Information, reviews, and miscellaneous shorts focusing on professional, nonprofit theater—from a Southeast Minnesota perspective.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Great River Shakespeare Festival

by William Shakespeare, directed by Rick Barbour
Great River Shakespeare Festival Apprentice and Intern Company
(July 23, 2008)

Once again the Apprentice Company has provided Winona with another top-notch production in the back waters of the summer Shakespeare Festival. After nearly two months of providing support for the festival's main plays, the group of largely college-aged actors, technicians, and administrative interns took center stage with one of Shakespeare's lesser known romances.

Presented in three-quarter round in Winona State's black box theater, with minimal costuming, sets and props, the company presented the episodic tale of a young noble's search for adventure and romance. During the journey, Pericles gains, and devastatingly loses, title, wife, and daughter. The play is similar to A Winter's Tale (which GRSF performed in its first season) with its final joyous reunion that is clouded by melancholy questions over the years of suffering and the uncertain future.

The play utilizes a narrator—a poet named Gower—to help tie together the acts which move through several kingdoms through a span of more than 15 years. Ricardo Valencia does a marvelous job as Gower, bringing to life lengthy speeches that could easily have dragged down the action of the play. Instead, the interludes felt like natural and necessary elements in the play.

The acting in the production is uniformly strong. Because of the multiple scenes and abundance of characters that populate these scenes, nearly all of the actors play multiple parts, yet no scene or character shows any sign of a let down. It seems as if each scene was treated by the company as if it were pivotal to the entire play. This attention to detail is remarkable considering the short time the company had to bring the production together and the size and complexity of the play itself.

And just to tie the play in to the main stage productions, Pericles, in his late play euphoria, gives his daughter in marriage to a man he doesn't know. Here it seems Pericles has not heeded the example of the Kings whose daughters he himself had wooed as a younger man, confronting the audience with a stark reminder that women, even women revered for virtue, have a limited voice in who or what they will become. But that is an ongoing discussion the twenty-first century is having with Shakespeare, and I'm sure GRSF will visit it again.

Pericles plays Thursday at 7:00 and Friday at 3:00 in the Winona State University's Performing Arts Center Black Box Theater.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

July Has Become Theatre Month in Southeast Minnesota

These next two weeks may be the busiest theatre weeks of the year in Southeast Minnesota. With the exception of the Jon Hassler Theater, which just finished its summer production, all of the area professional theatres have two or more shows scheduled, and most of them are offering related activities, conversations and performances. In addition, Minnesota has an abundance of community theaters; I've listed a few area productions below, but to be sure, this is only a partial listing.

Please check with the individual theaters for dates, times, and ticket information.

Commonweal Theatre, Lanesboro, Minnesota

Harvey by Mary Chase (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Thursdays - Mondays, through October 25
Schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Great River Shakespeare Festival, Winona Minnesota

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (Minnesota Theatre Review) (Preview: Problem Plays)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Tuesdays - Sundays, through July 27
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

GRSF Apprentice Acting Company

Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare
July 22 - 25
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre, St. Mary's Page Theater, Winona, Minnesota

Little Shop of Horrors by Ashman & Mencken (opens July 10)
The Foreigner by Larry Shue (opens July 17)
Thursdays - Sundays, through August 3
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Gilmore Creek Children's Theatre

Mouse Expedition by Erin Malcolm and Brian Blankenship
Five performances July 19 - August 2
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Community Theatre

Rushford Area Society for the Arts

The Sensuous Senator by Michael Parker
directed by Daryl Lanz
July 16 - 18 7:30 p.m.
July 19 - 20 2:00 p.m.
Rushford-Peterson High School, Rushford, Minn.
Tickets: 507-864-7525
www.rushfordrasa.org

Ye Olde Opera House

Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstiein
Directed by Kay Cross
July 16 - 20 8:30 p.m.
Ye Olde Gray Barn, Hwy 44 East of Spring Grove, Minn.
Tickets: 507-498-JULY
www.yeoldeoperahouse.org

Rochester Repetory Theatre Company

Glass Half Full: 10 Minute Plays
Directed by Becci Berg & Kent Griffin
July 17 - 19; 24 - 26 8:00 p.m.
Rochester Repertory Theatre, 103 Seventh St. N.E., Rochester, Minn.
www.rochesterrep.org

Fountain City Players

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Rupert Holmes
Directed by Judee Brone
July 23 - 26 7:30 p.m.
July 27 2:00 p.m.
Fountain City Auditorium, 42 North Main Street, Fountain City, Wis.
Tickets: 608-687-7481

