The Royal Shakespeare Company, now in residence at Davidson College through Sunday, proudly hails from the playwright’s native land. It is headquartered in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the holy place of the Bard’s nativity and burial. And for the first time ever, they have brought relics of past productions to the USA for a special “Break Thy Leg” exhibit through April 15: drawings, costumes and props that illuminate the mysterious transubstantiation of Shakespearean drama from page to stage.
But at the Duke Family Performance Hall, where Two Gentlemen of Verona and Julius Caesar are playing in tandem, the baggage of iambic pomposity and Elizabethan spectacle is nowhere in evidence. This is not your grandpa’s grandiloquent Shakespeare. This is plugged-in, high-concept Shakespeare audaciously transplanted into modern dress by two highly individual directors willing to take chances.
Neither of the productions is a perfect success in these American premieres, but both are teeming with delights — and sure to provoke with their daring. Settling her players into the 1930s, director Fiona Buffini takes Two Gents about as deep into the 20th Century as it will go without seriously eroding the concept of gentlemanliness.
Before we even begin our sojourn in Verona, sound designer Martin Slavin has trotted out some of the choicest cuts from Fats Waller’s discography. Then we nestle into Milan for nearly the rest of the evening, where production designer Liz Ascroft parlays silky formalwear, glittery chandeliers and cosmopolitan street scenes to evoke the elegance of Fred and Ginger, who parted cinematic ways in 1939. A chi-chi soiree is highlighted by a live jazz trio riffing on original music composed by Conor Linehan.
Whether we’re in 1590s Italy or 1930s Hollywood, the code of gentlemen takes a brutal buffeting from the treacheries of Proteus against his best friend Valentine and his fiancée Julia. When he’s finally alone in the wild with Sylvia — the beauty who has inspired his betrayals — Proteus attempts to rape Sylvia when she rebuffs him because of his loathsome turpitude.
Considering that this ultimate outrage occurs barely 100 lines from the final curtain, Buffini does an admirable job in plausibly staging all the swift discovery, penitence and forgiveness that ensues. Nor does she gloss over what has happened to the extent that we’re expected to completely forgive and forget.
But Buffini isn’t always as cold-blooded as she needs to be. Oftentimes, Buffini hasn’t prodded her younger cast members to project their voices deep into the audience. Worse, she allows the entire exposition to wallow in tedium and irrelevancy until intermission.
Especially excruciating are the endlessly tepid jests of Proteus’ servant Launce, irritatingly punctuated by the barking of his dog Crabb. Take them outside, I say, shoot them dead and offer them up to the Davidson Wildcat as sacrifices. Heartless as that sounds, neither one’s absence would be detectable for even an instant.
RSC’s Julius Caesar, on the other hand, is compelling from beginning to end under David Farr’s imaginative direction. While we’re viewing the famed infighting for leadership of the Roman Empire, we must struggle to unlock the logic of Farr’s electrifying overlays.
When live video is projected on large makeshift screens, it seems like we’re in a modern European nation — Putin’s Russia or Berlusconi’s Italy — where democracy and dictatorship are vying for ascendancy on the shoulders of wily, egotistical politicians. Alternately, we’re thrown back to primitive ritualism when successive actors douse themselves in a bucket of water entering a rainy scene — or later when Caesar and his killers douse themselves in a bucket of blood during the assassination scene.
We never get a positive fix on where Farr intends to transplant Shakespeare’s tragedy. Nor is there any reconciliation of the production’s many realistic and symbolic dimensions. But there are brilliant touches along the way, fortified by powerhouse acting from Gary Oliver as Antony, Adrian Schiller as Cassius and Christopher Saul as Caesar.
Conceived in a country where a vestigial monarchy still retains a prominent foothold, Farr’s interpretation refrains from taking a decisive stand on the rectitude of the republicans or the triumvirs. That in itself is a radical departure from the traditional reading of Caesar, one that encourages us to see the virtues, the cunning, the manipulation and the self-delusion on both sides.
Schiller stands out as the best Cassius — in or out of leather — that I’ve seen, particularly when he debunks Caesar’s divinity. But there’s no missing Saul’s larger-than-life presence as Caesar.
Saul is also a prime asset in Two Gents as Sylvia’s overprotective papa, the Duke of Milan. So is Rachel Pickup as the wise and lovely Sylvia. In Caesar, Pickup has just one fine scene as Portia, Brutus’ wife.
If you’re trying to choose between the two RSC productions, render your money unto Caesar. But both productions are definitely eye openers.
BareBones Theatre Group unveiled their new production of David Hare’s The Blue Room last week, in the process showing off their newly upfitted SouthEnd Performing Arts Center. SPAC now sports seating and lighting that BBTG reaped with their new tenant, the refugee Off-Tryon Theatre Company.
The upgrades make the 10 dialogues of The Blue Room, presented without intermission, easier on the eye and the rump. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, there has never been a sex comedy with a more palpable shape. Each of the 10 characters we see is two-timing the character he or she follows onstage — and each one is being two-timed by the character who follows. The chain that comes full circle at the end is thus a ring that symbolizes the elegant comedy of modern love. Or the futile emptiness within.
Jim Yost and newcomer Jocelyn Rose split the 10 roles, and their transformations are a joy to behold. Best is Yost’s transition from student to politician, overlapped by Rose’s change from politician’s wife to model. Unlike the notorious Broadway production, there’s no nudity here to trouble Charlotte’s infamous morals wardens. But the blackouts remain a wicked treat, linked by a running joke.
The geometry of Chad Calvert’s set design is almost as satisfying as his low-key stage direction, and Barbara Berry’s lighting meshes beautifully with the concept. This BareBones effort lives down to its name in only one respect, the awkwardness of the scene changes. With everything else so slickly dialed in, I longed for a turntable to whisk us from one dialogue to the next.
Not to worry, they’re all worth the wait.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.
