A Seasonal Treat Until Epiphany

Fiasco Theater is playing Shakespeare’s great comedy Twelfth Night at Classic Stage Company (136 East 13^th Street) until Saturday January 6, 2018.  Run don’t walk to catch this exciting, funny, musical, lyrical, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, pastoral-romantic comedy best suited to this season. 

Twelfth Night is often described as a perfect comedy and it may well be so.  But for that twin thing.  The romance is restrained (what with people in disguise), the comedy is not.  And in this production, the cast is superlative.  May I present:

Andy Grotelueschen as Sir Toby Belch

Jessie Austrian as Olivia

Emily Young as Viola/Cesario

Noah Brody as Orsino (also co-directed)

Ben Steinfeld as Feste (also co-directed)

Tina Chilip as Maria

Paul L. Coffey as Malvolio

Paco Tolson as Sir Andrew Aguecheek (among others)

Javier Ignacio as Sebastian (among others)

David Samuel as Antonio (among others)

 

Fiasco Theater at CSC (Photo by Joan Marcus)

John Doyle’s scenic design is flexible and creative, as is costume design by Emily Rebholz. 

Andy Grotelueschen’s Sir Toby may well be the best funniest and most consistently alive I’ve seen, with a real relationship between him and Tina Chilip’s happily hilarious Maria.

Ben Steinfeld as Feste shows himself as a fine comedic actor and musician and singer, quite romantic, and apparently a good director, since he and Noah Brody directed this production.

Noah Brody is a well-developed and believable Orsino (although I will always remember the delicious Orsino of Paul Rudd at Lincoln Center).

Jessie Austrian’s Olivia is a sex-starved delight.

Emily Young’s Cesario/Viola is witty, strong and quite marvelous.

As is their custom, when not actively onstage, the members of the Fiasco Theater sit or stand on the sidelines watching their colleagues and laughing along.  And accompanying one another on musical instruments and vocals, which makes for a funny, musical, delightful evening.

As always, the twins bit in the last scene goes on too long — how dense are these people — but that’s just a momentary annoyance that may only happen to people (like me) who’ve seen the play many times.

So go to 13^th Street, go online, get a ticket, celebrate a well-over-200-year-old play.  Just because it’s done all the time doesn’t mean it’s always done as well as this.  Trust Fiasco Theater.  Go!

http://www.classicstage.org/

~ Molly Matera, signing off to go bake Christmas Cookies....

Goldoni's "The Servant of Two Masters" at TFANA

The Samuel H. Scripps mainstage at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center is a wonderfully designed performance space:  it is multiple theatres in one, so flexible one may not recognize it from one season to another.  This production’s proscenium staging worked perfectly.

The Servant of Two Masters is silly, absurd, crass, ridiculous, pointless, and very, very funny.  Downright hysterical in fact, based on commedia dell’arte, a theatrical structure that set standard character types into scenarios, the characters performing functions in standard plots that usually involved lovers, tricksters, and hungry servants.  Characters were typically masked (and therefore recognizable in every town the troupe wandered into) except for the young lovers.  There are always young lovers.  The actors/characters often improvise the actual scenes, filled with slapstick, physical humor, and often violence.  Midway through the 18^th century, Carlo Goldoni put this scenario on paper. 

Something like 270 years later, Christopher Bayes (director) and Steven Epps (lead actor, the hungry servant Truffaldino) have taken Carlo Goldoni’s play (as adapted by Constance Congdon) and discarded whatever words interfered with the laughs they were looking for, which probably change nightly.  This is a living theatrical form, dependent on current events and the audience’s knowledge thereof.  Like improv, but with a storyline providing more overall structure. 

Considering the political humor running riot through the performance, I wish I could be transported back in time to hear what they all said before the election.

The evening started with Italian music your grandparents (maybe great grandparents) played and listened and danced to.  No, not Dean Martin or Al Martino, earlier than that, back in the old country, the kind with mandolins and guitars and small accordions — like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlNBuS7YgM.  With music in our ears, magic appeared around the wonderful mainstage with a Roman arch creating the proscenium and strings of patio lights illuminating the theatre like starlight.  It was delicioso.

Briefly, the servant of two masters has two masters because he has no money and he’s very hungry and his first master didn’t give so much as a centime for a hunk of bread.  “Federigo” (spoiler alert:  actually the late Federigo’s sister Beatrice in disguise for most of the play) won’t have money until “he” goes over the books of deals with Pantalone, father of the young woman to whom Federigo was affianced.  And therein lies a tale.  The second master turns out to be Florindo, for whom Federigo/Beatrice is searching, the man who killed Beatrice’s brother Federigo in a duel over her and who is her lover.  No one recognizes anybody, of course.  Poor Truffaldino, the incompetent servant, is still hungry halfway through the play!

