Rambles Reviews

Last season, there was a swath of productions of Titus Andronicus, as college troupes saw it, realized it was a fun play which didn't deserve its negative reputation, and decided to perform it themselves. I would be really happy if the same thing happened with King John this season, and the Actors' Shakespeare Project production, playing now until June 8th, demonstrates why.

See, Titus picked up a reputation as being too bloody and over-the-top to be performed, but a couple good productions, including ASP's, showed folks that "bloody and over-the-top" is not actually a BAD thing in a play. This play has a reputation as being so full of deception and plot twists that it can't be followed -- and it doesn't deserve that. Oh, it's chock-full of deception and twists, but that's a good thing. I suppose that, if one was reading the play, one would have trouble following who was backstabbing whom, but when it's performed on stage with a competent cast, the actors are able to take you through with no trouble whatsoever.

Yes, the plot twists and turns, and you never know what's going to happen in the next scene. But, no matter where you go, there you are. It's not hard to keep track of what's going on, even if you can't predict what will happen next.

It's sort of like one of those walking labyrinths, like the one that my parents built in their backyard, or the ones that a number of churches have painted on the floor. It consists of a single twisting path, looping back on itself, but with no deviations. You walk through the path, never knowing quite what the path will be, but nonetheless, never getting lost. There is only one path, and it takes you through it -- no matter how convoluted it looks from the outside.

Hold onto that image, by the way. We'll be coming back to it.

Shakespeare provides us with a guide through the treachery and deviousness of the court -- the two-fisted action Shakespearian pulp hero Philip Falconbridge, who has become one of my favorite Shakespearian characters. He's noble, brave, upright, and witty, with an action hero's penchant for snappy one-liners and clever observations. Stick with Philip the Bastard -- he'll take you through the play unscathed. Of the few characters who are more-or-less honest, he's the only one who isn't a victim.

So. This being the Actors' Shakespeare Project, let's start with talking about which odd corner of Boston they've found to fit with this play.

Next to the Common is an Episcopal cathedral, the Cathedral Church of St Paul. The Church has a basement. Deep in the bowels of the basement is a room which is used by a Chinese congregation, a homeless congregation, and a Muslim congregation, at different times. And, until June 8th, it's also used by a Shakespearian acting troupe.

I can only imagine what went through Ben Evett's mind when he looked at the space. (Well, that's not strictly true. I could, y'know, ASK him -- it's not like his email address is hard to find, and he's a generally approachable guy. But imagining is more fun.)

Evett would have walked into a room which feels like a high school gym cum-function hall. And he would have looked at the unfinished rough stone walls, and the beautiful faux-marbled pillars, and the beat-up-high-school-basketball-court floor. And the labyrinth painted on that floor in slightly-chipping but very tough paint. See? I told you to hold on to that image.

And he would have thought, "This space has character. What story does this place want to match up with? What play wants to be heard here?"

Like most of the places that ASP has found, this one is weird. And like most of the places, they use that weirdness to shape their performance.

There are a few things about the space that are genuine weaknesses. Those four beautiful faux-marble pillars obstruct views occasionally. The performance space is buried deep underground -- I felt that a miner's helmet might have been appropriate, and I'm not sure about how handicapped-accessible the space is. (The press materials state that the space is accessible, but I didn't see how that worked, so, if mobility is an issue for you, call them and ask what the situation is.)

But most of the things which seem like they WOULD be weaknesses ended up, bizarrely, as strengths. Somehow, the trains rumbling through Park Street Station diagonally above us added to the experience -- it's a play in which mysterious ominous rumblings are dramatically appropriate.

And the whole production design -- sound design, lighting design, everything -- works with the space to create an atmosphere for backstabbing, betrayal, and back-room dealing.

Now, let's talk about the actors, and how they portray the characters. And, since he IS my favorite character, and holds the play together, let's start with Bill Barclay's portrayal of Philip the Bastard.

See, there are two types of Shakespearian monologues. First, you've got the ones like Hamlet uses -- where he's talking to himself, or to God, or to something like that. They're introspective -- they're about the internal life of the character.

The other kind, though -- well, those are the ones where the character realizes that we're there, and decides to tell US what's going through his mind. And Philip is THAT kind of character. And so he needs to form a connection with the audience. The actor needs to have chemistry with the audience.

