Two Gentlemen of Verona (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Lately some of the Bard's more obscure plays saw production, at least here in Los Angeles.  One of these, Two Gentlemen of Verona, honestly I have never seen before now.

Given the script, one easily understands why.  The characters lack the real charm of such Shakespearean heavyweights as Viola, Benedick, Katherine, Prospero, etc. More the overtly racist/anti-semitic language feels (thankfully) extremely problematical.  So do other details, some of them icky.

This proved an excellent production, I should say.  Rather than avoiding the above issues, Coin & Ghost as well as director Marguarite French embraced and commented upon them.  Not by changing the words, but by making sure actions continue to speak louder.  After all, plays are a much much more than words chosen and arranged by a playwright.  Much, much more.

Credit: Julian Juaquin

Adding to the brew audiences soon discover another twist, one that highlights rather than ignores the disturbing parts of this "comedy."  All the genders in the play are switched.  Thus the two gentlemen of the title, Valentine (Elisa Rosin) and Proteus (Simms Holland), are played by women--not in drag but as women.  Likewise their two love interests--Julius (Kendall Johnson) and Sylvius (Colbert Alambert)--are men, played by men.

That the ones will all the power are white, and those without are black adds yet another element in which the play embraces its issues rather than avoids them.

Essentially, the plot sounds like a dark romcom.  The two gentlemen are best friends in (of course) Verona when Valentine must go on a visit to Milan.  Proteus has fallen for Julius, hard, and vice versa.  In Milan, Valentine falls for the Duke's ward Sylvius and (again) vice versa--this despite the fact the Duke has promised his hand to another.  When Proteus comes to visit Valentine, she learns of their plan to run away together, but in the process falls head over heels in lust with Sylvius.  So she betrays them in hopes of winning the young man's favors for herself, in the process of course betraying Julius, who has disguised himself and made his way to Milan to be with his beloved Proteus.

Credit: Julian Juaquin

Doesn't sound much like a comedy, does it?  Well, nobody dies in the end.  All the pretty young people are matched up at the end.  That makes it a comedy by the definitions of Shakespeare's time (same reason Merchant of Venice, weirdly to us, gets the same category). Such a plot, up to and including attempted rape by one of the "heroes" who is then forgiven not by their victim but the victim's betrothed, isn't really that odd then (or to be brutally honest) now.  Hopefully reading about that makes you cringe a bit.

Watching it hit me in the gut.  Deliberately so, because that is what this production intended, amid all the wit and the vivid characters, the entertaining wickedness and wonderful clown bits.  We really do laugh, and then we stop laughing, stop to feel, stop to think.

Let me also note the other two members of the cast who play between them pretty much the rest of the cast--Victoria Yvonne Martinez and Kathleen Leary, who make each of their six characters so amazingly alive I burst into laughter with a mere look from each.  The whole cast earned the words "superb" and "fascinating" as well as "genuine" a dozen times over. 

Two Gentlemen of Verona plays Thursdays through Sundays at 8pm until April 8, 2018 at the Ruby Theatre in the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd (several blocks west of Vine) Los Angeles CA 90038.

Man for All Seasons (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Honestly never before have I see a live stage production of Robert Bolt's play.  The movie with Paul Scofield yes, the made for television version with Charlton Heston, again yes.

After seeing A Man For All Seasons by the Actor's Co-Op, my view is one of doubt this should be filmed.  It works far, far too well as live theatre in ways all but unworkable for other media.

Topical, as well.  For those who don't know, Bolt's script tells of Sir Thomas More, a prominent lawyer in Tudor England who became friends with a young King Henry VIII, then broke with him over that monarch's efforts to divorce his queen to marry Anne Boleyn.  This resulted in a break with Rome, the formation of the Church of England, and generations of religious conflicts which impact British life to this day.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

The Roman Catholic Church eventually canonized More as a martyr.  In the hands of a lesser writer, his story might well have emerged dripping with maudlin sentiment.  Instead we get a vivid, nuanced and complex portrait not only of More (Bruce Ladd) but the rest of the people in his life--his fierce wife Alice (Treva Tegtmeier), their bright daughter Margaret (Elsa Gay), her eventual fiancee William Roper (Isaac Jay), More's friend the Duke of Norfolk (Sean McHugh), the wonderfully ruthless Thomas Cromwell (John Allee), etc.

Also, one feels more powerfully of the play than of either film, a more powerful feel for how these all these characters remain topical because they seem real.  Lacking the myopic focus of a camera, the whole story seems less a series of beautiful images and more slices of genuine life.

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

Genuine life and genuine evil. That actually surprised me a bit, because this play fails to take a stand on several questions.  Was it right to break away from Rome?  Did the threat of another generation mired in civil wars justify such extreme action?  The questions arise, naturally enough, but the play takes no side in that.  Rather it focuses on integrity, on doing the right as one sees the right, on the vicious power of hypocrisy as well as the difference between law and mere administration.

A vivid image of this lies in a character we only see once, but everyone talks about--King Henry (Ian Michaels) himself.  Not the overdressed whale of a man from the Holbien portraits, but the handsome and smarmy figure we soon realize has very nearly no ethics at all, just desires--including the weird desire to be seen (even by himself) as morally right.  So the wheels of church and government turn and seek to destroy a man who seeks only to be left alone, because this King remains very much a bully and a child, at least emotionally. 

Credit: Matthew Gilmore

With all this, and central to the action, lies The Common Man (Deborah Marlowe) filling, often unwillingly, a wide variety of roles in the story of More's final legal murder.  This person confides with the audience, sharing jokes and some background details, but all the while refusing to stand up and challenge authority.  More disturbing must be Richard Rich (Mitchell Lam Hau) a naive but ambitious student who learns to climb the political ladder in the most efficient way possible--via treachery.

