NEWS: The Passion of Zoe Roosevelt

 

You are cordially invited...

On Saturday September 28, 2024 there will be a free reading of the first act of my play The Passion of Zoe Roosevelt.    The Broadwater Theatre at 6320 Santa Monica Blvd (near Vine) opens its door at 10am.  It is presented under the auspices of Fierce Backbone Theatre Company.

Attendance is FREE.  Feedback requested.

This is a four character play, with the first act showing a group of people (two actors, two writers) coming together on an important day in November, 1914 during what was then called "The European War."  

The cast is:

• Zoe Roosevelt -- Emily Asher Kellis 
• Ferdinand Riley -- Skylar Silverlake
• Giselle de Vere --  Brittney de Leon
• Josephine Bligh -- De Ann Odom
• Stage Directions – Matthew Kamm

Twelfth Night (burlesque)

Spoilers ahoy! 

I make no excuse for loving this particular play of Shakespeare's, easily my favorite of his comedies (and one I've seen dozens of times).  I also have zero problem with anyone deciding to "play" with the play, so long as what we get in the end works.

Toil and Trouble Burlesque's version of Twelfth Night does indeed work.  Sometimes I almost wept with laughter and a couple of times I nearly lost my breath.

Yes it is a burlesque.  Every single opportunity it seems for having somebody do a strip was seized upon (male and female).  More, since the venue is a bar they have a license that allows them to play/perform lots of popular music, which they do--weaving Kate Bush, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Sira among many others, often with startling poignancy in such an overtly farcical show.

Same plot is essentially there--Viola (Kim Dalton) washes ashore in Illyria, believing wrongly her twin brother Sebastian (Alec Schiff) drowned, which he himself believes about her after he's rescued by a sexy pirate (Rehyan Rivera).  Somewhat rarely, these latter two are clearly portrayed as having a sexual fling going on.  Viola pretends to be a boy named Caesario who joins the service of Duke Orsino (Walt Gray IV) and gets the unenviable job of wooing the local Countess Olivia (Jessica Jones) on his behalf.  Olivia is mourning the loss of her brother (this is the first production ever I've seen that did something with this, how her story and Viola's have so much in common) (Reagan Osborne), but takes one look at Caesario and falls.  Hard.

Olivia's household includes her dour Steward Malvolio (Amir Levi), her maid Maria (Libby Letlow), her drunken kinsman Sir Toby Belch (Matt Pick), as well as his silly friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Daniel Krause)--this last portrayed with zero pathos which is one of my few criticisms of this gloriously fun production.

Rounding out the cast are the Fool Feste (Lily Anne Smith), one of the best Fools in all Shakespeare which is saying a lot.  Then there are a pair of maids in a series of fetchingly skimpy and sometimes kinky costumes (Angie Hobin, Kayla Emerson).

The plot is far more convoluted than I've hinted at here, but (as noted) explores quite a bit most productions don't.  For example, Viola begins to feel tempted by the Countess!  And Orsino is a tad confused in the end over who he finds more attractive--Viola or Sebastian!  More, I must applaud a production that makes zero attempt in even the slightest way to make the twins look like each other at all!  Not even their costumes have a single color in common!  And.  It.  Did.  Not.  Matter!

Honestly, this might well be my favorite production of Twelfth Night I've ever seen.  

Twelfth Night plays Saturdays in August at 7pm (the show itself starts at 8pm), i.e. Aug 19 and 26, 2023 at the Three Clubs Bar  1123 Vine St, Los Angeles, CA 90038, Los Angeles , CA.

Measure4Measure (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

I have seen William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure at least five times, including the production in which I played a tiny role lo these many year past. 

City Garage's Measure4Measure is not quite that play, although the vast majority of it consists of Shakespeare's writings.  Still, I'm stating outright this is the best production of this "problem play" I have ever seen.

Love getting to write those words.

To start, five of the many, many characters in this rather sprawling "comedy" (back in the day, this word was applied loosely to any play that did not end in massive deaths and devastation, i.e. tragedies) have specific actors assigned to them.  Everyone else is played by two other actors, which not only provides a chance for Kat Johnson and Angela Beyer to really show off their skills, it adds to some laughs to some rather more serious moments and (more importantly) gives these two--as well as Lucio, played/danced brilliantly by Courtney Brechemin (they nearly steal the show, for reals) to sometimes comment on events.

Because, as we hear up front, this is a "problem play."  Which means what?  Essentially, a play by Shakespeare that seems a bit weird, like Cymbeline with a plot so complicated even the title character at one point says "Wait, stop, I'm confused."  Or the deeply dark, cynical love story that crashes, falls over, and burns then starts a minor plague in Troilus and Cressida.  This one has a plot that, frankly, seems more disturbing every single moment one thinks about it.  That three of the performers actually do takes or feel outraged over the supposed hero's actions--i.e. the Duke played with a perfect blend of ruthless myopia by Troy Dunn--really brings this out.  It doesn't take much time out of the main action, just a commentary not unlike (albeit far more pointed) contemporary jokes included in other productions.  

In fact, it is hard in context not to see Shakespeare as exploring some really nasty parts of his own world, as well as ours, sometimes and especially in this play.  In my opinion.

The Duke of Verona decides to go abroad for a bit, leaving his lieutenants, the elderly but kind Escalus (Andy Kallok) and the supremely strict Angelo (Nathan Dana Aldrich or Anthony Sannazzaro depending on the performance) in charge.  He explicitly does this because for the past nineteen years he's been lax on a lot of very strict laws on the books.  As a result, vice is awash.  He pretty clearly intends Angelo especially to crack the whip, then when the Duke returns he will reform matters--thus letting the city blame Angelo for the change, and praise the Duke for making things right.

