The Comedy of Errors (at The Schubert Theatre, DeSales University on Thursday July 7th 2011)

A portion of the Errors cast (photo Lee A. Butz)

Performed as part of The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and directed by Russell Treyz

Click here to find out more about the festival and to gettickets to see this show and other Shakespearean productions during the PSFsummer season

It was clear to me from the very first scene that this was going to be a production with a great sense of humor.  When actor Carl Wallnau came on stage as Egeon, a condemned merchant who has been searching for his twin sons, I prepared myself for the relatively straightforward exposition of what I knew to be a fair bit of backstory.  Egeon’s account is necessary in any medium to set up the play; his scene is sort of a prologue.  On paper, it’s interesting enough, but doesn’t make for a particularly memorable moment. So, when Wallnau launched into a hilarious retelling of Egeon’s woes, complete with a multitude of props, the assistance of a surprising number of actors, and a fair few tongue-in-cheek references to the festival itself, I realized that this production was going to be an incredible amount of fun.

Wallnau’s Egeon was not the only strong first impression here.  As Steve Burns (famed as the original host of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues) initially took the stage as manservant Dromio of Syracuse, weighed down by enough luggage to take the whole cast camping, the physical comedy and well-timed ad-libs that would characterize the entire production had the crowd roaring with laughter.  Burns continued to mastermind the hilarity, embracing one bald audience member as his Dromio’s “Father Time,” a man with whom Burns went on to have a series of incredibly funny interactions.  Burns would later borrow programs and exchange glances with individual patrons, bringing the audience very literally into the action.  Burns was not alone in a masterful command of the stage; one by one characters burst on stage with so much energy that you couldn’t help but be swept up in the revelry, even when it wasn’t taking place partly in your aisle – which it often was.

Burns’ counterpart, Chris Faith, as Dromio of Ephesus, matched Burns’ hilarity blow for blow – and the blows abounded here in The Comedy of Errors.  As one set of long-separated identical twins, Faith and Burns made for a fantastic tag team in every sense of the term.  The pair took turns through the first four acts driving the comic action on the stage; between Faith’s desperate, stage-spanning attempts to evade a beating with a foreign object at the hands of his master Antipholus (well-played by Thomas Matthew Kelley), and Burns’ leap onto the back of his master Antipholus (identically well-played by Ian Bedford) with all the grace of a spritely Mexican luchador, the pair quite literally resembled a lovably outmatched pair of tiny wrestlers.

Steve Burns applying the aforementioned sleeperhold to Ian Bedford (photo by Lee A. Butz)

Some of my favorite wrestling in this production took place somewhat offstage.  As Burns’ Dromio wrestled with the misplaced affection of, and his unwitting betrothal to, the remarkably obese kitchen wench Nell, her booming offstage presence became a great highlight.  Though we never “see” Nell, Burns’ hopeless endeavor to describe her full girth to the audience – an attempt marked with fantastic physical ad-libs – was easily the most hysterical moment in production.

While the Dromios were an exceptional main event, as was to be expected here, and a number of other actors put in a fantastic performances – notably Eleanor Handley as a wonderful Adriana, and Brandon Meeks as a firm but fair Duke of Ephesus – one particular performer in this stellar ensemble was a wonderfully unexpected surprise.  On the page, the character Luciana is a dim-witted foil for her somewhat sharper sister, and a consistent purveyor of terrible advice to all and sundry, but far from a stand-out element of the play.  While Luciana may be somewhat outshone on Shakespeare’s page, actress Lauren Orkus did a brilliant job of bringing her to life and realizing her full comic potential on this stage.  As the man Luciana presumes to be her sister’s husband declares his love to her, Orkus delivers an enjoyable series of reactions with perfectly timed exclamations and other skillful comic subtleties which elevated the scene.  Orkus has a similar effect throughout the play, standing out and being hilarious in scenes where I did not expect to pay her character much mind.  She reminds me here of Kristen Chenoweth’s Olive Snook from Pushing Daisies, and Suzanne Somers’ Chrissy Snow from Three’s Company: a strong comic female supporting actress who can really make any given scene.  For all her efforts, and certainly for an exceptional performance, I am proud to present Lauren Orkus with the coveted Shawn and Shakespeare Show Stealer Award for this production.