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The Taming of the Shrew

Great River Shakespeare Festival

by William Shakespeare, directed by Alec Wild
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 9, 2008)

Alec Wild has returned to the Great River Shakespeare Festival with a splash of welcome creativity to offer one of the finest productions yet from the 5-year-old company. Wild and the production company present Italy’s Padua as a sort of circus of mimes, clowns, and minstrels who keep watch over a collection of brightly colored visitors to the city. The entire cast—including the principles—remains onstage for most of the play, populating the steel-truss towers that serve as trapeze supports, prop storage, and repositories for the varied tools of sound effects. Much of the action is exaggerated, utilizing Three Stooges-type physical comedy with feigned violence and pratfalls punctuated by bells, drums, and whistles. Characters supplement the stage action with facial expressions and poses designed to include the audience in the conspiracy. From the very beginning, the audience understands that this will be a production that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Taming of the Shrew abandons the GRSF tradition of starting its plays with the entire cast onstage for a choreographed prologue and instead sends out the lone Biondello (played by Zachary Michael Fine) who, relishing his time in the spotlight, makes several false starts before launching the anticipated prologue.


Carla Noack in The Taming of the Shrew Directed by Alec Wild (Photo: Jared Brown)

The GRSF staging of Taming certainly emphasizes the comedic aspects of the play, and certainly, Shakespeare is witty, cleaver, and playful in this work. But as the recent commemoration of comedian George Carlin should remind us, there is often humor in pushing concepts that make us uncomfortable. And Shakespeare’s play about the roles of men and women in courtship and marriage in the early 1600s likely pushed the envelope. The play poses several tenets of accepted social order: a quiet, obedient women is far preferred to one who uses her tongue and thinks for herself. Marriage arrangements are basically financial exchanges between men. Men have a right and a responsibility to make sure their wives and daughters conform to accepted social norms. Had these norms been universally accepted in 1600, Shakespeare, like Carlin, would have had little use for them as comedic devices.

Earlier I wrote about some of the problems for a modern audience with the concept of a husband “taming” his wife (see Problem Plays: Taming of the Shrew). The physical comedy takes some of the edge off this taming, but so does the stature of the characters playing the roles of tamer and shrew. Carla Noack as Katherine is taller than Christopher Gerson’s Petruchio and would not be a pushover in a physical match. So when Katherine allows Petruchio to dictate her behavior, she does not simply do it out of fear. While she has come to realize that she may not eat or see her family without giving in to Gerson’s Petruchio, she has also come to respect and possibly love Petruchio. Helping further take the edge off the taming, Gerson’s taming is pulled off in part by dumb luck. Despite his confident words, Gerson lets the audience know that his strategy is a bluff, and he certainly seems as surprised as the others when Katherine so quickly chooses to be tamed. And choice seems to be the key here: if the audience believes that Katherine is making a choice to put her lot in with Petruchio—Noack certainly plays Katherine this way—then the transformation seems a little less like brain washing and coercion. But even with fine performances by Noack and Gerson, that is still a bit of a stretch.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in repertory with The Merchant of Venice through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Man of La Mancha

by Dale Wasserman (book), Joe Darion (lyrics), Mitch Leigh (music). Directed by Hal Cropp
Commonweal Theatre (July 7, 2008)

The Commonweal’s summer offering, Man of La Mancha, matches the company’s creative production and acting with a strong and popular musical comedy. The result is a play that builds on this season’s earlier production of Peer Gynt: fast-paced story telling with a small cast that not only portrays multiple characters, it creates the scenes, manufactures important props, plays the chorus, and even handles the orchestra duties. The play is immensely funny and subtly thought-provoking. The cast, director Hal Cropp, and the production team are to be congratulated on a top-notch production.

The success of Man of La Mancha starts with a tried-and-true musical comedy which has seen constant performances since its 1965 Tony Award winning Broadway premiere. But its pedigree dates back even farther, borrowing the title character and its episodes from the classic seventeenth century Spanish novel, Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of an eccentric who sets out to recapture the honor of a long-gone, romanticized era of knights. The episodic novel’s huge success came from its witty ability to lampoon the conventions of popular legends and romance stories, perhaps in the same way that Monty Python lampooned the King Arthur legend in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When Dale Wasserman selected the episodes to include in his 1959 television drama, he not only had the pick of time-tested story lines from one of the pioneering books in world literature, he had a main character in Don Quixote whose lunacy and idealism has long been ingrained in western culture.