Meanwhile another young couple’s wedding plans start out blessed but upon the return from the dead of Federigo, well, the first arrangement must take precedence, which infuriates the Dottore, father of Silvio, the beloved of Clarice. Love is frustrated, Beatrice reveals herself as a woman to Clarice so of course they’re now like sisters, while the true lover, Silvio, is jealous and behaves very foolishly.  Oh, what will become of them all?

And Truffaldino is still hungry.  When he finally has a chance to eat, it’s catch as catch can:  food flies over the curtain to be caught and tossed by Truffaldino juggling with the two highly energetic waiters (Aidan Eastwood and Sam Urdang) while he’s also juggling the service of a meal to each of his masters.

 

The juggling waiters (Photo by Gerry Goodstein)

The play is filled with music (all played by Christopher Curtis and Aaron Halva), including television advertising jingles from 30 years ago, snippets of show tunes, some pretty ditties for the ladies to sing (by Aaron Halva), pratfalls and slaps, a little swordplay, and an evening of ridiculous fun. 

This company of players knows how to milk a laugh, go off and around the bend and then, like good jazz musicians, bring the story back on track and move along briskly.  And they all sing wonderfully. 

The star of the show is Truffaldino portrayed with high energy by the remarkable Steven Epps.  He runs from one master to another, he leaps, he weeps, he receives beatings, he is a hoot and a half.

I didn’t even recognize one of my favorite actors from the Fiasco Theater Co., Andy Goteleuschen playing the Dottore, father of the whiny lover Silvio (Eugene Ma).

 

Steven Epps as Truffaldino and Allen Gilmore as Pantalone.  (Rehearsal photo by Gerry Goodstein)

Pantalone, father of Clarice, sometimes friend and sometimes enemy of the Dottore, was well played by Allen Gilmore.

Orlando Pabotoy’s Florindo brought down the house when he came out brushing, or perhaps caressing, his wig.

Liam Craig’s Brighella the Chef is creepy but not as nasty as the Brighella character often is in Commedia.

Liz Wisan never fooled me, I knew she was a woman dressed as a man!  But the audience always knows, it’s the characters onstage who aren’t playing with a full deck.  As Beatrice in disguise as her dead brother Federico, Ms. Wisan did a fine job as alternately winsome and tough.

Adina Verson is very charming, sings beautifully and is hilarious as Clarice.

Finally, Emily Young is sweet, funny and poignant as Smeraldina, the typical lady's maid conspiring with her mistress only to fall for the not in the slightest bit wily Truffaldino.  She also had a fine time speaking as a modern feminist standing up for women’s rights against the vulgarians coming into power.

 

Cast unrecognizable without their masks, except for the Dottore (L) and Pantalone (4).   Rehearsal photo by Gerry Goodstein..

My feeling about nine out of ten of the shows I see is that they run a little longer than they need to — and this very, very funny show was not an exception.  It could lose 10, 15 minutes.  Just not the intermission, which is needed for the audience to catch their breaths after over an hour of laughing as well as for the bathroom break implied by Truffaldino. I suspect which 10 minutes is arguable — something I felt lasted too long, such as Pantalone’s leg business, probably did not appear so to others.

There’s no down time in The Servant of Two Masters, it’s just chock a block non-stop, full of laughter and song.  If you’re sensitive to raunchy innuendoes, verbal or physical, you might be offended once or twice, but really, in today’s world, aren’t we offended by someone or something multiple times a day?  Grin and bear it for the sake of the rest of the life-giving oxygen provided by all the laughter.

~  Molly Matera, signing off to read TFANA’s always entertaining program with quotes about the playwrights, the play, the times.  Or perhaps watch the 1952 film, Scaramouche!

Goldoni's "The Servant of Two Masters" at TFANA

The Samuel H. Scripps mainstage at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center is a wonderfully designed performance space:  it is multiple theatres in one, so flexible one may not recognize it from one season to another.  This production’s proscenium staging worked perfectly.

The Servant of Two Masters is silly, absurd, crass, ridiculous, pointless, and very, very funny.  Downright hysterical in fact, based on commedia dell’arte, a theatrical structure that set standard character types into scenarios, the characters performing functions in standard plots that usually involved lovers, tricksters, and hungry servants.  Characters were typically masked (and therefore recognizable in every town the troupe wandered into) except for the young lovers.  There are always young lovers.  The actors/characters often improvise the actual scenes, filled with slapstick, physical humor, and often violence.  Midway through the 18^th century, Carlo Goldoni put this scenario on paper. 

Something like 270 years later, Christopher Bayes (director) and Steven Epps (lead actor, the hungry servant Truffaldino) have taken Carlo Goldoni’s play (as adapted by Constance Congdon) and discarded whatever words interfered with the laughs they were looking for, which probably change nightly.  This is a living theatrical form, dependent on current events and the audience’s knowledge thereof.  Like improv, but with a storyline providing more overall structure. 

