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Theatre Weekend
Feb. 21st, 2011 10:58 amAfter four performances of The Lady's Not for Burning this past weekend, you'd think I'd have been theatred out. And I nearly was; but I wanted to see the ASP production of Cymbeline, so I bought tickets on Sunday morning and went with F.
It was delightful. It made me wonder why it's a rarely performed play. But then I thought a bit more about the final scene, and it became clear. This performance was delightful precisely because they didn't take it too seriously. The human emotions, they took seriously; but the plot? A pastiche of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. (I'm not even sure what a "pastiche" really is, but it sounds like a messy, awkward collage, doesn't it?) You've got your king spurning his loving daughter, and the lost children raised in the wild, and Romans and Welshmen and a woman dressed as a boy and a murderous queen and an exiled husband and "poison" that puts the victim into a sleep like death and mistaken identity and impersonation and a scoundrel who persuades the aforementioned exiled husband to test his distant wife's fidelity and and and... The only things missing, really, are a Jewish moneylender, a sorcerer and a bear. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plumtreeblossom's advice, we sat as far from The Foundry as possible (which, by the way, I have found to be distinctly mediocre. I've eaten there twice, now, and can think of no reason to return) so we got to enjoy the dialogue and the sound effects uninterrupted by Beyoncé.
One of the things I loved about the show, and this I have to attribute to The Bard, is the plotting of the last act. After the climactic battle (brilliantly staged, I thought, as a narrated dance piece), the prisoners are brought before the king and layer after layer of deception is revealed. But for an awful moment, it looks like it's all going to fall apart. The aforementioned exiled husband is reunited with his (recently dressed as a boy) wife, and his first action is to strike her in a rage. We get this close to Othello (and the actor playing the husband was black, what's more) before the aforementioned scoundrel speaks up and confesses his crimes, leading to tender reunions and forgiveness all around. Even the scoundrel is forgiven. It's hard to know whether Shakespeare imagined that the final scene would build in dramatic tension and resolution, or if he was deliberately parodying himself with all the identity swapping; either way, I think you'd have to perform it tongue-in-cheek, as in this performance. In addition, the fact that 7 people played fifteen rôles (including one rôle played by three actors in succession, whoever happened not to be busy at the moment) was a brilliant comment on the identity confusion within the text. I must add, though, that despite the doubling of rôles, it was always immediately obvious which of the fifteen characters was speaking at any moment. That is a tribute to the performer' skill, and to the director's vision.
If you haven't seen Cymbeline, you're too late; I caught the last performance. But you can still come see me in The Lady's Not for Burning at 8:00 next Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at Unity Church. It's a play about a Chaplain who would like to be a bluegrass mandolin player—kind of like The Jazz Singer in Appalachia. There are some other subplots, too, for comic relief.
It was delightful. It made me wonder why it's a rarely performed play. But then I thought a bit more about the final scene, and it became clear. This performance was delightful precisely because they didn't take it too seriously. The human emotions, they took seriously; but the plot? A pastiche of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. (I'm not even sure what a "pastiche" really is, but it sounds like a messy, awkward collage, doesn't it?) You've got your king spurning his loving daughter, and the lost children raised in the wild, and Romans and Welshmen and a woman dressed as a boy and a murderous queen and an exiled husband and "poison" that puts the victim into a sleep like death and mistaken identity and impersonation and a scoundrel who persuades the aforementioned exiled husband to test his distant wife's fidelity and and and... The only things missing, really, are a Jewish moneylender, a sorcerer and a bear. Thanks to
plumtreeblossom's advice, we sat as far from The Foundry as possible (which, by the way, I have found to be distinctly mediocre. I've eaten there twice, now, and can think of no reason to return) so we got to enjoy the dialogue and the sound effects uninterrupted by Beyoncé.One of the things I loved about the show, and this I have to attribute to The Bard, is the plotting of the last act. After the climactic battle (brilliantly staged, I thought, as a narrated dance piece), the prisoners are brought before the king and layer after layer of deception is revealed. But for an awful moment, it looks like it's all going to fall apart. The aforementioned exiled husband is reunited with his (recently dressed as a boy) wife, and his first action is to strike her in a rage. We get this close to Othello (and the actor playing the husband was black, what's more) before the aforementioned scoundrel speaks up and confesses his crimes, leading to tender reunions and forgiveness all around. Even the scoundrel is forgiven. It's hard to know whether Shakespeare imagined that the final scene would build in dramatic tension and resolution, or if he was deliberately parodying himself with all the identity swapping; either way, I think you'd have to perform it tongue-in-cheek, as in this performance. In addition, the fact that 7 people played fifteen rôles (including one rôle played by three actors in succession, whoever happened not to be busy at the moment) was a brilliant comment on the identity confusion within the text. I must add, though, that despite the doubling of rôles, it was always immediately obvious which of the fifteen characters was speaking at any moment. That is a tribute to the performer' skill, and to the director's vision.
If you haven't seen Cymbeline, you're too late; I caught the last performance. But you can still come see me in The Lady's Not for Burning at 8:00 next Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at Unity Church. It's a play about a Chaplain who would like to be a bluegrass mandolin player—kind of like The Jazz Singer in Appalachia. There are some other subplots, too, for comic relief.
