Medea in LA

I have been neglectful of late of blogging. Trust some good plays, however, to bring me back in. I saw two last week--each was quite different, yet both were stunning in their own way. The first was Southwest Shakespeare's Mojada: a Medea in Los Angeles, directed by Micah Espinosa and performed once again at the wonderfully small venue at Taliesin West. 

As you can tell from the title, the play is based on the Greek play Medea but it is set instead in LA. The transition is about as flawless as can be, which highlights the universality of the themes in the original play. Just because the story was set in a specific time and place with specific politics and social structures does not mean that all of those don't have similar reflections at any point in history. People are still people no matter the year. And perhaps Greek plays are especially good for adapting to new settings. Translations are already so different from the original language that translators often already modernize the language. (I remember, for instance, reading Lysistrata and seeing the explanation that a certain group of characters had been given Southern accents in the translation in order to portray to modern readers the effect of their different accents within the play.) So why not take things a step further?

Structurally, they did also move some of the action onto the stage and change a little of the timing. Greek plays are all about things taking place off stage. Medea is largely composed of characters talking about what has happened or what will happen. So with this play, they kept the monologue or long dialogue style but also spread the action around more. And they kept the ending secret so that it comes more as a shock to views who might not know the Greek play's plot. 

That difference in how they approached "the big thing that happens at the end" is reflective of what is perhaps the biggest change in this adaptation. Greek Medea is a woman who has been wronged and expresses great emotion over how she has been treated; she's a woman who finds ultimate vengeance against her wrongdoers. Modern Medea likewise has been wronged, but she is portrayed a little differently. She starts off more passive and then becomes enraged, like she has finally passed her breaking point and has lost her mind to pain so that all she can do is lash out. So what we end up seeing is Medea's trauma. Her vengeance takes on a greater emphasis on pain and tragedy. What has happened to Medea is tragedy--and what she does as a result of this tragedy is likewise tragedy. 

I can't mention this production without also taking a moment to appreciate Greta Skelly's moving performance as Tita, the nurse/maid. Her character combines various roles from the Greek play including the Chorus. So while Medea is the title character, Tita is the audience's guide both to the facts of what is happening and to the emotions we are meant to feel. She weeps for the tragedy that happens--but in her desire to not see injustice, she cannot support Medea's final actions. So when we see what trauma can cause a person to do, we don't dwell on our delight to see wrongdoers get their just deserts. Rather, we simply weep that tragedy exists. 

The Sonnets on Stage

Southwest Shakespeare Company has a way with combining the new and the old, the familiar and the fresh. They'll perform Shakespeare plays and they'll perform contemporary plays. They'll set the Shakespeare plays in their original settings, or in a more recent time period. It keeps things fluid. Their latest production pushes the fluidity even more.

"Shall I Compare Thee: The Sonnets," directed by Mary Coleman Way and Dathan B. Williams (who was also the playwright), combines various of Shakespeare's sonnets into a play. It's one of the cases in which you have very little idea going in about what you're going to see on stage. They said there would be music and dance, but I still had a lot of questions. I was imagining a small cast and more of a monologue style. 

What they came up with much more cohesive than what I was imagining. The cast included eight actors and three musicians. Not only was this a larger group than I'd expected, but it's also a large group for the small venue at Taliesin West. That theatre gives the opportunity to feel fully enveloped by the stage. There was a light framework of Shakespeare's biography to give a kind of context to each sonnet. So the actors switch in and out of speaking directly to the audience (when explaining various factoids) and performing the different roles within each sonnet. 

Some actors played Shakespeare himself at various ages: youth, adulthood, and maturity. They all played either the speakers or subjects of the sonnets. So the play was a constantly-changing kaleidoscope of sound and visuals and emotional beats. But it didn't feel convoluted. In fact, it was quite a delight. There was very little pressure in the watching as compared with a usual Shakespeare play. Normally, if it's a play you're not familiar with, you have to glance at plot or characters beforehand so that you'll be able to keep up with what's happening when you watch. Here, though, the "action" was simple. And if a particular few lines eluded you, no worries: that sonnet will be over soon and you'll move on to the next. 