Rounding out the cast is the Spanish Ambassador Signor Chapuys (Vito Viscuso) along with Cardinal Woolsey as well the Archbishop of Canterbury (Greg Martin)--the flawed men defending the Church, such as it is, that More feels bound by far more than honor to preserve--to a heartbreaking conclusion.

All in all, under the direction of Thom Babbes, this play portrays what Los Angeles theatre seems increasingly skilled at recreating--a very possible nightmare when the powerful lack compassion or loyalty, enslaved by desire and cowardice instead. 

A Man for All Seasons plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2:30pm until April 15, 2018 at the David Schall Theatre (part of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood) 1760 North Gower Street. Hollyood CA 90028.

Adapting Dracula (Part One)

This is a series of posts sharing my ideas/considerations while getting ready to adapt Bram Stoker's novel Dracula for the live stage. Expect one of these per week for awhile.

One: A New Vision

Anyone planning on adapting Bram Stoker's novel Dracula for the stage faces a challenge.  Why do that?  Aren't there plenty already?  I've reviewed at least four different versions myself!

So why on earth do another?

The only answer seems to me is to bring something new to the table, something unexplored in earlier versions.  So--not a zany comedy, nor a Phantom-esque musical, nor a tongue-in-cheek period piece, nor vision of Victorian London as a Feminist Dystopia, etc.  But what ultimately fascinated me was Death.  Maybe I'm showing my age...

Part of this (in my mind's eye anyway) is the medieval image, emerging in the wake of the Black Death, of the danse macabre, not only in terms of the Grim Reaper leading a dance of those who have passed but also the rather more disturbing notion of Death itself as a lover.

Not to define Dracula himself as some kind of byronic suitor to Lucy or Mina (I don't object to this, but believe that trope reached saturation point a while ago), but rather as one of many different views people have of death.  Some see it as an enemy to be fought and struggled against with every breath.  Others choose to ignore it whenever possible.  Some cultures view it as the ultimate moment of life, that by facing it face forward, even choosing the method of one's own passing, we win a kind of victory.  Many religious folk (in theory) see it as nothing but a door into eternity.  I suspect however that to those dying of very painful conditions, it can be an alluring figure--the ultimate mercy.

To be honest, this was not where I began.  Rather this emerged out of what else I found myself wanting to explore...

To be continued

Wicked Pagan Gays (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I joked to a lot of folks at work about going to see play titled Wicked Pagan Gays, with the note that with a title like that I expected something fabulous.

And it was.

The story, set in modern day Los Angeles, centers around Jeff (Jeff Dinell), a writer/bartender who proudly wears his atheism on every sleeve--putting him in direct conflict with his over-the-top roommate Tyrell (Jordan Green) but even more with Greg (Nathan Tylutki), a former co-worker who re-enters his life under odd circumstances.  Greg has pretty much never found a New Age fad or idea he did not embrace with vigor--a fact that makes the super Roman Catholic Tyrell condemn him as a witch. 

This already hints at the silliness to come, interwoven with some genuine debate about faith and belief and tolerance as well as the weird dynamics to which we human beings are prone.

Other characters we meet along the war the super-condescending Doug (Ian Dick), nemesis to Jeff and new love interest to Greg;  New Age Guru Helene Aurora (Krista Conti) who bonds with Jeff over a mutual worship of Stevie Nicks; bitchy Jillian Stark (Emily Jerez) who worked with then betrayed Greg;  former 1990s heartthrob Jonathan Tyler Tyler (Eric Allen Smith) who becomes involved with Jeff; plus lawyer Jacob Falconberg (Will Gibson) who enters Greg's life in an unexpected manner.

The show sizzles with laughs, while characters interact in some wildly inconsistent (but very human) ways, up to and including what might be called some severe moral lapses.  Well, not too severe.  The play evokes laughter from darkness, yet not deep-space-dark only day-to-day (but studiously ignored) shadows.

Everyone for example comes across as simultaneously shallow yet deep, depending on circumstances and subject.  Just as everyone proves willing to engage on some serious issues, but never more than a surface level--although Jeff at least proves the better debater, while even though an atheist finds himself at least listening to ideas he evidently despises.  Hardly a single character fails to show real kindness sooner or later, as well as genuine spite, sometimes to the point of viciousness.

Mix in thwarted ambitions, deep-seated neuroses, uber-competition, true belief in contradicting philosophies, a lot (and I mean a lot) of sexual details and plenty of crazy (yet believable) plot twists, the result proves itself as some deliciously dark farce.

And yet.  Despite a good (if tricky) script by Dinnell, wonderful direction by Kiff Scholl, coupled with a genuinely funny and talented cast, the production fails to completely gel at the end.  Make no mistake--this show is funny!  It entertains!  It even makes one think about some things!  Yet something didn't feel quite right, and after thinking about it for awhile I've concluded the problem stems from something physical.  Multiple scenes change location again and again, but every time it happened the flow of the play stopped dead while the set shifted.  The set shifts were well done, accompanied by music and flashing lights, but the flow of the story still endured a hiccup every single time this happened. With the rhythm of the play so interrupted, it never quite reached its full potential. 

To be fair, this tends to show up as a perennial problem in live theatre, although all kinds of interesting ways exist to get around it, depending on details.  More, while the play didn't reach the heights maybe it could have, it and the players definitely achieved flight.

Wicked Pagan Gays plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm, Sunday nights at 7pm through March 31, 2018 at the Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Avenue (west of La Brea), Los Angeles CA 90046.