Richard III had lessons to learn from this guy, who promptly sneaks back into the city in disguise to see how things are going.

Apart from the brothels being closed down and burned, the employees therein punished, etc. there's also the case of a young man named Claudio who has gotten his fiancee Juliet pregnant.  Now, one of the few details we know about Shakespeare's life is that this is precisely how he came to marry his own wife.  Just sayin'  Lucio, our wonderful narrator, goes to see if Claudio's sister Isabel (Naomi Helen Weissberg)--in a subtle pun about to become a sister in a convent--might try and intervene on her brothers' behalf.  She is totally willing, and pleads for mercy as well as Portia ever did.  But...what she does, by her obvious piety and virtue, is inflame Angelo's seemingly-feeble lust, which roars into life a la Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  He eventually, and with difficulty since she seemingly does not and/or refuses to understand his meaning, demands a quid pro quo of her body for Claudio's life.

When the Duke finds out about this, he comes up with a very weird and convoluted plot to rescue Claudio and yet spare Isabel--a solution which is all kinds of problematical, as our cast very vocally notes with their reaction!  In fact, apart from a love of scheming, the Duke seems to believe Isabel but also cannot quite bring himself to believe her at the same time.  Which honestly seems the most realistic moment in the whole play, if one has been paying attention to the real world.

This all gets very complicated, which is in and of itself part of the fun, not least when Angelo orders Claudio put to death anyway and the Duke has to juggle even more balls (or words) to save the young man.  Which he could do so much more easily, it must be said.  Lord this man loves his drama!  More than he loves his justice, certainly.  In fact the entire climax of the play comes across as needlessly cruel and manipulative, a fact most productions try to mitigate against as much as possible.  At the very end--and here I cannot praise Charles A. Duncombe's editing nor Frederique Michel's direction enough--what seems like the perfect ending in terms of theatrical formula lies naked in its exploitation and deceit and casual sadism.  

So...wow.  

Measure4Measure plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until July 9, 2023 at City Garage, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Hamlet at Antaeus (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

Antaeus Theatre Company remains something of a jewel in the Los Angeles Theatre community, a highly (and deservedly) respected group with lots of support and which produced marvelous classic works.  I  have certainly found their shows just lovely, wonderful, touching.

So they have created some mighty strong expectations.  Which means the current production of Hamlet suffers by comparison.  Unfairly.

I want to start with the good, which is very good indeed.  This show has literally one of the best Laertes (Michael Kirby) I have ever seen, especially since that remains one of the most difficult roles in the whole play.  Unlike most Shakespeare productions, I understood almost every single sentence spoken--which to be honest is the norm for Antaeus.  Several "lesser" characters were not only good, but excellent such as the Player King (Joel Swetow), and Guildenstern (Sally Hughes).  Also, and this is no small thing, the sword fight was good.  Cannot tell you how much a bad or poorly rehearsed sword fight has ruined many a Hamlet or other play I've attended over the years.  Plus I was genuinely impressed at how this edit retained so much of the play (like Fortinbras!) so often omitted from what is after a very long play.

This makes it sound like I'm about to damn the rest of the production with faint praise.  No!  Nor will I even praise with faint damnation.  I will simply say--it is not uniformly excellent, while never once stopping anything but a good performance.

In fact the only solid criticism I have is that the costumes were a little bland.  A little.  Not even solidly bland, just kinda/sorta.

On a more subtle point, I did not personally feel or perceive any specific theme or idea in the production, especially in the first half of the first Act.  The director's note in the program identifies Hamlet's dilemma in rather boring terms of plot, rather than emotional life of the character.  In the very best productions of this play, I know for sure whether Hamlet (Ramon de Ocampo) and Ophelia (Jeanne Syquia) have slept together.  In this one, I have a strong suspicion only--which still places this above the vast majority of productions.  Likewise I was very impressed with Gertrude (Veralyn Jones), and I thoroughly approve of casting one actor to play both Uncle and Ghost (Gregg T. Daniel).  Polonius (Peter Van Norden) remains the most difficult role in the whole play, and I have still seen only two performances in the role I totally believed.  One of those was Ian Holm.  But this time at least he was genuinely charming, which is a vast improvement.

All of which boils down to complaints about nuance in a production I think otherwise quite good.  

Hamlet plays Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm, Sundays at 2pm and Mondays at 8pm at the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway, Glendale, CA 91205

The Devil's Bride (review)

Spoilers Ahoy!

Let me say right now I went into seeing The Devil's Bride at Theatre Unleashed utterly in love with the concept.  Essentially this is a sequel to William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.  At the end of that comedy, the villain of the piece--the bastard Don John--has been captured and the too-clever-for-his-own-good hero Benedick is given the power to decide his punishment.  This play is all about that punishment.  In effect it is sequel.

The result proved quite lovely!

Don John (Michael Cortez) we meet in a dungeon, under the auspices of Dogberry (Richard Abraham) and Verges (Cyanne McClairian), two of the funniest Shakespearean characters this side of Midsummer Night's Dream.  Soon enough Benedick (Jim Martyka) arrives to order his relief under specific conditions--the bastard prince is to forfeit all lands, treasure and titles unless he can persuade Benedick's sister Allegra (Sammi Lappin) to marry him.