Their musical explanation of a sonnet's construction deserves the limelight. It would be the delight of high school English students eager for a few minutes of a YouTube video to lighten the load of learning. In fact, the whole play had that sense of delight. Maybe it's because the actors were constantly moving in and out of breaking the fourth wall that there was greater awareness of their love of their craft. That plus the experimental nature of this play showcased the fun and whimsy of hamming it up to elevate dialogue and sequences. 

And we hit the more serious emotions, too, all the way from the opening sequence speaking of death to the closing "Shall I Compare Thee?" We walked away reminded of what a difference it makes to produce and consume art. "So long lives this and this gives life to thee." Art in the hands of performers with an audience becomes a tangible, living thing that outlasts the ages. It's quite a glorious thing to behold. 

The Tempest in Our Hearts

Although they were back doing live shows last fall, I haven't had a chance to watch any of Southwest Shakespeare's current season until seeing The Tempest last week. It's playing in repertory with Farinelli and the King until March 19/20. 

I'm familiar with some of the basics of The Tempest, but this was the first time I had seen a full production. It's quite grand, jolly fun, isn't it? I tend to prefer the tragedies over the comedies, but this one follows a slightly different tone than is most common with the tragedies. Sometimes the comedy is all about innuendo; that wasn't as much the case here. And with the addition of magic, the plot has a wonderfully random quality. People drop in here and there, setting up a series of little tableaus in which we can focus on separate elements one after the other. 

Then also we have some heavier concepts within the themes. Director Ingrid Sonnichsen's notes in the program explore the idea of forgiveness in the story. Most specifically she refers to Prospero's forgiveness of his brother and the freedom it gives him from isolation. That's great. We can look at the island as a sort of metaphor for how we try and deal with the circumstances we have faced in life. Prospero, with the help of Ariel, is messing with the people he used to know and making them turn this way or that. He's trying to manipulate circumstances in the way he wants--which compares to the past, in which he was, you could say, a victim of circumstances. But along the way of playing with the magic of this island, he comes to realize that he doesn't need to play the game anymore. 

There is a line in the play that I wish I could quote back. It was about love, about how love should stand fast through all circumstances or storms. At least, something to that effect. That's terrific. It connects to forgiveness, too, because of course as people we all fail one another in one way or other at some point; love needs to be willing to accept that and endure through it. We agree to work through the difficulties rather than to run away. We face the tempest head on. 

Though simple, the set effectively put us on the strange island. I particularly like the way in which the draped strips of cloth at some point in the play lit up with lights. It added to the otherworldly, anything-can-happen feeling. For a chance at escapism and for a dive back into Southwest Shakespeare after a long break, The Tempest hit all the right notes. 

Aurora, Little Women, & Artistic Release

Okay, last week I was listening to Breaking Benjamin while writing about Puccini's La Boheme. This week I'm taking it one step further and comparing the generation of the latest version of "Dear Agony" with Southwest Shakespeare's production (by Tier 5) of "Meg Jo Beth Amy & Louisa."

I can't just talk about the play because my feelings on it are mixed. On the one hand, it delivered striking emotional chords the likes of which I don't remember seeing since the January 2017 Hamlet (oh, that was one was amazing). On the other, I'm uninterested in mixing things up and modernizing things just for the sake of mixing up and modernizing--for instance, why does the audience get so excited whenever they add in cuss words, is that really that creative?

And I also can't just talk about "Dear Agony." It's part of Breaking Benjamin's new acoustic album, Aurora, and it has the exciting first collaboration with Lacey Sturm formerly of Flyleaf (their Memento Mori is probably my top album of all). So I can say, yeah, that's a great song and so is the story about how they came to collab and the possibility of them doing a whole album together. Her comment to him about how the song is Jesus in Gethsemane is really a reflection of the relation between art, the artist, and the processing of emotion.