Considering the political humor running riot through the performance, I wish I could be transported back in time to hear what they all said before the election.

The evening started with Italian music your grandparents (maybe great grandparents) played and listened and danced to.  No, not Dean Martin or Al Martino, earlier than that, back in the old country, the kind with mandolins and guitars and small accordions — like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlNBuS7YgM.  With music in our ears, magic appeared around the wonderful mainstage with a Roman arch creating the proscenium and strings of patio lights illuminating the theatre like starlight.  It was delicioso.

Briefly, the servant of two masters has two masters because he has no money and he’s very hungry and his first master didn’t give so much as a centime for a hunk of bread.  “Federigo” (spoiler alert:  actually the late Federigo’s sister Beatrice in disguise for most of the play) won’t have money until “he” goes over the books of deals with Pantalone, father of the young woman to whom Federigo was affianced.  And therein lies a tale.  The second master turns out to be Florindo, for whom Federigo/Beatrice is searching, the man who killed Beatrice’s brother Federigo in a duel over her and who is her lover.  No one recognizes anybody, of course.  Poor Truffaldino, the incompetent servant, is still hungry halfway through the play!

Meanwhile another young couple’s wedding plans start out blessed but upon the return from the dead of Federigo, well, the first arrangement must take precedence, which infuriates the Dottore, father of Silvio, the beloved of Clarice. Love is frustrated, Beatrice reveals herself as a woman to Clarice so of course they’re now like sisters, while the true lover, Silvio, is jealous and behaves very foolishly.  Oh, what will become of them all?

And Truffaldino is still hungry.  When he finally has a chance to eat, it’s catch as catch can:  food flies over the curtain to be caught and tossed by Truffaldino juggling with the two highly energetic waiters (Aidan Eastwood and Sam Urdang) while he’s also juggling the service of a meal to each of his masters.

 

The juggling waiters (Photo by Gerry Goodstein)

The play is filled with music (all played by Christopher Curtis and Aaron Halva), including television advertising jingles from 30 years ago, snippets of show tunes, some pretty ditties for the ladies to sing (by Aaron Halva), pratfalls and slaps, a little swordplay, and an evening of ridiculous fun. 

This company of players knows how to milk a laugh, go off and around the bend and then, like good jazz musicians, bring the story back on track and move along briskly.  And they all sing wonderfully. 

The star of the show is Truffaldino portrayed with high energy by the remarkable Steven Epps.  He runs from one master to another, he leaps, he weeps, he receives beatings, he is a hoot and a half.

I didn’t even recognize one of my favorite actors from the Fiasco Theater Co., Andy Goteleuschen playing the Dottore, father of the whiny lover Silvio (Eugene Ma).

 

Steven Epps as Truffaldino and Allen Gilmore as Pantalone.  (Rehearsal photo by Gerry Goodstein)

Pantalone, father of Clarice, sometimes friend and sometimes enemy of the Dottore, was well played by Allen Gilmore.

Orlando Pabotoy’s Florindo brought down the house when he came out brushing, or perhaps caressing, his wig.

Liam Craig’s Brighella the Chef is creepy but not as nasty as the Brighella character often is in Commedia.

Liz Wisan never fooled me, I knew she was a woman dressed as a man!  But the audience always knows, it’s the characters onstage who aren’t playing with a full deck.  As Beatrice in disguise as her dead brother Federico, Ms. Wisan did a fine job as alternately winsome and tough.

Adina Verson is very charming, sings beautifully and is hilarious as Clarice.

Finally, Emily Young is sweet, funny and poignant as Smeraldina, the typical lady's maid conspiring with her mistress only to fall for the not in the slightest bit wily Truffaldino.  She also had a fine time speaking as a modern feminist standing up for women’s rights against the vulgarians coming into power.

 

Cast unrecognizable without their masks, except for the Dottore (L) and Pantalone (4).   Rehearsal photo by Gerry Goodstein..

My feeling about nine out of ten of the shows I see is that they run a little longer than they need to — and this very, very funny show was not an exception.  It could lose 10, 15 minutes.  Just not the intermission, which is needed for the audience to catch their breaths after over an hour of laughing as well as for the bathroom break implied by Truffaldino. I suspect which 10 minutes is arguable — something I felt lasted too long, such as Pantalone’s leg business, probably did not appear so to others.

There’s no down time in The Servant of Two Masters, it’s just chock a block non-stop, full of laughter and song.  If you’re sensitive to raunchy innuendoes, verbal or physical, you might be offended once or twice, but really, in today’s world, aren’t we offended by someone or something multiple times a day?  Grin and bear it for the sake of the rest of the life-giving oxygen provided by all the laughter.

