Adventure Theater Festival

This weekend and next, the Jon Hassler Theater is hosting 5 theater companies doing short, experimental plays. (Their slogan: “13 performances. 5 companies. 2 weekends. 1 epic adventure.”)

Last night, I saw plays from two companies: Suitcase by Sandbox Theatre and Four Humors’ Lotita: A Three Man Show by Four Humors.

Suitcase

Five short 1-person plays with actors   Derek Lee Miller and Amber Bjork (Bjork wrote one of the shorts; Miller wrote two others). The plays all had whimsical elements as well as poignant endings. Perhaps the most interesting was “A True Story” which actor Derek Lee Miller narrates and plays several of the characters while dressed as a 28-year-old Japanese woman named Takako Konishi in fashionable mini-skirt, boots, and coat. The play is based on a short film about Takako’s death, which news reports connected to the movie Fargo: Japanese woman dies looking for Fargo money.

All five shorts   are interesting plays and well worth seeing.

Lolita: A Three Man Show

The Four Humors’ take on Lolita picks up on the movie theme. Their short description of the play reads: “A one hour stage play, based on the two and a half hour movie by Stanley Kubrick, based on the five hour screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on the 300 page novel by Vladimir Nabokov, as told by 3 idiots.”  The description doesn’t leave much else to say, really. The play deals with Lolita with an unexpected depth, even while making fun of itself and the book and films with predictable, but superbly acted slapstick.

It was a fun night at the theater, and my only regret is that I won’t be able to see the other three companies (Live Action Set on Sunday and SunsetGun Productions, Dangerous Productions) next weekend.

Adventure Theater Festival, August 16 - 26

Jon Hassler Theater

Plainview, MN

For more information visit adventuretheaterfestival.com.

Twelfth Night

Directed by Paul Mason Barnes, Music by Jack Forbes Wilson
Great River Shakespeare Festival

If someone were to ask me what my favorite play is, I would have to place Twelfth Night near the top of my list. It is funny and thought provoking, demonstrating an interesting awareness of the plight of women, centuries before our own women's movement.

Viola survives a shipwreck and has to make her way alone in a strange land. Her first move is to disguise herself as a young man—knowing the danger of being an unprotected female. This danger hangs over the entire play, even as the play follows its comedic twists and turns.

On Shakespeare's stage, Viola would be played by a young male actor. And when the character Viola dresses as Cesario, the Shakespearian audience would have seen a boy playing a woman playing a man. This trope must have guaranteed a laugh as Shakespeare employs it in several of his plays, but nowhere better than in Twelfth Night. Another comedic element used by Shakespeare is that of separated twins. Viola's brother, assumed to have been lost, also lands in the same country and is, of course, mistaken for Viola's male form. Tarah Flanagan does a nice job playing Viola playing Cesario.

Perhaps the most memorable characters of Twelfth Night develop on side stories outside of the main plot of the odd love triangle that develops between Viola, Olivia, and Orsino. The part of Malvolio—the prudish servant to Olivia—tends to be one of the characters that gets remembered. Christopher Gerson gets the role in this production and handles it with humor and empathy. Malvolio's humiliation puts a damper on the play's ending festivities.

Twelfth Night also offers the trio of late night revelers, Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria, played by Michael Fitzpatrick, Chris Mixon, and Laura Jacobs, who are also Malvolio's tormentors. The play allows these three talented actors to show off their comic prowess.

But the production is not just good because of strong individual performances, the production, as it does in Henry V, works as a whole. The lighting creates a rich set that reflects the leisurely indulgence of melancholy that exists in both Olivia and Orsino's dwellings. Olivia is playing at mourning her lost brother, and Orsino is playing at mourning his unrequited love for Olivia. The mood is supported with music,composed by the fabulous Jack Forbes Wilson. The music makes sense of Orsino's opening lines:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it: that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall;
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and Giving odor. (I.i.1-7)

Corey Allen recites the line, reclining backwards to face the audience, with the singers poised to resume their song, and I quickly scribbled in my notebook: “Corey Allen is quickly becoming my favorite actor.” Everything works in that moment, saving the play from a confusing and clumsy prologue.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival is down to its last three days. For schedules and tickets for Twelfth Night, Henry V and Macbeth, visit GRSF.org.