(As an aside -- this is among the reasons I think Shakespeare generally works better in smaller theaters, and in the round. A proscenium is a border between the audience and the actors -- and I think that a lot of Shakespeare needs to be more interactive. Maybe less so for his latest plays -- I think that The Tempest and Pericles, for instance, can work in proscenium-type settings.)

And Barclay does. He's our guide, our buddy, and we are willing to hang out with him as he attempts to find his way through the treacherous footing of the play. Barclay portrays a Philip who covers a spine of steel under a somewhat goofy exterior -- and it works.

Shakespeare wrote Hubert as King John's thuggish hatchetman, but, in this production, Sarah Newhouse plays a female Hubert, which changes all sorts of relationships. I don't want to say too much about it, because I don't want to give away plot points, but it's an interesting variation, with resonances throughout the play. Jennie Israel's Constance is emotionally powerful, and John Kuntz is deeply creepy as the manipulative Cardinal Pandulph.

As King John, Michael Forden Walker is the center of the play -- but he is shaped by circumstances as much as he shapes them -- he's as much a victim as he is an active player, and Walker's performance shows this dichotomy.

So -- to conclude: the Actors' Shakespeare Project shows us that a complex plot need not be a confusing plot. Their actors and production team lead us through the labyrinthine paths of King John's many betrayals and twists, letting us feel the emotional impact of each one, but never losing us or confusing us.

Tickets are forty bucks, plus or minus a couple bucks depending on which seat, for adults, thirty to thirty-five for students. But remember, guys: they also may have student rush tickets available just before the show, for just fifteen bucks. I encourage you to go and check it out -- I'd like to see if you in the college companies like the play as much as I do. If so, I'd love to see what you'd do with it if you put it on yourselves.

The first question about any production of Henry V -- any production going back to the first time that Shakespeare's company put it on after he wrote it -- is "how do you deal with the audacity of trying to put an empire-spanning war, including one of the most dramatic battles in English history, on a stage?"

Shakespeare's answer was to, in effect, "hang a lampshade on it". Do you know that phrase? It means to call attention to the ridiculousness of a concept, to encourage the audience to go along with it. Actually, the time Shakespeare REALLY did this was in Twelfth Night, when, after the "big reveal" of everybody disguised as everybody else and all the other wackiness, one of the characters says, "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." In Henry V, he uses a slightly different tack. He simply tells the audience that the task of representing what he's representing is impossible. So we, the audience, will have to fill the rest of it in.

I assume most of you know the speech that opens the play. If you're not familiar with it, you may want to take a quick look at it before I go on.

Now, there are two ways you can go with this: you can take this as a challenge to fight against, and prove that you CAN do more to represent reality, or you can embrace it, and trust your audience to fill in the gaps. Of course, one can debate about what Shakespeare would have done if he could -- if he could, would Shakespeare have done a Cecil B DeMille "cast of thousands"? Would he have preferred to do a Battle of Agincourt with seventy thousand CGI warriors fighting?

It's an interesting question, but "what Shakespeare would have done" is not terribly relevant to the question of how a director wants to present the play.

The Actors' Shakespeare Project, under the direction of Normi Noel, has chosen to embrace the "trust the imagination" school of thought. They present a lean, spare production, in which the forty-some-odd characters in the play are portrayed by five actors: Ken Cheeseman, Paula Langton, Doug Lockwood, Seth Powers, and Molly Schreiber.

The space they use is the basement of the Garage in Harvard Square, the same space they played Titus Andronicus and Love's Labours Lost last season. Those of you who have seen those productions can remember the . . . challenges . . . of the space, not least of which is the big freakin' support post smack dab in the middle of the room.

This production uses a similar layout as they did in Titus, making the support post the center point of the stage, with seating on all four sides around it. This, naturally, means that, no matter where you sit, there WILL be times where you can't see exactly what is happening, or, at least, you can't see the facial expression of characters. Of course, the blocking they use attempts to minimize these problems, but it nonetheless can be frustrating. I know that some people I've talked to were annoyed by this when ASP put on Titus in this space, so be aware that many of the same issues exist.

But they also use this. It is a small space, and an awkward one, and they use that as part of the energy in the play. When Ken Cheeseman asked, ". . . can this cockpit hold/The vasty fields of France?", a ripple of laughter went through the room, as we recognized the simple truth of that. The Prologue worked in a way I've never seen it work before -- because the space was so small, the task of bringing forth this tale so impossible, the idea of presenting the scope of the story so ridiculous, that we, the audience, accepted the task of filling in the gaps with our imaginations.