Understandably, pretty much everyone in the play who hears about this does a double take.  What on Earth is Benedick up to?  He explains all to his new wife/once and future antagonist Beatrice (Jenn Scuderi Crafts), even as Allegra herself arrives in Messina from Padua. Generations ago, a gypsy curse decreed any girl child born of their family would see all those who agreed to marry them die before their wedding day.  Allegra, the first such child in generations, took the legend as exactly that--until she was betrothed three times in a row to men who died before the wedding.  She has resolved to enter a convent.  Benedick believes Don John might break her resolve and in the process she will temper his dark impulses.  And as a royal prince with a substantial fortune she "could do worse."

When alone on stage, Allegra reveals this is not at all to her liking. She had dreamt of love, of marriage and children.  But even though she liked none of her late fiancees, neither did she want any of them dead!  The same is true of Don John!

Naturally enough, Don John's rather dark turn of mind makes him presume that any woman so offered to him will either prove a "whore or a harpy."  Which makes good sense, as far as it goes. One of the best moments in the whole play, which you can almost see coming, happens when the two finally do meet.  And yes, sparks fly.  Allegra, wanting love so much and having renounced it for the most honorable motives, quickly finds her resolve challenged.  John, a man bitter with the hatred hurled at him for being born out of wedlock (some openly insist he cannot possess a soul for just that reason), finds Allegra a young woman captivating almost beyond words.  A meaty seed of a story!

But totally worthless unless the cast is equal to it.

Fortunately, all the leads in this play are well up to the challenge, up to an including Duke Leonato (Steve Peterson).  All throughout what might easily have been nothing more than an intellectual exercise for Shakespeare geeks (like myself) rises to an actual drama.  I will frankly say Lappin and Cortez steal the entire show, as it should be since they are the title characters and the pole around which everything turns. Lappin has turned in many a fine comedic performance before now, and I'm thrilled to see her (as I have longed for) do drama.  The genuine torment of her Allegra proved fascinating to watch, as was Cortez's turn as a would-be villain who in fact turns out to be rather un-villainous at second or third or fourth glance.  That he remains tormented by his late first wife Marisol (Molly Moran), so much so she appears to taunt him, could be cloying but remains instead a window into his man's soul.

Having said all this praise, I'll admit the secondary characters aren't really as well-served by Joan Silsby's the script as we might like, such as Conrade (Lee Pollero), Don Pedro (Matthew Martin), Margaret (Isabelle Gonlund) or Borachio (Carey Matthews). But then, we're comparing this to a play by Shakespeare after all!  That said, I found myself a bit sorry the heightened language gradually seemed to vanish altogether by the second half of Act Two.  Frankly, I will also say the sword fight needs lots more practice to achieve the kind of speed which makes a sword fight exciting!

Yet, those are quibbles. The Devil's Bride not only lived up overall to my hopes, but gave me lots of lovely surprises as well as compelling performances full of those contradictory impulses that make characters human.  I want to see this show again.

The Devil's Bride plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until May 21, 2016 with special Monday shows May 2 and 9 also at 8pm, upstairs at the Belfry Stage 11031 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood CA 91602

R&J (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Last year I reviewed the Mine is Yours theater's gender-swapped production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I had a mixed reaction to it. Now they've re-imagined that production for the 2015 Hollywood Fringe with a somewhat different cast and noticeably different staging and approach.

The new R&J, about the star crossed lovers Romea (Mary Ellen Schneider) and Julian (Dane Oliver), is much improved! In fact, the chemistry between these two actors is one of the major highlights of the production--that and the often-startling ways their love is portrayed. I don't want to spoil anything (despite the above disclaimer) but the moment wherein they meet is fairly electric--and tellingly, from that moment on the hitherto rather callow Romea begins to act in a more adult manner. She starts to show promise of what a very fine young woman this teenager might grow to be, if only.

If only. Two little words that might as well be engraved on one of the two theatrical masks. We've all seen this particular Shakespeare play many times, but kudos to the cast and director Abby Craden for making us feel that tragedy in the gut. In fact, that seems to be the reason for the gender switch. It makes us see the work anew. When Julian is treated as a sex object, we aren't used to thinking of that in relation to a teenage boy. When Romea stabs Tybalt to death, the rage involved feels different when fueled by feminine energy.

This means that (for the most part) anything about the matriarchal nature of this world simply never ends up explored. Which is too bad.

But on the other hand the world of this play does exist, does feel consistent (using Julian as a maypole in a party--and his reaction--was a nice and disturbing touch), especially in the interplay of characters. The gangs of restless young women such as Tybalt (Cj Merriman), Mercutia (Taylor Jackson Ross in one of the plum roles of this play) and Benvolia (Hannah Pell) to whom Romea belongs were much better realized than the same in most other productions I've seen--which involved young men of course.

Alan Blumenfeld as the Nurse and Katherine James as Sister Laurence also stood out, lending a gravitas to older individuals who understood yet remained in some sense baffled by the leads.

I genuinely would say this is my favorite live production of Romeo and Juliet. Perfect? No. But it works, it holds my attention and twists my heart.

R&J has one more performance, Saturday, June 27th at 3pm at The Actors Company in The Other Space,
916A N Formosa Ave. West Hollywood, CA 90046.

Slings and Arrows (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

This marks my first review of a work from the Monkey Wrench Collective, an experimental theater group pretty much headed by Dave Barton, director of this re-imagination of Shakespeare's Hamlet. A commissioned work, intended to be site specific, rather like The Manor in Beverly Hills, Slings and Arrows can be seen at the Casa Romantica in San Clemente. The idea is to use the lovely seaside mansion (utterly charming and gorgeous btw) and its rooms as the settings for a carefully tailored set of reworked scenes using Shakepeare's most famous play as its foundation, inspiration and (in many ways) a seed. We the audience are encouraged to wander between a certain set of rooms, where scenes take place. We all begin and end each act together.

