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....

2 Shakespeares and an Upstart Crow

Although Something Rotten is not a Shakespeare play, it contains snippets of his verse and a potential personality type of the Bard. I consider Something Rotten and recall it with a smile.  And then I think of the CSC Hamlet and sigh.  And then think of the Fiasco Theater Company’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona at TFANA and rejoice:  2 Fabulous Shows out of 3 — Shakespeare Rules! 

 

Christian Borle as the Bard in Something Rotten.  Photo Credit 2015 Joan  Marcus

Something Rotten is a very funny musical comedy that will be most enjoyed by fans of American musical theatre. Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell’s book and lyrics are full of winks, nods, and witticisms, with sometimes lyrical and sometimes show-stopping songs by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick. One must love a show that rhymes genius with penis. (I realize there are those who will complain of this imperfect rhyme, but lowbrow that I am, I laughed like hell.)  Something Rotten appeals to both types of brows, as well as to lovers of Shakespeare. Characters appear with familiar names like Nostradamus, Nick Bottom, Shylock, Portia.  There are musical and dance riffs reminiscent of countless modern musicals (Chicago, Cats, A Chorus Line, Mary Poppins, to name just a few…) as well as scenes that could have inspired some of Shakespeare’s most famous ones.  

 

John Cariana as Nigel Bottom and Kate Reinders as Portia in Something Rotten.  (Photo 2015 Joan Marcus)

Christian Borle plays Shakespeare as that upstart crow (remember those “Notes” in your Folger editions), a cross between David Bowie and Tim Curry (as Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Frank N. Furter) as the coolest strutting rock star playwright ever.  The diminutive ingénue Kate Reinders is playing a role apparently written with Kristen Chenoweth in mind and doing it beautifully with charm, expert comic timing, and a sweetly powerful voice.  One can readily understand Brian d’Arcy James leaving the fun role of King George in Hamilton for the lead of Nick Bottom in Something Rotten.  Like Aaron Burr in Hamilton, Nick Bottom reveals himself in his solo about his rival, defining himself by his enemy: Shakespeare.  He tells us in “I Hate Shakespeare” about that country hick who steals other people’s ideas and glory.  The cast is overflowing with funny, talented people, like John Cariana as Nigel Bottom and Brad Oscar as the scene-stealing Nostradamus.  The only unimpressive performance was that of Heidi Blickenstaff as Bottom’s wife Bea, who just belted everything without modulation.  Finally, the direction and choreography by Casey Nicholaw was a driving and moving force celebrating American musical theatre.

Brad Oscar and Brian  d'Arcy James in Something Rotten (2012 Photo Credit Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, the CSC Hamlet sounded more interesting than it was. I had heard (belated spoiler alert) that director Austin Pendleton had chosen not to show us the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, which could make us wonder what, if anything, the ghost ever said to Hamlet.  Peter Sarsgaard’s Hamlet was stupefying, overthought and overwrought. Even Harris Yulin was rather dull as Claudius.    The Gertrude by Penelope Allen was somnolent, but Lisa Joyce’s Ophelia was feisty and Stephen Spinella played Polonius with wit and style.

 

Left to right, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, Ophelia.  (c) 2015 Classic Stage Company

Austin Pendleton staged the play within a play so that more than half the audience could not see Claudius’ reaction to the murder of Gonzago, which would seem impossible in a 3-sided playing space.  The set was as annoying as an overdressed floral centerpiece, such that it became all about trying to see around the furniture instead of the content.  All in all, the potential excitement in removing the actual Ghost fell flat with nothing interesting from Hamlet or the director in this empty rendition.  Reimagining did not occur. 

But then, hope revived.  Even though Julia should punch Proteus at the end — does anyone else remember the joyous moment in an otherwise tedious Cymbeline when Joan Cusack’s Imogen punched Posthumous? — I know she never will so the clever edit of the Fiasco Theater Company’s production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at Theatre for a New Audience was a sheer delight of sparkling wordplay, song, and fun, with nary a moment of its two hour and ten minute running time allowed to lag. 

 

Sylvia and Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Photo Credit 2015 Gerry Goodstein.

Apparently cutting the script to the bone clarifies what the play is really about. Judicious edits inspired six actors — two women and four men — to drive the play in high gear.  The doubling and tripling and quadrupling of characters played led to laughter, with all players throwing in voices from “offstage” while sitting in plain sight.  In one scene, the cast’s two women were both onstage, so when Sylvia called off to Ursula, the always original Andy Grotelueschen responds in a small frilly cap, bellowing like that goat meme that went around earlier this year.  Such laughter as filled the house also fills the audience with oxygen and moves the play forward after Grotelueschen stops the show.  I tend to believe that he does something like this to his fellow players every night in the same spot, in addition to playing Launce, the Duke, and Antonio. Jessie Austrian was a full-blooded and funny, awkward Julia to Noah Brody’s unfaithful Proteus.  Paul L. Coffee was a sharp Speed, and Emily Young played Lucetta tartly and Sylvia with passionate intelligence.  Zachary Fine was a sweet and loyal dog called Crab as well as Sylvia’s steadfast and true Valentine.  And the music was rollicking and sweet.  Fiasco’s Two Gents as directed by Jessie Austrian and Ben Steinfeld was a brilliant addition to TFANA’s spring season.