The drama takes place entirely in a prison where Cervantes awaits trial before the Spanish Inquisition. But first, his fellow inmates charge Cervantes with being honest, a bad poet, and an idealist. For these crimes, they threaten to take his meager possessions and destroy his manuscript. Desperate to save the manuscript, Cervantes and his servant enact scenes from the life of Don Quixote as a form of defense. With the aid of a few rough props and costumes that he has brought with him, Cervantes transforms into Don Quixote, and his fellow prisoners are enlisted to play the other characters. Their reluctance to join this charade drains away as they become interested in the story and forget the endless tedium of their life in prison.

In the Commonweal’s production, the musical becomes a sort of “non-musical.” While the play features as many songs as most musicals, and the actors do a fine job of singing these songs, the songs seem to naturally fit the story being told on stage; the songs do not upstage the story. I suspect that this is partly due to the play—in Don Quioxte’s world, it could be natural for someone to break out into song—and partly due to choices made by the Commonweal. First, the play does not use an orchestra (or an orchestral recording), so the transition from dialog to song does not include an orchestral swell and a corresponding amplified singer—the actors are able to enter into a song without breaking character. The actors provide the minimal accompaniment. Rick Nance’s character moves to a partially hidden piano for most songs. Additionally, the actors contribute poly-rhythmic instrumentation using muted hand claps or improvised percussion instruments such as rugged eating utensils or rough stage furniture. (Later, David Hennessey told me that Musical Director Stephen Houtz based the rhythms on flamingo). Kimberly Maas occasionally adds accordion for texture and Eric Bunge tells part of a story on guitar. Even “The Impossible Dream” seems like a natural continuation of the theme, not a show-stopping “number.”

The Commonweal’s eight actors rarely leave stage during the 95-minute single act play, moving to the shadows when they are not directly involved in the action. Having one scene to tell a story of this magnitude places a huge burden on the set, blocking, and lighting. Kit Mayer’s seemingly simple set design evokes an iron-cold underworld of lawlessness and despair that physically and emotionally extends beyond the stage’s perimeter. The transitions from dungeon to country-side adventure are created largely by Jason Underferth’s effective lighting design.

Individual performances—and there are many good ones—are overshadowed by the company in this play. Eric Bunge completely transforms into the elderly Quixote character with the aid of a very simple mustache and goatee. Troy Iverson is fun to watch as Quixote’s squire Sancho, and Stef Dickens is brilliant as Quixote’s Lady Dulcinia, as she moves from acceptance of her tough lot in life through confusion and anger at being thought a lady to finally embracing Quixote’s hope and optimism. Her emotional journey reflects the journey of the entire ensemble. But the play’s success is ultimately carried off by the pacing and energy of this ensemble and their ability to spontaneously create the world where the idealism of the foolish knight, Don Quixote, and his unlikely squire, Sancho Panza, seem possible.

The Man of La Mancha plays in repertory with Harvey through October 25.
Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Merchant of Venice

Great River Shakespeare Festival

by William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 3, 2008)

“Unsettling” was the word that both cast and audience kept using in the post production conversation to describe The Merchant of Venice after Thursday’s performance at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. The plot line that follows the Jewish moneylender Shylock took up most of the conversation. Jonathan Gillard Daly’s portrayal of Shylock is polarizing in the story and mesmerizing to the audience. Daly takes Shakespeare’s caricature of a Jew—godless, money-grubbing miser—and dominates the scenes that he is in. The performance is reminiscent of Daly’s powerful Richard III, but rather than being driven by Richard’s lust for power, Shylock seeks only a single revenge to help ease the pain of a lifetime of slander and injustice.

The evidence of this anti-Semitic slander is abundant, leaving it hard to find a hero amongst the characters the audience is meant to root for. We want Antonio (the merchant of the title, played by Michael Fitzpatrick) to clear his debts, yet his refusal to see Shylock as human and his harsh “mercy” at the end of the play taint our enthusiasm for him and his friends. We are certainly relieved at the turn of events that save Antonio, but we aren’t exactly cheering along with the actors on stage.

A Jew would have been rare in Shakespeare’s London, perhaps as exotic as a Prince from Morocco. So one would guess that Shakespeare’s audience would not have had much reason to question the evil caricature of Shylock, and it likely did cheer his final humiliation. But the play also offers evidence that Shakespeare didn’t believe the black and white, Christian and Jew dichotomy he created. In a well known speech, Shylock proclaims his humanity: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III.i.64-66). And in several places in the play, Shakespeare uses Shylock to highlight the questionable actions and values of Christians. But even with these devices at work, the anti-Semitism is dominant. Director Paul Barnes’ decision to leave the text unaltered, to not soften the racism to suit the times, certainly demonstrates his respect of the intelligence of GRSF’s audience. But ironically, leaving the text alone means that we are seeing a significantly different play than Shakespeare’s original audience.