Orkus on the left as Luciana, with Handley, right, as Adriana (photo by Lee A. Butz)

Orkus’ performance was one of a number of ingredients here that made this great play even more enjoyable to see than anyone could have expected.  There was a playful spirit driving the show, one which clearly resonated with both actors and audience.  In a Q&A after the performance, one member of the creative team referred to this energy as a conscious decision early in rehearsal to “embrace a style of performance” marked by the kind of lightheartedness that we had seen on stage.  That was clearly just the first of a number of great decisions, as a fun-loving, tongue-in-cheek mode of operations was incredibly well suited to this play, so full of both slapstick and clever wordplay on the page.  Director Russell Treyz, his production team, and the excellent cast did Shakespeare great justice here in bringing his Comedy of Errors to the stage.

I greatly regret that I was unable to post this review in enough time to get you up to the festival to see this fantastic production.  On the bright side though, the festival will be presenting productions of both Hamlet and The Two Noble Kinsmen, both led by Comedy of Errors Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy.  The Two Noble Kinsmen production will also feature a number of actors from the excellent Errors ensemble including the aforementioned Ian Bedford, Thomas Matthew Kelley, Eleanor Handley, and Shawn and Shakespeare award winning actress Lauren Orkus.  It is my great hope to catch the Two Noble Kinsmen, and I highly recommend you making similar arrangements.

l-r: My sister-in-law Mary Kate (DeSales alum), her former classmate Steve Burns, Chris Faith, and me (photo by Ann O'Brien)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Romantic Confusion and Magical Solutions

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Elizabeth E. Schuch for Immortal Longings Ltd.

Way before Oprah or Dr. Phil got in the game, Shakespeare was taking on the most difficult situations that people in a romantic relationship are likely to face, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a veritable self-help guide for those wayward lovers.  Reconfigured in the lingo of the self-help genre, chapters of the Midsummer Night’s Guide to Messy Relationships would include (in no particular order):

How to Deal with the Violent Invasion of Your Country by a Devilishly Handsome Monarch

Why Your Daughter Will Marry Who You Say She’ll Marry 

followed closely by 

Policies and Procedures for Having Insolent Daughters Lawfully Executed

What to Do When Your Fairy Queen Won’t Give You the Small Indian Boy You’ve Been Asking For

Why Hallucinogenic Concoctions Will Only Make Courtship More Complicated

And everyone’s favorite,

What to Do When You Realize the Guy You’ve Been in Love With Is, Quite Literally, An

Tell me that chapter doesn’t contain timeless advice, ladies.  I dare you.

The Update

While there have been several posts in 2011, and there have been plenty of Shawn and Shakespearean goings-on since the last post a few weeks ago  (I'm prepping another play post, I was down checking out the latest play from Shawn and Shakespeare favorite Quintessence Theatre Group, I've been lining up more reviews, etc.), there is no denying that my overall output has slowed.  So, I thought an update would be in order.

First off, please know that the project is alive and well.  I am incredibly passionate about continuing to blog my way through the Shakespearean catalog.  Posts will resume at some point in the next couple of weeks, and the frequency will pick back up toward my once-a-week ideal.

Two things have contributed to the slower Shakespearean start to 2011:

1. My job situation changed dramatically.  I had been working full-time in education, but my assignment was temporary, and ended with the first semester of school on January 14th.  As I continue to pursue a permanent contract teaching English, this recent transition left me with a lot of occupational rearranging to do in order to keep the bills paid and my family insured.  Now that I've made the arrangements for a comfortable transition, I have more time for writing.

2. I've been fortunate enough that my band, The Kiera Plan, has been gaining momentum. We just released a new single internationally on iTunes and Amazon, we're in pre-production for our second full-length album, we've had a series of great performance opportunities come up, and we're in the running for a spot on the 2011 Vans Warped Tour.  This is all great news, and I feel incredibly blessed to have so much positive energy surrounding the band, but basically it's just been keeping me pretty busy.  I definitely like to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves, and since Shawn and Shakespeare allows for more of me setting my own pace, it's been more playing and songwriting than reading and blogging of late.  Much like the job situation though, now that arrangements have been made and music is in motion, I am confident that there will be ample time for both the band and the blog.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for me, feel free to e-mail me at shawnandshakespeare@gmail.com.  For now, I truly appreciate your interest and your support.  You won't have to wait until midsummer for the next post; I'll have it for you inside of a fortnight (by my troth).