So let me address the production in terms of three elements.

First, this moving around. I remain convinced it could work, and in many ways it did, but on a fundamental level a lot of my energy was focused on figuring out the map included in the program. I got lost. More than once. As a result I missed a scene from Act One and rushed to see truncated scenes for Act Two. This helped me not at all when it comes to entering into this world, losing myself in the story. In fact, I got lost once. Outdoors. In the dark. I applaud the whole notion of the audience becoming voyeurs into the lives of this dysfunctional family! Really--simply adored the idea! Sometimes the impact of that worked wonderfully. But mostly the raw mechanics of it distracted me something fierce--and cumulatively.

Second is the script, the re-imagination. Overall, I was pretty impressed! I'm not one to complain about re-imagining or re-working Shakespeare, far from it! This production accomplished it at times with considerable aplomb! Cutting Horatio for example--brilliant! Especially when his important scenes are transferred to others like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (expanding this characters proved a magnificent choice) and in one very crucial scene, Gertrude!  Really, I might have problems now and then accepting Horatio as a character in future productions! But I did get confused. The world of this play, as opposed to Hamlet, is explained in general terms by director Barton. Honestly, that isn't a good sign. I end up wondering why the play cannot speak for itself in performance? And the initial setup of this world feels jolting, out of sync. Maybe they intended it, but I never quite entered into this new reality, never quite understood it on an intuitive level. Many of the details were lovely or intriguing--the Mexican painted skull for Yorik, the paper cranes of Hamlet's love letters, the weirdly clownlike yet somehow mundane normalcy of Rosencranz, etc. But I was left with a fair number of problems in terms of visceral impact. Central to the conceit (we are told) is that Hamlet suffers from schizophrenia, to the point of hallucinations (these two are the skull-faced Shadow Hamlets, who take the place of the ghost and with whom he shares so many monologues--while they themselves take Hamlet's place in many scenes). But--everyone seems at most mildly surprised at Hamlet's obvious and severe mental illness. How is that possible, no one noticed until now? Who are the Shadow Hamlets, anyway? Archetypes of his unconscious somehow broken free? Demons? Echoes of his future actions? I don't know. They're intriguing, but I don't understand them--or a lot of other things in this world.

Which brings me to element three. The performances. Like the rest of this production, a seriously mixed bag.  Rather strangely, I thought in many ways the weakest performance came from Hamlet himself! He seemed to be doing an imitation of what a good Hamlet should be rather than a real character (most of the time--in fact he, like everyone, had some very fine moments indeed). Polonius and Laertes, as usual, remain cyphers although the performers at least brought an intensity that felt real and were more than cardboard cutouts (the fate of both characters in most Hamlets I've seen). Ophelia at least had a great scene with one of the Shadow Hamlets while Rosencranz had another great scene with the other Shadow. Those two were by far the best scenes in the whole performance.

I'm glad I saw this, not least because of the genuine quality that dazzled in spots, amid what frankly ended up feeling pretty murky. Lots of productions rarely even achieve that!

Slings and Arrows, Shakespeare's Hamlet Re-Imagined will play at Casa Romantica 415 Avenida Granada
San Clemente, CA 92672 Friday April 17 and Saturday April 18 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $25 and you can check availability at (949) 498-2139.

Off the Rails (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Measure for Measure is one of several of Shakespeare's works dubbed "problem plays" by literary experts.  To be fair, plenty of actors and directors agree.  It certainly does not easily fall into one of the neat categories of Comedy, Tragedy or History.  At least it doesn't feel that way.

Off the Rails is based on this "problem play," relocating it in time and space to the Old West. More, it retells the whole story in terms of the Native American experience.  This sounds intriguing, at least to me.  It frankly proved better than expected overall. Randy Reinholz (Choctaw) did the adaptation, and honestly the result ends up uneven.

Let us get the unevenness out of the way right now.  The whole thing keeps having sudden changes of mood and feel, at times to considerable dramatic impact but other times I felt yanked out of the story.  Having Buffalo Bill's Wild  West Show pop up at the end was one, and having it followed by a Native dance was another.  The former felt awkward and the latter felt as if it came out of nowhere.  Methinks the idea behind it is clear, and let me say that idea seems borderline glorious.  But the transition was about as awkward and clumsy as possible.  Nor frankly did it help that much of the show was directed in the style of a rather cheesy production of Oklahomah! I'll also point out the exposition at the start filled me with dread.  It looked little better than a kindergarden play.

PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Schwartz © 2015

Now, though, let me turn to where the play and production not only rose above all that but soared! At its finest this proved in many ways the best Measure for Measure I've ever seen! Start with the how the whole story ends up framed.  The frontier, a place were laws alternate between loose and severe.  Where vast power concentrates in the hands of the very few, with an even greater divide based on race.  Loads of opportunities here, but Rheinholz makes a few dazzling choices.  First and foremost, he eschewed turning the equivalent of Vienna's Duke into the lead.  This proved brilliant!  All of his storyline that makes up the bulk of the play then becomes not about a startlingly good and wise man setting right his realm, but about how an oppressed people meet the challenge of a deeply unjust world. Many of the Duke's lines and actions transfer to Madame Overdone (Shyla Marlin - Choctaw), who also ends up methinks with some variations of lines from Othello's Emilia, cutting ones about women and men. This is good stuff!  Especially since Madame Overdone's salloon singer proves to be none other than Mariana (Adrieanne Perez), placing her in the action from very early on--a stereotype who suddenly becomes a far more complex person in our eyes once we learn anything at all about her.

PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Schwartz © 2015

More, now Isobel (Elizabeth Frances - Cherokee) becomes an even more powerful character than she is in the original!  Not least because there's no one to offer answers to her dilema, no vastly powerful figure in disguise rendering aid.  The Duke, as I said, is gone.  She's left on her own in the face of Captain Angelo's self-righteousness and racist lust (Michael Matthys), threatening her brother's life and her own chastity.  The scenes between these two rivet with horror, not least because unlike with Shakespeare's play, we don't see a deus ex machina in sight. 

Parenthetically, I must point out the blocking in these scenes sometimes really interferes.  These actors prove themselves very capable of filling stillness with radiant power.  Wish they were given more chance to do so!

Likewise, the Claudio character now rises as well!  Shaun Taylor-Corbett (Blackfeet) as Momaday becomes less a background stock character and more of a tragic hero, even given lines from the male half of Romeo

PHOTO CREDIT: Craig Schwartz © 2015

and Juliet. More than his life turns out to be at stake. His identity is under attack, as it has been since childhood, as the Whites have sought to "Kill the Indian, save the Man" by eradicating Native culture.  That he fell in love with an Irish girl (Emily Lenkeit) who wed him in a Choctaw ceremony but begged him to do the same in a Christian one brings out more of what makes the original a "problem play."  It doesn't give simple answers.  What after all really is justice?  How does one decide what to do when there aren't any good choices?  Does mercy extend only to those whom you like or are like you?  Should it? Can it?


As noted earlier, the whole production remains uneven, but I strongly recommend audiences to go anyway. This play rises to the level of resplendent more than a few times.  The leads do wonders with their roles, and more than once my heart felt pierced with the pain of these characters.

Off the Rails performs Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8pm, Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm until March 15, 2015 at the Wells Fargo Theater in The Autry Museum in Griffith Park. 

LA Women's Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark not only remains one of Shakespeare's most famous works, but one of the most challenging. For an almost startling number of reasons! Many go unnoticed unless (like yours truly) one has seen many productions of differing styles and quality.

The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company just premiered a production. I've never seen a show of theirs before now, sorry to say. Having watched this, I'm even sorrier to have missed earlier shows! A major conceit of this company lies in an all-female cast, with male parts (Edwin Drood-like) played by male impersonators, i.e. women in drag. Not in any campy way, but simply in a reversal of how they did theatre in Shakespeare's day--with men (or boys) playing the women's roles. Some folks react badly to such, whereas to me this counts as a style. Ditto the non-traditional casting, i.e. ignoring ethnicity. Seems to me this production did exactly the right thing in such casting. I've seen plenty of Shakespeare productions do as much, and nearly always it worked when the performance pretty much ignored ethnicity altogether. Audiences accept a lot. If the cast simply does something, most of the time the audience follows suit. After all, people don't speak in iambic pentameter! Neither do they routinely stand in such a way as to be visible to people sitting in one end of every single room!

Okay, enough of pontificating about other performances! How was this one?

Something of mixed bag, but far less mixed than usual! Mostly quite good--and in startling ways! I really want to offer up a lot of praise for Natsuko Ohama who plays Polonius. Not until reading through the program did I realize she's also the co-director of this production. And not until I did a search to find her website did my jaw drop as I realize why she looked familiar! Quite simply, she was a regular on a favorite televisions series, Forever Knight. But more to the point, she is the second best Polonius I've ever seen (the best was Ian Holm). And Polonius is the single most difficult character in a play riddled with traps and difficult characters (an acting coach once insisted to me we don't have the final draft of Hamlet for that very reason). Better than nine times out of ten, Polonius ends up as a comic relief, played as an elderly clown. In this production, Ohama's performance shows exactly why that's a mistake. Suddenly, Ophelia's and Laertes' reaction to his death is shared by the audience! Yes, sometimes Polonius is funny, not least because the man does like to hear himself talk and he's old enough now and then he loses his train of thought. But he himself is not a joke. Polonius is wise, active, capable of admitting a mistake (amazing, that)

and for this among other things commands the respect of virtually every other character in the play! In fact, one can point out the biggest mistake Hamlet makes in the whole story is not trusting Polonius from the very start.

Likewise, Cynthia Beckert's Laertes (the second most difficult part in the play, so say I) makes total sense now, simply because his relationship with Polonius is based not simply familial love but genuine respect and admiration. This is no boy enraged at a personal loss, but that enraged boy who knows (as does everyone) what a very fine and good man has been murdered. Ditto Chastity Dotson as Ophelia! The specificity of her performance completely grabbed my heart as I (rightly or wrongly) came away with a precise idea of what is going on inside Ophelia's tortured soul. Lawrence Olivier famously answered the question "Did Hamlet and Ophelia sleep together?" with the (very funny) "Yes...on tour." But my measurement of Ophelia tends to be whether I know the answer to that question. Or think I do. In this case, the whole story of this young lady's tangled feelings for her brother, her father and her paramour, even for herself, bled out onto the stage.

I can offer lots of other praise for many details in this production, including the high quality sets and costumes, the very cunning expedient of making one of the notoriously difficult-to-distinguish pair Rosencranz and Guildenstern female (including--no small thing--treating the character as female in that milieu), the overall quality of the cast (very high indeed) or even the seemingly minor detail of having people cross themselves correctly (how odd this is

so rare!). But I called this performance 'mixed' and I should justify that.

