 27, 2017
California Shakespeare Theatre
www.calshakes.org
(510) 548-9666
Tickets $20-96
Bruns Ampitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda, CA 94563
Tuesdays-Sundays through June 18
Comedy and Emotion: A Review of THE LIAR at Santa Cruz Shakespeare
July 28, 2015 § Leave a Comment
“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.)
Toby Onwumere (Cliton), Brian Smolin (Dorante), and Mary Cavett (Clarice) in David Mickelson’s costumes. All photos by Shmuel Thaler.
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.
Sierra Jolene (Lucrece), Mary Cavett (Clarice), and Brian Smolin (Dorante) on Nina Ball’s set
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
Playing through August 29, 2015
Seen on July 25
Smart Choices, More Voices: A Review of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at Santa Cruz Shakespeare
July 26, 2015 § 1 Comment
Mike Ryan is making a lot of smart, invigorating decisions as Artistic Director at Santa Cruz Shakespeare, but the smartest of all might be to feature his own talents as Benedick in their current production of Much Ado About Nothing. He is an exceptional actor, generally under-utilized in dazzling cameos and featured side-kick roles. He is evenly matched by the wonderful Greta Wohlrabe, who was outstanding last season in the secondary roles of Mistress Page in MWW and Celia in AYLI, and is even better now when she is promoted to the central role as Beatrice. Character actors are placed front and center – and celebrated – throughout this production, with the famously quarreling couple masterfully mining the text for both humor and emotional nuance.
Mike Ryan (Benedick) and Greta Wohlrabe (Beatrice) in Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by rr jones.
Rosie the Riveter Revisited
Under the direction of Laura Gordon, the production is set just as the troops return from WWII, with strong Rosie the Riveter-type women tending what appears to be an idyllic California vineyard. (More about those women later!) Nina Ball’s minimalist set and B. Modern’s costumes gave the show a postwar flavor that was never really foregrounded (at least not in the way that a similarly situated Taming of the Shrew at Livermore Shakespeare Festival utilized this tension a couple of seasons ago) but made perfect sense as a background. The gorgeous lighting is by my SFSU colleague Ray Oppenheimer, and Kurt Landisman.
The challenge of Much Ado is that the protagonists – a young Count Claudio and his intended bride, Hero – are not particularly large or compelling parts. Josh Saleh and Sarah Traisman are more than competent in these roles, but exploring the callowness of youth does not an evening make. The energy of the show must come from the supporting characters, particularly from Beatrice and Benedick who have to run the gamut from farce to border-line tragedy. A silly set of clowns also invigorates the proceedings (and provides the actual solution to the plot crisis, albeit accidentally).
Nina Ball’s minimal but useful set in the gorgeous Shinsheimer-Stanley Glen.
Range and Virtuosity
Ryan and Wohlrabe find the complete range of tones in their characters. Both are pleasantly humorous in their farcical scenes but really come into their own when revealing the darker content. They handle the language beautifully, making the text accessible without compromise, but what ultimately makes this a moving and inspiring evening is that they are willing to explore their own emotional vulnerabilities in ways you rarely see in comedy.
Steve Pickering accomplishes a similar virtuosity, although he does it by playing a pair of contracting characters rather than revealing the range of a single one. His sinister Don John, the antagonist of the play, is coldly chilling but by the addition of a pair of glasses and a thick, hick dialect he becomes the hilarious constable Dogberry.
Madison Kisst (George Seacoal) and Steve Pickering (Dogberry). Photo by rr jones.
Another source of interest in the evening stems from Ryan’s decision as AD that the organization should try to achieve gender parity in its casting. Because the casts of Shakespeare plays are far from evenly balanced with male and female roles, that involves some careful decisions about how to deal with the mismatch between supply and demand. It is possible for women to simply put on pants and play the male parts (a decision employed by SF Shakes last summer) but Director Laura Gordon settled on prominently regendering the roles of Hero’s father and uncle – Leonato and Antonio become Leonata and Antonia. This is not just a matter of switching pronouns, however. In a play with a plot that so thoroughly incorporates traditional gender roles and male privilege, the resulting shift in perspective could unsettle the balance.
Particularly at the moment of crisis, when Hero’s parent turns on her after Claudio rejects her at the altar as unchaste, only an artist of fierce intelligence and exacting specificity could make that plausible as a mother’s psychological shock rather than a father’s loss of property and “honor.” Fortunately, Patty Gallagher is such an artist. Although known locally for her almost ditzy comic turns, she is both smart and brave, and in this production she totally “goes there.” Backed up with equal strength by Suzanne Sturn as her sister, the about-faces of the characters became not just more plausible, but actually more compelling when they finally do the right thing and confront the callow count and his misogynistic enabler, Prince Pedro. It is worth seeing this production just to watch these two women reinterpret these roles.
Patty Gallagher (Leonata) and Kipp Moorman (Don Pedro)
Much Ado About Nothing
Playing through August 30, 2015
Seen on July 25