Johnathan Gillard Daly
Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock in the GRSF production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo: GRSF)

Another example of this not-so-subtle racism comes in another plot line, where suitors to the rich and beautiful Portia must pass a lottery to win her hand. Before Bassanio (Antonio’s good friend, played by Zachary Michael Fine) arrives to try his luck, two other suitors—The Prince of Morocco (Donte Fitzgerald) and the Prince of Aragon (Bob Fairbrook)—try theirs. These two scenes provide comic relief as both suitors, decked out in culturally exaggerated costumes, speech, movements, and actions, fall prey to their own vanity. But Portia’s comment upon the departure of the saddened Prince of Morocco changes the audience’s perspective of a brilliantly written comedy sketch.

A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.
Let all of his complexion choose me so. (II.vii.78-79)

This comment forces a contemporary audience to wonder if its own relief and amusement over Morocco’s failed choice was, after all, based on race. Again Barnes doesn’t let us off the hook; we have to wrestle with the uncertainty inherent in the text.

Unsettling can also be used to describe the final plot development which is clearly intended as humorous. Portia (played by Tarah Flanagan) and her maid (Carla Noack), disguised as men, have induced their new husbands to offer their respective wedding rings as tokens of appreciation for having saved Antonio. When the men return, the women chide the men for so easily parting with their rings. While the trick is clearly funny, it is also clearly manipulative. Portia uses the opportunity to place separation between her new husband Bassanio and his best friend Antonio, and in a sense, to change the ground rules for their marriage. Portia initially sets the ground rules for their marriage in a more traditional manor just after Bassanio has passed the lottery:

Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o’er myself, and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours—my lord’s!—I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. (III.ii.166-174)

Even before the fiasco with the ring, Portia has shown little willingness to submit or even share power with her new husband. While freely giving over her purse to Bassanio, she continues to direct her servants and orchestrates the events that will resolve the play. But it would be hard to find fault with Portia if she is not yet willing to give over her house to Bassanio—Bassanio has done little to prove that he deserves it. He has spent his youth flitting from one adventure to another, exhausting his own fortune and borrowing heavily from his friends. In the play, he is finally choosing to get serious and take responsibility for his debts. His responsible plan: borrow more money and play a lottery to win a wealthy heiress.

The production itself seems top notch. The lighting and staging are both simple and elegant, helping the audience move from the streets of Venice to the court of Belmont to the Venetian courtroom. The three young attendants to Portia (Orion McCullough-Smith, Christopher Bernard, and Mitchell Essar) sing a lovely passage put to music by Daniel Kallman. The acting certainly meets the high quality that we’ve come to expect from the festival. Along with Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock, Tarah Flanagan’s Portia controls both the court and her home of Belmont, and Chris Mixon plays a memorable Gratiano, the type of friend you’d rather didn’t come along when meeting your future spouse. Doug Scholz-Carlson seems to have taken over the role of company fool, and here he does a particularly nice job fooling with words as Lancelot Gobbo.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival’s The Merchant of Venice is certainly more thought provoking than satisfying. While a comedy—it abounds in weddings—the humor is often overshadowed by the many unsettling aspects of the play itself. And rather than simply transport an audience to a romantic Venice, the play forces us to explore our own experiences with racism. There may not be another way to honestly play The Merchant of Venice.

The Merchant of Venice plays in reperatory with The Taming of the Shrew through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Problem Plays: The Taming of the Shrew

Great River Shakespeare Festival

The Great River Shakespeare Festivals 2008 offerings include two plays that are often described as “problem” plays. These type of problem plays use stereotypes or social attitudes that might seem offensive to contemporary audiences. Both of the GRSF plays this summer, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, have seen periods where theater companies refused to stage them. Luckily, both plays receive regular productions as theaters and audiences welcome the opportunity to enjoy these important works, often by finding ways to confront or diffuse the racism or sexism that contribute significantly to their plot development. I am excited that GRSF has brought these two plays to Southeast Minnesota this summer, and I look forward to seeing them both.