First, the stage combat didn't work. It looked seriously under-rehearsed, because the essential actions themselves seemed just fine. Above average at least! But the actors (the same two) moved too slowly and with not near enough assurance to look like a real fight.

Second, this production over-used the Ghost. Not much, but putting the Ghost of Hamlet's father into scenes where the playwright did not (however briefly) can be problematical and in this case didn't work.

Both of those seem barely qualifying of critiques, maybe. True enough. I've little to complain about at all. A few moments here and there I thought could use some work. Here however I will come to a subtle but pervasive problem.

Hamlet, as played by Lisa Wolpe (who also co-directed). I find myself wondering if the fact she directed herself had something to do with what I have to say. The rest of the cast did such a splendid job overall! But that creates the wrong impression, as if Wolpe did a poor performance. Not at all! But it did prove an uneven one. Quite startlingly so--because between Hamlet's first and last scenes with the Ghost (on the castle parapet, then in the Queen's chamber) this was a vivid, poignant and in his own way powerful Hamlet. Every actor who takes on this role needs to make it their own. Wolpe made a choice I've never seen before--and kudos for that alone! Her Hamlet is...well...weak. Not a bad person, but less strong than a future king really should be, and he cracks under what is simply Too Much. Too much confusion over his father's death and mother's remarriage. Too much resentment over the same,

coupled with the frustrations over his longing for Ophelia. Finding out there's life after death, that his father was murdered and now suffers in Purgatory, followed by one lie after another from those he cares about (his contemporaries, all--like many young men he simply doesn't look to his elders for wisdom or advice). This Hamlet pretends to be mad, but doesn't have to pretend much. He's suffering from a kind of breakdown, and Wolpe shows us this in ways that touch the heart and involve the mind.

But no so much at the very start. At the very beginning this Hamlet seems a cypher. Mind you, the more Wolpe acts with other members of the cast the better and more powerful her every moment. Which is to say she's better doing scenes than soliliquies. Okay.

More frustrating (but still--anything but bad) is when Hamlet returns from abroad, having escaped a piece of treachery by arranging the legal murder of two (former?) friends then going through a battle at sea. The confusion vanishes. Instead of melancholy, we see a razor-like serenity and focus. He's gone from someone who listens to the Dead in terror and rage to a man contemplated the skull of a beloved childhood companion, asking questions without any fierce demand for answers. Ophelia's death moves him to an outburst, but instead of wallowing he realizes almost immediately he's in the wrong, forthrightly and with minimum drama. "Readiness is all," he says. Here lies the heart of who Hamlet has become. Now, he is ready. Knows it. Proceeds with the end of this tale, eyes open and head up, unafraid and resolute. But where did this change take place? And why? Frankly this seems to me the greatest single challenge of the part. Wolpe doesn't quite answer that question for me. She does the middle Hamlet, the tormented young man bubbling over with passions he doesn't understand, extremely well. Her beginning Hamlet is straightforward, real, uninspired but totally believable. Her end Hamlet, though, lacks the power of her Middle.

Which is a nuance. That I 'complain' about such a nuance actually testifies how good this production is overall. I recommend it highly, and say publically it compares well with some of the very best Hamlets I myself have seen (like Kevin Kline's and David Tenant's), and far exceeds others (Mel Gibson's and Richard Chamberlain's).

The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark plays through October 27, 2013 at the Odyssey Theatre at 2055 Sepulveda, Los Angeles CA 90025 (310) 477-2055.

Much Ado About Nothing (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group likes to do Shakespeare.  Sometimes straight.  Sometimes on some kind of probably illegal substance.  Much Ado About Nothing (running through December 2) emerges as the former.  One of the Bard's four big comedies (the others being As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew), this one was made into a very good film some years back starring then-married couple Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson.

Therein demonstrates a key to the play and making it work.  You need a good set to play the primary romantic leads.  Beatrice and Benedick are mismatched lovers, but with a refreshingly realistic (also hilarious) obstacle to their united bliss.

They hate each other.

Or, more accurately, they are each far too witty and too sure of themselves to let the other get away with anything.  Every conversation has become notorious among their many mutual friends for turning into fencing matches with their tongues.  And so their friends, led by Don Pedro (Gino Costabile), resolve to trick them into falling in love.  It works, amid some lovely set pieces involving overheard conversations and misunderstandings.  But if we don't believe these two as a couple, the whole thing collapses.

Fortunately, that proves no problem.  Jennifer Kenyon and Amir Khalighi capture these two with all the intelligence and foolishness, the passion and arrogance one could ask.  These two are precursors of Sam and Diane, Batman and Catwoman, Rhett and Scarlett--couples that go at each other tooth and claw, mostly because in the end how else does a strong person find a mate? They long for an equal.  So it becomes a matter of who survives the contest.  Beatrice and Benedick begin with sneers, contempt, public declarations of insult after insult.  Reminds one of kindergarden, really.  And they are in perfect counterpoint to the younger couple of the play--Claudio (Philip Rodriguez) and Hero (Stefanie Ogden), a pair of nice stupid kids whose angst-strewn drama touches on sex, politics, deceit, humiliation, the threat of death, etc.  Yet their story remains totally upstaged by Beatrice and Benedick.  Indeed, imagine for a moment the play without the two slightly older lovers and it seems so bland!  Despite all the props of drama!  Because the characters remain all important.  Their reactions to each other would eclipse a minor war.  At least that is how they're written.