And that's where we come back to the play. It is so-titled as it is because it shows Lousia May Alcott writing Little Women and fighting with her publisher over what she doesn't want to write (we all know she had no interest in writing a book for little girls). She is literally onstage with her characters, deciding what they will do, trying to find a connection by writing about her own family, and then along the way realizing that she is invested in this story because it has become something that she does care about.

On one hand, Little Women is as flat as her publisher wanted. On the other, it is quite a contrast to other moral stories of the day and that's why it has continued to be read even today. She did what was asked and somehow tweaked it just enough that it wouldn't be too shocking as to not be published and yet that it would be enough that it would subtly start to shift things. Meg's Mishaps particularly stands out to me; she didn't just write about the good wife, she wrote about a young wife crying over the jelly that didn't jell and getting into the first friction with her husband over buying expensive clothing fabric. So Louisa wrote the moral tale--but she somehow also wrote real at the same time.

What does this have to do with Breaking Benjamin and Lacey Sturm? Throughout the play, we see Louisa struggling with her relationship not just to her publisher but also to her past and to her family and to her society and to herself. Through the creation of the book and the unraveling of her memories that comes with it, she is able to forgive people in her life (whether her sister or her father), to appreciate things in her life (particularly her sisters), and to better come to terms with her place in the world. So it is essentially an emotional unwinding process. Like what led to the Aurora collaboration.

On the one hand, you have Benjamin Burnley writing a rock song with whatever inspiration. Then Lacey Sturm comes in (I love that picture of them where she doesn't even come close to reaching his shoulder) saying, this is what your song is about. And then he in a way agrees to take on that interpretation by inviting her to collab with him on the new version. So the song starts angling into a new or perhaps simply more full meaning as the artist's relationship with it develops. Emotional unwinding.

The play is over, but here is the Spotify link to the Aurora version of "Dear Agony."

Macbeth Doth Come

When it comes to the Shakespeare plays that are more easily digestible to the audience and those that are less easy to follow, Macbeth falls into the former category. Not because it is shallow but because it has approachable concepts: ambition, greed, glory, murder, fear, and horror. You can easily explain the plot in a sentence or two, so you always know at least the gist of what's going on, even if it's your first time seeing the play.

This was not my first time seeing Macbeth performed live, but it's easy to say that Southwest Shakespeare Company (with Drew Shirley directing) found a way to make this a unique performance and yet also one that did not take a less traditional approach. "Less traditional" usually means a modern setting or the addition of music or silly props--that sort of thing. It was traditional in the sense that they kept the time period and kept most of the classic elements, but it was unique because they mixed things up.

Most notably, the wytches. The three wytches are one, performed by Elizabeth Broeder. She plays a strange, demon-possessed-like creature that feels truly evil and wrong. Instead of three witches dancing around a cauldron (an image with which we are all overly familiar with from fiction by now), they gave us something to disturb us fresh. And she sticks around. She doesn't disappear after the start of the play; she stays, leaking her poison further and deeper, all the way to that final scene, that hint of the offer of evil that the future will always bring to each person.

In their earlier scenes, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth felt more like people, just people. And in their later, haunted scenes, they are us in our darkest moments. They are haunted by horrific deeds that will soon be made public. We may not be doing the same (hopefully not), but we are still, in our darkest moments, hidden and alone, in deep corners wondering how we can ever recover from what we have done or what has been done to us. They are us when we crave escape and don't know how to find it. Kyle Sorrell gave that style of line delivery that pulls you immediately into the feeling of an existential crisis.

On the practical side, the lighting of this show was beautiful, so I must give a nod to Lighting Designer Dallas Nichols. There were shadows of the actors on both walls that extend out from the sides of the stage; this helped to create that eerie atmosphere but also to set up that concept of being watched. The lights on the stage, as well, set up strange color and obscurity and focus, whatever suited each moment. In fact, the lighting was a character of its own.