The Plot

The Taming of the Shrew is a Shakespearean comedy, which means an audience can expect a plot driven by coincidence and chance, characters in disguise, clownish characters, and a happy ending replete with multiple marriages. Shrew does not disappoint.

Baptista, a rich gentleman, has two daughters of marriageable age. The younger daughter, Bianca, has attracted several competing suitors, while Katherine has none. Baptista decides that he will not entertain any suits for his younger daughter until a match is found for his older daughter who has a reputation as a “shrew.” This declaration sends the suitors on a search for someone crazy or desperate enough to marry Katherine—a task they view as impossible, even with the generous dowry and their own bounty added to the mix.

Enter the clownish gentleman from Vienna, Petruchio, who not only willingly takes on Katherine, her sizable dowry, her future inheritance, and the payments from Bianca's suitors, but undertakes the seemingly impossible task of “taming” her.

The Problems with the Text

Great River Shakespeare Festival
Carla Noack as Kate and Christopher Gerson as Petruchio in the Great River Shakespeare Festival’ The Taming of the Shrew. (Photo: GRSF)

While the play is very funny and very clever, the humor can be dampened by the sexist portrayal of marriage and women in the text. It should make us squirm a bit—and I suppose it might have made some early 17th Century Londoners squirm too. Some scholars point out that the abundance of surviving treatises and sermons dictating the proper role of women in marriage and society suggests that many women were not exactly embracing the role of obedience and servility in the early 1600s.

  • Katherine is called shrew and devil and freely described as curst and rough. But like derogatory terms used for women today—terms such as bitch, slut, whore, and feminazi—the terms are difficult to define, and they are nearly impossible to refute because of their ambiguous meaning, illogical application, and malicious intent. The function of these words is to bully women into silence and conformity.
  • Another troubling aspect of the play is that the daughters are not allowed any voice in who they will marry. Even though Bianca has many suitors, her father chooses without consulting Bianca. And in this case, Baptista chooses the highest bidder. One of the suitors, Lucentio, utilizes a two-prong strategy to try and win Bianca. He devises a way to secretly spend time with Bianca while his servant negotiates the financial deal with the father. But the disguised meetings with Bianca are simply for sport; only the financial deal holds any weight in marriage considerations. Another suitor, Hortensio, also disguises himself to meet directly with Bianca. But he fails to enter into negotiations with the father and, therefore, has no chance.

    Katherine's marriage is also arranged between suitor and father. But here it is the father (and Bianca's suitors) who makes the payments. Both daughters are traded as property by father and suitors. Petruchio even puts it in words on his wedding day:
    She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
    My household stuff, my field my barn,
    My horse my ox my ass my anything. (III.ii.220-222)
  • A final problem is with the main comic device of the play—the “taming” of Katherine. Petruchio marries Katherine with the assurance that he can turn her from curst devil into a model wife, mild and obedient. His methods are those of a falconer taming a wild bird—and Shakespeare uses rich metaphors from falconry throughout:
    My Falcon now is sharp and passing empty
    And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,
    For then she never looks upon her lure. (IV.ii.159-161)

    He captures her, removes her from her native place, refuses her food and sleep, then makes sure she knows that she can only get food and clothing through him. And before allowing her to return to her native home, she must accept his word as truth—even going so far as to embrace an old man as a young girl and calling the sun the moon. While the falconry metaphor is brilliantly written, this brainwashing is chilling when applied to a human being.

Playing to a Contemporary Audience

Katherine finally is allowed to speak for herself at the end of the play, and her words lay out the ideal for a loving, obedient wife—a final speech that leaves the play's characters astonished in admiration at her transformation and leaves the reader/audience cringing. It seems to me that this scene can only work for a contemporary audience if a couple of things happen. One, the audience buys into the “shrew” conceit and accepts that Katherine is better off in her new reincarnation. A more likely strategy is to play Katherine so large that she is seen as an equal to Petruchio, despite the limited text Shakespeare gives her to define herself. If the company can achieve this portrayal, the final speech can be viewed as a truce or understanding between equals who hold each other with mutual respect and love.

The text of the play seems starkly oppressive (and I'm contemplating the play entirely from the text here), but the play in production can be very different. Actors, directors, and designers are able to make choices that allow the audience to enjoy Shakespeare's keen wit while allowing Katherine to have a voice. The choice of Carla Noack as Katherine in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's production is a good indication that Katherine's voice will be heard. I expect that most theater companies who undertake this play will find ways to make the play work for an audience without asking them to accept a view of women as property to be exchanged between men.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in reperatory with The Merchant of Venice through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org