 

Messrs. Fine, Coffee, Brody, and Grotelueschen.  (Photo Credit 2015 Gerry Goodstein)

As luck would have it, The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been extended through Saturday, June 20, at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.  Lucky you!

 

~ Molly Matera, signing off and urging you to see the Fiasco Theater Company’s production of Two Gents in Brooklyn while it lasts.  I believe you have more time for Something Rotten which may just run on Broadway forever, but just in case it doesn’t, get your tickets now!

Shakespeare in Frontierville

A rip-roaring production of The Taming of The Shrew opened this weekend at the Duke Theatre on 42^nd Street.  Theatre for a New Audience brings us back to the old west to experience a rollicking, jolly, remarkably American production of Shakespeare’s controversial comedy.

(c) Theatre for a New Audience

Director Arin Arbus reins in the 16^th century European setting to the 19^th century western frontier.  The scene is familiar, warm brown wood flooring and walls, beams going every which way on doors, shutters, a balcony.  The two-storied set by by Donyale Werle is classical in style, yet like “Frontiersville” in nature.  Anita Yavich’s costumes wrap natural hues around the company, appearing at once timeless and settled in the wild west.  As the audience enters a plinking piano played throughout by Jonathan Mastro is comfortingly reminiscent of saloon scenes from movie westerns.  Michael Friedman’s music combines traditional western “cowboy” music with Italian opera of the period, the latter in a particularly hilarious sequence when disguised Hortensio attempts to teach Bianca to sing. 

Lighting by Marcus Doshi is atmospheric, with footlights surrounding the stage, candles hanging from above. “Effects”of the sun and moon are as they would have been created by a 19^th century company.  Doug Elkins’ choreography works with the geography and the characters.

Director Arbus has chosen to maintain the blatant theatricality of the often-omitted Christopher Sly sub-plot, making Sly the town drunk tossed out of the saloon, where he can be wittily played upon by the local “lord” and a traveling theatrical troupe.  It’s a fine conceit, with Sly occasionally interrupting the proceedings, reminding us this is a play within a play we’re watching, and that everyone is someone other than who they profess to be.

Said play within the play takes place in 16^th Century Padua, where Baptista (Robert Langdon Lloyd) has two daughters: The elder is called Kate the Curst, while the younger, Bianca, is wooed by gentlemen old and young.  Baptista will not allow his younger daughter to be courted until his elder is wed, so Bianca’s suitors — Hortensio (a preening, stuttering, Saxon Palmer), Gremio (John Christopher Jones plays the traditional pantaloon with sympathy and humor), and the newly arrived Lucentio (Denis Butkus) — need someone to marry Kate.  Enter Petruchio, who has come to wive it wealthily in Padua while doing a great deal of slapstick. 

Maggie Siff as Kate and Andy Grotelueschen as Petruchio (C) 2012 Henry Grossman

Lucentio and his servant Tranio exchange clothing (and pseudo-identities) onstage, each revealing long-johns.  John Keating as the devious servant Tranio, however, is taller than Lucentio, so he spends the play strutting, posing, and conspiring in pants that are too short for him.  Kathryn Saffell is an amusing and intelligent Bianca, one moment a pouting victim, the next a flirt, and finally a veritable shrew herself.  The happily ubiquitous John Pankow is excellent as Grumio, conspiratorial servant to Petruchio and his partner in slapstick.

In this production, the titular Kate was clearly a tomboy just a few years ago.  She is now rangy and tough and no-nonsense.  It is perfectly clear only fools or liars come to court, for they really only want her soft and feminine little sister.  This Kate is an unrepresented, disrespected woman that weaker men wish to repress.  She’s funny, she’s sharp, she’s a little scary:  I half expected her to draw a derringer — or maybe a bullwhip.  She is personified perfectly by Maggie Siff.  In most of Shakespeare’s plays, the witty, wordsmithing woman is silenced after her marriage.  Not so Kate.  Once she is “tamed,” she has a long speech instructing women how to deal with their men, and thereby how to live in the world.  It’s not a swell world, but it’s the only one they’ve got.  The men in Kate’s world are dainty, where she is dauntless.  It takes a wild fellow named Petruchio to choose a highly imaginative method of wooing in order to tame.  This bold and bawdy man is played rather like a rich rancher’s son, but not a bad guy — a Cartwright, perhaps.  He’ll work his land, but he’s used to having money and wants it.  Andy Grotelueschen is a charming, tough yet thoughtful Petruchio, whose bravado can be seen to fade in face of his Kate.  After tempests are tossed about, quiet negotiations between this pair become surprisingly sweet love scenes you would not have imagined could appear in this play.

Andy Grotelueschen and Maggie Siff in TFANA's "The Taming of the Shrew"  (c) 2012 Gerry Goodstein

Theatre For A New Audience has brought together a fine, highly skilled company of players. There was really only one actor who seemed apart from the rest, not for lack of enthusiasm.

Shakespeare is quite at home in the American west, having toured through its mining towns, from tents to shanties to young cities, in dance halls, saloons and bona fide theatres — or the open air.  Ms. Arbus has set this production just where The Taming of the Shrew belongs.  The play runs at the Duke until April 21.  If you’re in town, go.  If you’re not, come visit.  (www.tfana.org)

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.