Now, despite what I'd said, there was a big way in which SSC departed from the traditional. They switched male for female. They made Banquo female. I thought at first they had just cast a woman for the role until another character referred to Banquo as "she." And they switched Macduff and Lady Macduff. So it is in fact Lady Macduff who kills Macbeth. It all went along with the gender concepts in Lady Macbeth's speech; she asks for all of the tender, female parts of her character to vanish so that she can help Macbeth in the dark and evil tasks ahead. So to have her give this speech and then to see both male and female characters taking part in different types of events shows that evil is not male or female, tenderness is not male or female, and both male and female face temptation and the option to choose one way or another, to choose right or to choose wrong. If, however, you are not interested in exploring such gender questions, they did these switches in such a simple way that you can simply ignore them if you wish. That is, they weren't distracting to the main events of the story.

This was one of the best plays Southwest Shakespeare has put on in a while. Partly because it's Macbeth but also because they approached it so well. They made it freshly creepy, and I can say nothing better than that.

The Death of Kings

Heading over to see what Southwest Shakespeare Company has going on at Taliesin West always turns out well. The Death of Kings: Seize the Crown was performed by a group from UC Santa Barbara's Department of Theater and Dance. The play itself combines eight of Shakespeare's history plays, only one of which I have watched.

Frank Lloyd Wright's little theatre up at Taliesin is already such a strange (in a good way) spot to see a play. This played used the space differently, bringing the back "wall" of the stage farther back than in the other plays I've seen there. The other plays have had small casts, usually just a few people. This one had a little over a dozen. So they did need a bigger physical space--and yet they were still in the smaller physical space of the theatre itself.

I talk about space because this production emphasized the use of space and visuals. They had that not-quite-abstract, artistic approach. The same wooden poles in the hands of the cast could represent either the swords of the battlefield or the wood that burns Joan of Arc. The physical passing of the crown from one monarch to another was a theme in and of itself. And red light or red hands or red cloth, well, I'll let you imagine that. It was all done in a fluid way, though. Sometimes such an approach can feel like the actors are pretending to show something happening; but the approach here was, instead, a direct representation of what was happening.

Although the cast was on the bigger side, most were playing at least two or three roles, in addition to being part of the ensemble. The 90 minute play, after all, puts together eight plays. The whole play, then, was much about the overall concept of changing thrones and yet also about each moment. In this moment, this actor is this character and they are playing out this scene, even if they were a completely different character in a completely different scene just a minute ago. In this way, they took the pressure on themselves instead of putting it on the audience: we were free to just sit back and watch it all unfold, not needing to worry about keeping track of who's who or what's happening. Indeed, the carefully placed snippets of narration also worked to provide whatever guidance the audience might need.

All of these pieces of plays came together to create something dark and dramatic and exciting and funny and thoughtful. The concept of different generations falling and rising brings up questions of what we are doing in our own time, or how the present would look as just a single strand in a whole stack of events. What would you choose if you were being watched in the pages of history?

In the Forest of Arden

Ha ha ha, Spring Break, Winter Break, three day weekends--these are phrases that not freeing and leisurely when you work in certain industries; rather, they are terrifying. When you're the person working so that everyone else may take their leisure time, all you do is work during their leisure time. So . . . even though I've had things to post about (since there are an abundance of shows going on this month and I seem to be making it to them all), I just haven't done so.

So I'll go ahead and bundle Southwest Shakespeare's latest plays into one post. They ran them together, anyways, so I suppose it's fitting enough. Now, often when they do this, there is one play that stands out over the other. This time, though, I was impressed with the quality of the performances in each one. The two plays in question are The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It.

Probably it's easier to say that the former was the better one. But that's because it was filled with humor and laughs and to have the audience constantly responding to all of that wittiness and energy was an experience. However, the delivery in As You Like It was just as much of quality; it was just less humor (although there was still certainly some).