Kenyon has in some ways the toughest scene, when she overhears a staged conversation about how Benedick loves her to the point of becoming sick.  Yet also, so they say, no one will tell her because they think so highly of him and will not subject their friend to the pain of her rejection.  She has little time and few lines to change her tune, declaring this love shall be requited.  But we won't accept it if we didn't sense something of that before hand.  Which we do!  Khalighi on the other hand gets more time to convince himself, which turns into quite the nice comic monologue.  In fact he gets several, plus the more dramatic scenes.  One really important moment in the play, which we must believe or it just doesn't work, comes a little over halfway.  Claudio, deceived as to his fiancee Hero's virtue, denounces her publicly in the Church where they are to be wed.  Beatrice demands Benedick, who has declared himself in love with her, kill his good friend Claudio.  When Benedick agrees, that's when the whole play deepens.  He loves her.  For real.  And will kill a man, a friend, on her say-so.  Nice?  No.  But real.  And passionate.  And a fine comparison to the young, pleasing, naive and jealous idiot Claudio whom we see early on jumps to easy conclusions.  Not so wise as Benedick.  Under the same circumstances, Benedick one feels would remain loyal.  Demand far more proof.  Instantly suspect the accuser.

One suspects this is a story of Romeo and Juliet if they each had an old and wiser sibling, who in turn also fell in love and managed to prevent the tragedy.

The overall production itself is remarkably fast and lean.  Every trace of fat has seen an editing pencil, while the tone ends up rather frenzied and veering towards comedia del arte.  But not quite there.  Never seen this play done quite such a manner, but the proof is in the pudding--I was both moved and I laughed.  Nor was I alone.  Some nuances got lost, even opportunities for humor amid the steady and quick pace.  But then, there's never a perfect production of any play.  Every one must make choices.  I'll admit a bit of opening night jitters showed up in the first few minutes but they evaporated before long so I suspect subsequent performances will get even better.

But one curious thing also popped up.  This play contains one of Shakespeare's very best Fools, not least because Dogberry doesn't actually have that job.  He is no jester, at least not knowingly.  He instead is an official, the equivalent of a small town sheriff.  But so full of himself, so charmingly lazy but good-hearted, so earnest in his duty while so ridiculous of pretension he makes for arguably the third most coveted part in the play.  Here lies the odd thing.  Nicholas Thurkettle who plays Dogberry, frankly hams it up.  Well, this part can work with that, but I didn't feel he quite hit all the marks.  Make no mistake, he was still funny and the laughs involving the character grew as he appeared on stage.  But at least at first he wasn't so much a character as a collection of quirks.  Yet the same actor played a second role, a small but pivotal role of Friar Francis who comes up with the scheme by which all is ultimately made well.  This is precisely the kind of part Shakespeare's plays abound with--small, important, all too often given to lesser members of the company.  Yet Thurkettle did this part splendidly!  He outlines a subtle plan onstage using the heightened language of the Bard, does so with skill and such simple honesty for a few moments he upstaged everyone!  Kudos to him!  Yet his Dogberry qualifies as almost a misfire.  Almost.  Not quite the correct note.  He was funny, but I didn't care about him.  I always cared about Dogberry before in some weird quirky way.  But--a good actor.  Demonstrably so.  And he accomplished the most important thing about Dogberry--made us laugh at the antics and speech of this odd, worthy Fool who ultimately saves the day.  So kudos again!

Much Ado About Nothing plays Sundays at 7pm October 14 through December 2, 2012 at 4850 Lankershem Blvd, North Hollywood (818) 202-4120.  Directed by Denise Devin (who also did the same company's very fine Hamlet earlier this year). All Photo Credit: Denise Devin & Zombie Joe

Celluloid Anticipation Redux!

Movies I am looking forward to!  And why.

I've only recently learned that Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman and Virginia Madsden are starring in a motion picture version of Little Red Riding Hood.  To be honest, the poster here is not official in any way, shape, manner or form.  Just something I whipped together.  Here is the official synopsis:  Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, much to her family's displeasure.You can read (a little) more about the film here, so there really isn't much I can say for certain.  Still, I like the whole idea of a retelling of this classic (and very Freudian) fairy tale, especially when linked explicitly with the legend of the werewolf!  As you can probably guess, I'm quite the fan of Neil Jordon's Company of Wolves.  It is supposed to be a "gothic" retelling and is directed by the same person who did the first Twilight movie.  Expected release date is March 2011.

One film I've know of for a little while is The Tempest based on Shakespeare's play, directed by Julie Taymor (who also did another Shakespeare film, Titus). Interestingly, the lead's gender is changed but that I don't mind at all.  The cast is stellar with Dame Helen Mirren as Prospera, Felicity Jones as her daughter Miranda, Alan Cumming as Sebastian and Russel Brand as Trinculo.  You can see the trailer right here.  I think it looks spectacular!  This was one of the Bard's mature plays, and has a slightly melancholy air despite the many hijinks and puns.  Film gives us the potential to see the magic, and frankly looks to put Harry Potter to shame!  Look for it December 10, 2010.

Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader surprised me, simply because I thought the decision had been not to make the thing!  To be honest, C.S.Lewis' works don't touch me as much as do Tolkien's but that doesn't mean they aren't fun.  Methinks (will have to check) this is the first adaptation of the third Narnia novel, about a quest to the very edge of the world.  If one thinks Ulysses, or the Argonauts with a few dashes of Sinbad but through a Narnian lens you won't be far off.  For me, having always loved to live near waves and the smell of salt air, this fantasy which comprises a sea journey holds a special attraction.  Take a gander at the trailer right here.

The Shakespeare "Controversy"

As perhaps might be obvious from the use of quotation marks above, I believe the author of William Shakespeare's plays and poems was in fact...William Shakespeare. Obvious? Hardly worthy of the word "controversy"? Rather startlingly, among some this remains a point of real contention.