Who remembers Infocom text adventures? Like Zork and the rest? There was a way in which the best-written ones were more immersive than games written today with photo-realistic graphics and all the rest. There are ways that radio plays are more immersive than television, and books are more immersive than radio.

And storytelling can be the most immersive of all.

That, at least, is the goal of this presentation of Henry V. The role of "Chorus" -- aka, the narrator -- is taken by different cast members at different times. And, for me, those were some of my favorite moments in the play -- when one of the members of the cast comes out, and talks to us, filling in bits of the story that just can't be staged.

Because of the space, because of the energy of the production, I, at least, felt comfortable allowing my mind's eye to fill in all the action sequences. This goes for the fight scenes, too. In previous productions, I've seen the fights done (in movies) with special effects and realism, I've seen impressive fight choreography, and once, I saw the fights done as interpretive dance. That last one was kind of embarrassing to watch.

In this production, the fighting happens offstage. We see people running in, exhausted, wounded, and sick, or victorious and bold, or disheartened, and from that, we know what happened. There is one exception: just before the "Once more into the breach" speech, they use a rather symbolic piece to show the English onstage attacking and being thrown back -- and, to me, that was one of the weakest moments in the play.

One final bit that I want to mention is the final scene, where Henry woos Katherine, the Princess of France, as part of the treaty to make a lasting peace between England and France. In order to have a happy ending (or, rather, as happy an ending as you can honestly have in a history), the play ends with a romance, to end the violence. The concept is that this marriage is, or at least, can be, a marriage of love, as well as one of political expedience, and Molly Schreiber and Seth Powers get only one scene in which to attempt to have two people meet and fall in love.

They nail it. The scene is just adorable. I don't know what else I can say about it. Maybe "KAWAII!!!"

Henry V
Directed by Normi Noel
January 10 – February 3
Downstairs at The Garage
38 JFK Street, Harvard Square

This is probably one of the most intimidating reviews I've ever attempted to write. Robert Brustein is perhaps the most significant name in American theater criticism in the past several decades. He is the person who, in many ways, codified and defined what a competent theater critic should know and be, and what a competently-written theater review should include. Lis and I are trying to write things that fit in with some of his ideas of criticism.

He is also the author of the new play The English Channel, which just had its world premiere at the newly-refurbished and gorgeous C. Walsh theater at Suffolk University -- and therefore, there is a chance that he'll read this thing.

Um, Prof. Brustein, if you read this, please feel free to criticise our criticism -- we'd actually be very glad of your opinion of our opinions.

The English Channel is an example of the developing subgenre of "Will&Kit" fiction. There are enough examples out there of stories which imagine the relationships between Shakespeare and Marlowe, and their contemporaries, that one can start to notice themes and tropes among them. The stories range from the highfalutin' literary to porn, and even a few which are both.

Brustein's play isn't either extreme, but has elements that would appeal to fans of both types.

The content of the play doesn't break any new ground. The action is set in one room of the Mermaid Tavern outside London, where Shakespeare is living while the playhouses are closed, in April and May of 1593.

In terms of characterization and interpretation of events, Brustein generally chooses the interpretation most common among this subgenre. As various people and events were mentioned, I saw Lis marking off notes in her "Stories About Shakespeare and Marlowe Checklist": Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, check; the Baines note, check; Dutch church libel as a frame-up, check. . . .

But, see -- all that is just the framework. Sure, Brustein stole the plot and outline of the play, from history and from other writers' interpretations of history, Of course he did: it's a play about freakin'Shakespeare. If you're writing a play about Shakespeare, and NOT stealing the plot, you're kind of missing the point. Shakespeare is about writing characters, and about language.

So, let's start with language. On that matter, let me give my highest commendation: Robert Brustein must be totally out of his frickin' mind. I know of no higher praise I can give an artist.

He wrote the entire play in iambic pentameter. If that was just a stunt, I'd have enjoyed it, just for the novelty and "goddamned cool" factor. But it wasn't a stunt. It worked. The story which the play tells, the characters on the stage -- they need to talk in blank verse. It just is who they are. Of course the historical people on whom these characters are based didn't do that -- but we're not watching the historical people. We are watching the characters which Brustein wrote -- and they are characters who think in poetry.