The Taming of the Shrew was the play I was completely unfamiliar with. I'd heard of it, of course, but not much else. Knowing that it's one of those plays that can be . . . problematic for the modern scene, I found that they did very well with it. Maybe I'm just used to viewing things in context of timelines, but I wasn't offended by this play and I even felt like much of it could have been written today (as opposed to so many of my dear Victorian novels that I love but are definitely often quite dated in certain respects). So whether this was the careful choosing of which lines to use or the delivery or just the overall strutting and direction of the play (or most likely a combination), well done to everyone involved. It was just a fun comedy, making everyone laugh at the silliness of humanity and then ultimately ponder what our statements and our actions really mean in the end.

What As You Like It did best was to create that sense of the forest of Arden. Arden is that place that is a state of mind. Given that this play used the same set (a heavy structure with a balcony and doors and stairs) as the other (since the two were running at the same time, of course), I wondered how they would create the forest. Turns out they introduced it bit by bit. As the characters spend more time in the forest and get, in a sense, mentally deeper into the forest, the entire forest overlay emerges. Wonderful there. Once more, this was one of SWS's plays to feature music throughout. And in this case, the music helped to create that sense of the forest as this single moment in time, this state of mind, that helps the characters to ponder who they are.

Pondering, pondering in the forest that is our minds. Both plays, though different, contained that sense of pondering the self. We're in this forest--who are you and who am I? Do we know or do we have yet to discover? The discovery is a journey, that is certain.

The Horror of Frankenstein

Despite being perhaps the most famous story of them all, Frankenstein is one of those books that tends to take readers by surprise. Expecting a horrific tale full of action and suspense, they instead find a book filled with pages of philosophical thought. And despite there being movie adaptation after adaptation of the story, most of them focus on the physical scene of bringing the creature to life rather than on all of the philosophical thought (not to say that they don't include it at all; they just put the focus on the action).

Southwest Shakespeare Company is currently performing Quinn Mattfeld's adaptation of Frankenstein. He is part of the new artistic director team of the company. What this production, directed by Patrick Walsh, sought to present was a balance between the action and horror that modern audiences expect from this story and the philosophical elements that Mary Shelley herself wrote in her novel. They allowed the story to get a little dark and spooky at times to go for that Halloweentime feel and they also kept in passages of deep thought about life and death and creation and science and experimentation.

Now, I did overhear someone commenting that the play, while extremely well-acted, was a bit choppy. I did also get the overall sense that much of the audience, if they had read the novel at all, didn't really remember much from it. So what someone else might have found as choppy, I found as their way of balancing out these two elements of the story and keeping it from being a flat, monotone, philosophical piece. I should here note that I'm not calling Shelley's novel flat or boring. Far from it; it's a wonderful work. It's just what we would today call "slow," which doesn't necessarily lend itself towards something like a movie or a play today. And that is, of course, why most of the adaptations take such a different focus.

There was, certainly, more narration in this play than there tends to be in plays. Yet the way that scenes were played out kept things moving. The lighting, too, helped to create that sense of drama and weight and also to express the violence of certain scenes (like Mary's death) that couldn't necessarily be played out live. Joshua Murphy once again ruled the stage as the Creature, playing both the newly-created childlike figure and the classically-educated man. Jesse James Kamps as Dr. Frankenstein brought the obsession of a man fully bent on a project and the true horror of a man faced with a situation to which he can see no solution.

That's the horror of Frankenstein, isn't it? Creation is part of life and death is part of life and creation unleashes a whole new world of possible occurrences which you cannot predict.

You still have two more chances to catch Frankenstein; it's running through this Saturday at the Mesa Arts Center.