~  Molly Matera, signing off to read TFANA’s always entertaining program with quotes about the playwrights, the play, the times.  Or perhaps watch the 1952 film, Scaramouche!

Fiasco Theatre’s Tuneful "Cymbeline" at the Barrow Street Theatre

 “Cymbeline” is a very strange play.  It’s Shakespeare’s most bizarre kaleidoscope of styles and periods.  Not that he didn’t mix it up on occasion, but this one’s a doozy.  It’s part romance, part mythology, part bad history, part theatre of the absurd.  It’s set in Roman-occupied Britain and Rome occupied by cosmopolitan courtiers of another millennium.  Rather than attempt to make rational sense of the piece, the Fiasco Theatre has sensibly embraced its irrationality and created an imaginative one-set wonder performed in under 2.5 hours.

Productions of “Cymbeline” over the years have generally disappointed — sometimes awful with one shining moment (think Joan Cusack’s Imogen slugging Posthumous in the final act), or pleasant and fun until a disastrous choice decimates it, then decimates it again and again until nothing’s left.  In that part of the play where each absurd revelation comes hard upon the last, this production just keeps getting more frenetic.  Funnier and faster.  Faster and funnier.  The more ridiculous the plot point, jab, and stab, the more ridiculous the performers recognize it to be and just have a jolly old time.  And so do we. 

The company of players here numbers six.  The characters in this play (as they’ve edited it) number 15.  There are no puppets, no supernumeraries.  These fantabulous six actors make short work of the overlapping plotlines, multiple roles, nationalities, and voices, not to mention multiple musical instruments.

These actors are highly skilled, the verse work is very fine, and vocally the players are multi-faceted, sometimes mellow, sometimes ringing, always distinct to the characters.  Their talent and innate gifts were apparently augmented by the coaching of Cicely Berry, the renowned voice and text coach.  Clarity of voice, clarity of vision, clarity of silly storylines.  The Fiasco Theatre makes it all work.

The Company:  Jessie Austrian played Imogen with sweetness, anger, innocence, and strength. 

Noah Brody played Posthumus staunchly, a Roman Captain, choreographed the fights (consulting with J. Allen Suddeth), and co-directed with Ben Steinfeld.

Paul L. Coffey was Pisanio, Philario, Caius Lucius, and Guiderius, turning on a dime from a put-upon servant to a Roman statesman.

Andy Grotelueschen played Cymbeline callously, Cloten cloddishly, and Cornelius cleverly.

Ben Steinfeld co-directed, played Iachimo wickedly and Ariragus innocently, and was musical director — the music wooed the audience into joy.

Sweet-voiced Emily Young played the mean Queen wittily, and aged herself into Belaria.

There can be no spoilers in a Shakespeare play, except for the personal touches an inspired company can make.  For the uninitiated, Cymbeline is a doddering old fool who has fallen for a nasty woman, so naturally he’s the king.  He had three children by his first queen — two boys who disappeared twenty years before the story starts, and his daughter Imogen.  The mean queen (Cymbeline’s second) has an oafish son, Cloten, whom she wants to inherit the crown, by marriage to Imogen … or however.

Imogen has fallen in love with and married a penniless young man named Posthumus — although he is of good birth, he carelessly lost his parents.  He has a loyal and highly moral servant named Pisanio, whom he orders to stay behind to protect Imogen when the king banishes Posthumous from England.  Cymbeline likes to banish people who annoy him.

In Rome, Posthumous hangs out with a slug named Iachimo and not surprisingly becomes a slug himself, after Iachimo betrays his tenuous friendship with Posthumous by telling him that Imogen betrayed their marriage bed.  Then Posthumous betrays Imogen by ordering Pisanio to kill what he considers his inconstant wife.  Follow so far?  Meanwhile … oh, there’s just too much.  But it’s important to know that the mean queen without a name gives gullible Pisanio a “healing” potion that isn’t really.  He gives it to Imogen, she appears dead, wakes to find a headless dead body and mistakes it for her husband… Again, too much. 

Eventually there’s war, atonement, revenge, reunited families, and along the way there’s some charming foot-tapping bluegrass. 

Suffice to say, this company of players really knows its stuff.  The threesome who came up with the notion of this production — Jessie Austrian, Noah Brody, and Ben Steinfeld — have given us a great gift of a damned good “Cymbeline.”  Staging is terribly clever, the ubiquitous trunk used exceptionally well throughout the play.  Jacques Roy created the Fabulous Trunk that is the centerpiece of the action, along with scenic designer Jean-Guy Lecat. 

'Tis a frabjous day when such people come together, take mad risks with an impossible play, and make a theatreful of people happy for an evening.  Get thee to the Barrow Street Theatre for this delightful funny tuneful production of “Cymbeline.”  You won’t regret it and you won’t forget it.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, listening to a bluegrass lullaby.