Okay, that's enough about the play as written, for now: what about the play as performed?

Set designer Richard Chambers gave us Shakespeare's small, cramped room above a tavern, with a mattress on the floor, a desk and a chair, an armoire, a bench, and all the props that the theater company owned that had to go SOMEWHERE when the theaters were closed. The effect is flashy, vibrant, and claustrophobic.

The play's four characters are Kit Marlowe (Sean Dugan), Emilia Lanier (Merritt Janson), Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton (Alex Pollock), and William Shakespeare (Gabriel Field).

The costuming of Southampton appears based on his portrait from 1600, but the portrayal is also influenced by the 1590s Cobbe portrait -- you know: this one -- also known as "That's No Lady; That's the Earl of Southampton" Portrait. Shakespeare's costuming is reminiscent of the Chandos portrait,and Marlowe's look is, thankfully, not based on the Corpus Christi portrait.

It's a small play -- one room, four characters, and the proscenium arch works perfectly for it. As Lis and I review mostly Shakespeare stuff, we're actually more used to non-proscenium stages (we generally feel that most of Shakespeare, with the possible exception of his later Romances such as Pericles, don't naturally fit with the proscenium), But you can feel when a play is written for the proscenium, and this one is. The claustrophobia of room, the energy of the four people, is contained in the stage-space, making something of a pressure cooker.

And there's plenty of pressure to cook. Political plots, sexual affairs, jealousy, treason, spying, and all the other things that you'd expect from any "Bill and Kit's Excellent Adventure". But what's actually happening is secondary to the characters.

Among four characters, there are six relationships, some sexual, some not. Will's schtupping Emilia, Emilia's schtupping Will and Southampton, Southampton's schtupping Emilia and Kit. Kit considers himself to be Will's friend and inspiration -- or, at least, Will steals all the best ideas from him, Southampton is Will's patron.

Southampton is a traitor, Kit is a spy for the Queen, Will is stuck between them.

In the mix, I feel Emilia's character gets a bit lost. She feels somewhat one-note. Admittedly, it's a really interesting note: she's a firm believer in women's strength and dignity and inherent worth in a time where that's hardly the prevailing norm -- and it does put her in an interesting position, with interesting conflicts. But she still seems shallower than the other characters. After their first couple scenes together, which I enjoyed, it feels like every conversation between Emilia and Will devolves into carping and bickering -- which is okay -- about the same topics over and over again -- which is not okay. An argument that you've already had gets boring the second time around.

Southampton is a powerful and relatively simple character -- at least compared to the rest of the cast. He is nineteen, passionate, driven, and impetuous. He is driven by a lust for adventure, for conspiracy, for excitement, and for, well, lust. He is beautiful, and knows it. He shows up on stage like a meteor -- bright, hot, and heading to burn up. He is in the "live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" mode.

So is Marlowe. But Marlowe is a bit older: twenty-nine to Southampton's nineteen. He is perhaps equally as impetuous, lustful, and adventurous, but, if not more cautious, at least more skilled. . . which makes a bit of irony as to which of them is alive at the end of the play, but that's history, and historical fiction, for you.

I found Marlowe to be my favorite character, until one of his final scenes, when Dugan, unfortunately, hit one of my pet peeves: he Played Drunk Badly.

I don't know why so many stage actors can't act as if they are drunk. It's not like actors typically are unfamiliar with alcohol, and yet it is extremely common for them to stagger about the stage in an annoyingly unconvincing manner.

Nonetheless, I liked the rest of his performance, both as a living Marlowe, and in his role as a ghost, delivering the prologue of the play and helping bring about the resolution.

Shakespeare is the central character in the play -- there are very few moments in which he is not on stage. Brustein's conceit for Shakespeare is that he does not naturally have a strong personality of his own, but rather channels the personalities of others -- influenced both by the flesh-and-blood people around him, and by the characters he channels as he writes his plays. It's a difficult concept to play on the stage, and Field does it well. He does have his own passions and motivations, but he finds them shaped by the powerful personalities around him. When he butts heads with Emilia, it is as much because her ideas of what women are are in conflict with what Southampton and Marlowe think women are -- in effect, Emilia is in conflict with the other two men in the play, through the medium of Shakespeare, as much as she is in conflict with Shakespeare himself.