All the best,

Shawn

Antony and Cleopatra: This Modern Love

Cleopatra and the Dying Mark Anthony by Pompeo Batoni, 1763

Despite the fact that the action picks up in ancient Rome, more or less where Julius Caesar left off, there is a lot that is remarkably modern about Antony and Cleopatra. You’ve got a guy blowing off work to make time for his mistress, people getting married carelessly without bothering to get to know their spouses, and a husband-stealing diva who creates all kinds of drama for her already remarried widower boyfriend because she can’t ever really be sure that he’s any more committed to her than he has been to any of his poor, dead wives. Of course, this kind of thing is just fodder for daytime talk shows when it involves the lower classes, but it is primetime news when it involves royalty or heads of state. The infidelity of England’s Prince Charles to Lady Diana became more than just countless front pages; it became a part of world history. Imagine how much more scandalous it would be, then, if the unfaithful party was actually expected to be in charge of running his country, and carelessly placed his people at risk in order to pursue the continued pleasure of his mistress’s company. This is exactly where Mark Antony begins in Antony and Cleopatra.

The Tempest (2010)

Director Julie Taymor’s Tempest is the perfect storm: the cast, the effects, the costumes, the make-up – everything about this production is phenomenal.  The shame of it is that with Taymor busy trying not to kill anybody on Broadway in her exceedingly dangerous musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and with virtually no distribution for the film’s December 10^th 2010 release – can you even call four theaters in the whole country a release? – the spectacular Tempest has yet to receive the attention or the reception that it deserves.  Having been severely disappointed to realize on December 9^th, that my geographical region was not to be one of the four graced with a single theater playing The Tempest, I was furious to read blurbs in the press about the financially disappointing performance of the film after the opening weekend.  So allow me to briefly vent to all of those writers before I proceed with the review:

Hello, film industry geniuses.  If a film isn’t released in more theaters than I can count on one hand, THEN IT CAN’T POSSIBLY MAKE ANY MONEY!  That is, unless there are some 100,000 seat theaters somewhere in America that I don’t know about.

Sorry about that, I just love this film, and I was super salty that people were trashing it just because none of the power players involved made its release a big enough deal.

The irony is that the film itself is a testament to the power of great decision making. 

Julius Caesar: The Problem With Top Billing

The Death of Caesar at the Hands of the Senators by Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798

As Shakespeare dramatizes the over two-thousand-year-old assassination of Roman general Julius Caesar, he raises a number of timeless questions about the problematic nature of success.  Late rap music great Christopher Wallace, The Notorious B.I.G., famously hinted at the heart of the problem when he said that “The more money you make, the more problems you get.”  Whether the bar is set by money, power, position, or even virtue, the rise of any individual to some substantial level of greatness always seems to simultaneously give rise to envy, criticism, and even hatred.   Haters will want to see a great man brought down.  Unfortunately for Caesar, back in 44 BC, haters weren’t just going to hate; they were going to stab you thirty-three times in the chest.

The Notorious B.I.G.

The Tempest: Adventures on a Magic Island

Miranda by John W. Waterhouse 1916

It really is as cool as it sounds.  Shakespeare’s The Tempest is like an awesome mash-up of Lost, Harry Potter, and Giligan’s Island.

What we’ve got here are five acts filled with shipwrecks, intrigue, magic, and monsters.  It really is incredibly entertaining.  The play was initially grouped with Shakespeare’s comedies, others later categorized it as a romance, but the only descriptor that really matters here is fun, because that’s exactly what The Tempest is.  It’s got everything.

The drama kicks off right away as a ship filled with important passengers (the King of Naples being one) loses its battle with a fierce storm.  However, this particular tempest is not the work of Mother Nature; it was conjured by a POWERFUL SORCERER!  Dun Dun Duuuuuunnnnnn! 