Being something of a collector of conspiracy theories--and feeling qualified to opine at length about this one--herein you'll find my twin pennies on the subject...

For many years, a variety of individuals (some of them quite prominent persons, with considerable accomplishment) have doubted that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Some simply look at the scarcity of hard data we have about the matter and express doubt. All well and good. None can deny the lives of Elizabethan playwrights are mostly matters of mystery, with many records that no doubt existed having gone the way of all things in the ensuing centuries. We're not even sure about his birthdate, birth certificates being pretty much unheard-of at the time. Others, however, take a further tack and insist that from what we do know of Shakespeare he could not have been the author. More, they usually have specific candidates in mind.

Much of the argument against Shakespeare, let us be frank, remains extremely subjective. How, some dissidents argue, could the son of an illiterate glove-maker from a provincial town like Stratford-Upon-Avon possibly written the greatest poetry in English literature? A man who didn't even attend University! They point to the plays and how various people in (for example) politics or the law or the church insist those words show an "insider's" knowledge and feel. But at its heart, this argument rests on snobbery. I for one would find zero difficulty believing a great writer might not be noble, or that they might never have gone to a major university. For the one, I reject there is something inherently superior in those lucky enough to have had successful ancestors. And for the other, does the premise not suggest that no great literary artist could have arisen prior to the invention of the university? Well, what about Euripedes, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes and the like? More, I would posit that genius has its own power. Stephen Crane many times in his life was approached by those insisting he must have actually seen combat in the Civil War because no one who had not could possibly have written The Red Badge of Courage. Of course, Crane was born five years after that war ended! Likewise there've been accusations that a "nobody" like J.K.Rowling could not have written such a vastly popular work as Harry Potter, that instead a secret committee must have done it and the publishers hired Ms.Rowling to masquerade as the books' author. I've not heard anyone make a similar claim about Stephanie Meyer but that is probably just a matter of time.

Mind you, there's a bigger problem that this matter of opinion regarding the Author's knowledge. Quite simply, the Author of the plays (whoever it might have been) showed a less-than-perfect knowledge of certain subjects, such as an understanding of what was genuinely believed to be the nature of the heavens. More subtly, careful scholarship reveals that the Author's sources for much of his material (regarding the history plays, for example) are few in number. Indeed, the impression of a broad but not extremely deep knowledge is created--at least that was my impression (which is as valid as any Anti-Stratfordian, surely).

They are on somewhat stronger ground when pointing to the sheer vocabulary shown in the plays, gigantic by any measure and exceeding that of the King James Bible! But again, surely the Author was a genius and is that not something one might expect of genius? Still stronger evidence is that of William Shakespeare's last will and testament, or at least at first glance. That document--which does survive--makes no mention of books or shares in the acting company of which Shakespeare was part owner. By any measure this seems odd. But then, consider what else is omitted. Famously, Shakespeare left his "second best bed" to his widow. Nowhere is a "best bed" mentioned. Neither is any kind of manuscript or document mentioned. Is it likely the man had no papers at all? Or--and this is offered as a theory, nothing more--are we applying our own expectations to a document rather than the desires and circumstances of the man who actually wrote it?

In fact, there are quite a lot of mysteries surrounding Shakespeare's life, whether he wrote those plays or not. But lack of knowledge is not the same as proof. In fact, the two are very nearly opposites. And the mysteries of Shakeaspeare's life are few and far between compared to those surrounding virtually any other playwright of his country and age.

Now, look at who the Anti-Stratfordians (i.e. those who insist Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare) posit as being the true Author. The current favorite is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. They insist he's noble and University educated, with the wit and poetic ability to have composed those plays. But their theory falls apart on several key points. First--why keep it a secret? Oxford was a rebel, the English Renaissance version of a hippie or rogue. Why not proclaim his authorship and get the glory (since it is acknowledged that the plays were very popular)? Second--he died in 1604 and evidence indicates that the plays continued to be produced for years afterwards. What "Oxfordians" usually claim is that such evidence is inconclusive. But they don't apply the same criteria to their own ideas.

More tellingly, at least IMHO, is the lengths to which supporters of Christopher Marlowe as the Author go. He died in 1593, the victim of a fight in a tavern with a dagger through his eye. Rather than claim the plays were not produced following 1593 (which would be ridiculous), these adherents claim Marlowe only faked his death as part of some intelligence scheme hatched by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham (who, however, died three years previously). Of course, unlike Oxford, Marlowe's works are already acknowledged as works of great literary merit. But they are also agreed to be of a radically different style than that of Shakespeare's.

To give a concrete example--Marlowe's works show an increased use of rhyming couplets, wherein subsequent lines do rhyme with one another ("For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo" from Romeo and Juliet). Yet Shakespeare showed the exact opposite pattern, reducing the number of rhyming couplets in favor of "hidden" rhyme and variations in meter.

And then we have some other facts that Anti-Stratfordians really have trouble defeating--such as contemporary comments about Shakespeare and his plays, including published references to Shakespeare as the author. One or two or even three may be dismissed, but there are far more than three. In the end, doesn't Occam's Razor indicate that the simplest explanation is probably the mainstream one--that a genius of a slightly distinctive family (his father was the equivalent of mayor at one point), with the typical education of a boy of his class of the time, went on to have a successful career in Elizabethan theatre, writing these wonderful works? No need for elaborate conspiracies about faked deaths or secret identities or reworking chronologies. Just genius, which we already know is part of the truth of this story.