The further conflict in Shakespeare's character is a between Brustein's conceit of "playwright" versus "poet". His idea is that poet creates a work which is an expression of his or her own personality, while a playwright is a channel for the personalities of the fictional personalities which inhabit his or her mind. And the play includes this conflict within Shakespeare -- when he is writing sonnets, he is expressing more of his own personality, but that personality is easily subsumed under the overwhelming personalities around him, and by their very language. Brustein has fun with a Shakespeare in Love-like conceit in which Shakespeare observes and absorbs the witty turns of phrase, and the motivations and actions, of the people around him in order to use them in his own writing, and Field appears to enjoy playing that aspect of the character.

In general, The English Channel has a decent but unoriginal plot, four fascinating characters, and amazing language. It very much works as a play, and deserves to be played regularly. And this is a worthy first production of a worthy play.

There are four more productions, next week:

Thursday, September 13: 7:30 pm
Friday, September 14: 7:30 pm
Saturday, September 15 3:00 pm & 7:30 pm

At the C. Walsh Theatre at Suffolk University, 55 Temple St, Boston

All seats are General Admission. Please note that the content of this play is not recommended for children.
Tickets for the general public are $30 and $15 for students with ID.
Box office: Theatre Mania, 866-811-4111

So, Lis and I saw the Industrial Theatre's production of Henry IV today. It'll be playing again tomorrow at 2, next weekend on Saturday and Sunday at 2, where we saw it, on the lawn of the First Parish Church in Taunton Center, then it will be at the Sanders Theater at Harvard on the 27th, and in the state park in Easton on the 28th and 29th.

All shows are free -- just show up.

So, is it worth showing up?

Short answer: sure! It's free!

Frankly, it's a pretty basic production -- no particularly impressive conceits, no standout amazing performances. Very basic sets (which, incidentally, I tend to like), very simple costumes. They chose to put Hal, Bartolph, Pistol, and the rest in modern dress when they were boozing it up, and they used bottles of Bud for the sack, but, other than that, it was all more-or-less-generic-medievalish-kinda costuming.

The performances were solid. Nothing amazing, but the lines were delivered clearly, and with appropriate amounts of emotion and inflection. No complaints there.

If I had a complaint, it would be that the fight scenes could have been better. They were fine, but, given that we're in Boston, which has so many people working on medieval and Renaissance swordplay, and so many people who do fight choreography, I've gotten to expect a pretty high standard for my Shakespearian swordfights. But, again, there was nothing wrong with them.

Everything was solid. It was a good, average production.

Which made it a hell of a lot of fun, because the play is good. We'd not seen Henry IV before, although Lis had read it. I was generally familiar with some of the basic outline of the story, but not the details.

And it's a good, fun play. Some of the bits where Shakespeare is deliberately trying to be funny are, well, kind of embarrassing -- I generally feel that people who deliberately annoy their waiters should be beaten with sticks -- but other humor bits are damn good. And the main plot itself is fast-paced and exciting, while Prince Hal is a genuinely interesting guy.

So is it worth it? Yes -- I mean, c'mon, it's free. But even so -- we drove an hour to Taunton and an hour back, and feel that it was time well-spent. If you can easily get to Taunton, the Borderlands state park, or the Sanders Theater, it's worth going. Especially if you've never seen Henry IV before.

The Actors' Shakespeare Project is finishing off their third season with an extra, bonus play, a six-person Love's Labour's Lost, a light, fluffy, and funny play to balance out a season which would otherwise be entirely about psychotic princes killing their families.

If you include the 2000 Kenneth Branagh movie version, Lis and I have now seen LLL four times. In those four times, we've seen it done more-or-less straight once.

This wasn't that time.

(For the record, it was the 2006 Huntington Theater production, reviewed by Lis and by me. The other one was the 2005 ART student-troupe production, which I also reviewed.)

As pure entertainment, it works very well. If you want to laugh and enjoy yourself for two and a half hours, this is an extremely good way to go about it. The belly-laughs started within thirty seconds of the actors' first appearance on the stage. They use physical comedy, including slapstick, and very clearly let you know what you're in for -- and they deliver handsomely on that promise of entertainment and humor.

So it works as entertainment. Which makes it worth watching. But how does it work as a production of Love's Labour's Lost?