Titus (1999)

Little did I know, when I literally tried to pitch a film adaptation of Titus Andronicus to Quentin Tarantino several months ago, that critically acclaimed director Julie Taymor made her debut bringing Titus to the big screen back in 1999.  I guess that explains why Tarantino’s agent never got back to me.  Note to self: do more research before contacting Hollywood agents with your next big idea.  In fairness to Julie Taymor, I’ll say that I was dreading my viewing of Titus well before I hit play.  Shakespeare’s text is so gruesome and disturbing that I wasn’t sure I had the stomach to make it through the whole film.  But with Taymor’s Tempest on the way, I knew that I had to acknowledge this bold new voice in Shakespearean cinema.

I had braced myself for horror, but nothing could have prepared me for Titus’s opening scene.  Having expected the action to begin in ancient Rome, I was caught completely off guard when the first thing I saw was a young boy with a paper bag over his head, breaking his toys apart amid a large-scale ketchup explosion at a 1950s-era kitchen table. In fact, I was afraid I had inserted the wrong disc into my DVD player.  Though this fear turned out to be unfounded, the strange scene made for anxiety-filled viewing all the same.  Things did calm down for me moments later as a large man, dressed entirely in black, burst through the kitchen window to seemingly kidnap this child.  Normally, this would be alarming, but once you see the kind of mess the kid was making, you’ll accept the fact that he had to be stopped somehow.

Coriolanus: Pride Plus Betrayal Equals Bad News for Everybody

Coriolanus at the Gates of Rome by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1730

In a Rome more ancient than that of Julius Caesar or Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus centers around the marquee-stealing pride of an exceptional Roman soldier, and – no surprise here – the disastrous effects of that greatest of errors.  The arrogant master of arms in question is Coriolanus, but don’t look for that name to pop up until the penultimate scene of Act One; until then, the man who will be known as Coriolanus goes by Martius.  This original name is a great fit, since his prowess on the battlefield inherently associates him with Mars (Roman god of war), and all things martial.

No, not that kind of martian.

Though his reputation precedes him, we don’t get to see our martian friend in action on the battlefield before we see him in the throes of his other powerful passion – hating the common people.  Charming, right?  Being of Roman nobility, Martius disdains the lower class, and is only too happy to give these “dissentious rogues” a piece of his discriminating mind when the need arises.   The commoners have been kicking up an accusation-heavy fuss concerning their oppression at the hands of the ruling class (particularly as it relates to corn for some reason), and have thus been granted tribunes to represent them in the government.  Martius is livid.  He’s really not a “no taxation without representation” kind of guy.   Martius speaks his mind in all things, so his feelings about the common people and their representatives are no secret.  As the play opens, the protesting citizens label him “chief enemy to the people.”

Don't mess with these Romans' corn

As You Like It (2006)

By any standard, Kenneth Branagh’s 2006 production of As You Like It is exceptional.  It is both an incredibly entertaining film and – in my mind - a terrifically faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play.  In the DVD extra “From Page to Screen With Kenneth Branagh,” the director explains that, as a filmmaker adapting Shakespeare, “you’re trying to serve the story in the medium you’re working in” (emphasis added).  The point being that if you just stick to the text, then you don’t have a visually stunning movie; but throw the text out the window in order to make a Star Wars prequel-esque, special effects-heavy, cinematic explosion, then you’ve lost Shakespeare’s genius in the translation.   Brannagh makes neither mistake here.

In As You Like It, Branagh makes the bold decision to change the play’s setting from a French dukedom (of an uncertain time period) to the feudal Japan of the 19^th century.  In fact, as the film opened, I felt like the play was happening in the cover art of Weezer’s classic 1996 album Pinkerton.  

You should own this album.

As a huge fan, I was that much more excited about the movie.  The setting change was a make it or break it move for Branagh’s production, one which proves itself over the course of the film to be a brilliant decision. Shakespeare’s play begins with the hostile takeover by Duke Frederick already completed, but the cool new setting allows Brangh to stage it at the film’s outset as a ferocious samurai invasion.  Pairing that awesome open with seamless translation of Shakespeare’s “wrestling” in Act One to the sumo wrestling in the film, and you not only have a dynamite new setting, but also the brilliant juxtaposition of the dukedom’s violence and the peace we find in the Forest of Arden.