The Tale of Pericles

Currently in repertory from Southwest Shakespeare Company are Pericles and Frankenstein. The latter I was keen to see from the start but the former I thought I would see if I could but wouldn't be too sad if I had to miss. I knew nothing of Pericles and the name evoked a historical, military story about leaders and duties and valor and dry content. Turns out that such is not the picture at all.

True, Pericles is a king. And there are other leaders and such figures throughout the play. And yet the play is anything but dry. It's emotionally moving and dark and light and fun all at once. It's a fantasy, where impossible things happen, and yet it's grounded in real world feelings, as well. It's a story of love and tragedy and happiness and sorrow. There were moments that were like watching a tragedy and moments akin to watching a comedy and yet somehow the play never quite landed on one or the other: it took the best of both. As someone who tends to favor the tragedies more than the comedies when it comes to Shakespeare, this was the perfect blend.

Stylistically, music was once again a central element to the production, as it often has been lately with Southwest Shakespeare. And this was one of those instances where music lent a painfully tender joining force to the scenes. The main piece they played with was "Sleepsong" which listeners of Secret Garden will recognize. If you're familiar with the song, you'll already know the specific emotional atmosphere it creates. So picture that entwined within live, dramatic scenes of heartbreak and heart-healing.

Usually it's hard for me to watch and follow along with and enjoy a Shakespeare play with which I have no familiarity. Usually it helps to know, going in, the gist of the story or, ideally, to already know the characters and the important scenes and the different possible ways to bring it all together. This time I knew nothing and yet I could follow along so well. Director Quinn Mattfeld and the whole team involved did a great job of creating a production digestible to a modern audience. It was fun and exciting and touching. All of the actors, as well, brought everything together seamlessly, even when they were jumping from one character to another (quite different) character in a single moment, often without even leaving the stage. Joshua Murphy, as Pericles, in particular gave the audience that emotional link.

Pericles isn't someone we can relate to, from one way of looking at it. He's a king, for one thing, and the things that happen to him are quite different from the things that happen to most of us. And yet his emotion was something for us to relate to. I particularly enjoy that we could go through everything that this plot went through and still come to that ending. That's . . . peaceful.

Well done. This was probably one of my favorite productions from Southwest Shakespeare. And you still have a couple more chances to see it, too: it's running through this Saturday.

The Henry Play

If I may, just a moment in time.

I'm not really a critic; that style has never quite suited me. Even my chocolate reviews (which I always stress are my only posts that I even consider reviews) aren't always reviews in the usual sense. I have my own way of approaching content.

For Southwest Shakespeare Company's latest production, Henry IV Part I, I want only to describe a moment, a glimpse, a single something.

That single something is song. This production used music, sometimes sung by just one character and sometimes building into a piece sung by the entire cast. The effect amplified the themes of royalty, duties of leadership, and struggle--and also elevated these themes to become simply the themes of life. Seeing performers on stage, singing as a group, lifted the far-off story of kings and princes from long ago into something tactile and approachable. It's like they were singing the song of life, of generations of people passing from one to the next. Beauty and heartbreak, joy and pain.

I am not overly familiar with the Henry plays. To find, side by side with all of the (mainly Falstaff-centered) comedy of the play, such a tender core brought me, in those moments, to that sort of out-of-body feeling that I seek from plays. That moment when everything seems simultaneously great and small. All of this makes me think of how much (instrumental) music added to Romeo and Juliet earlier this year. SSC has been doing great with music lately, haven't they?

Romeo & Juliet

Well, you know, Romeo and Juliet wouldn't exactly have been a play I would want to rush out and see, except that I do like to keep an eye on most of Southwest Shakespeare Company's productions. You just never know which ones will click with you and resonate in a powerful way.

Romeo and Juliet (directed here by Patrick Walsh) began and I thought I was seeing things that I expected. The prologue, the two families, and the comedy. But then something happened. I want to say it was around Mercutio's Queen Mab speech that I noticed this production was taking a different angle. That speech is dirty even for Shakespeare--I remember finding it dirty in high school even though I probably didn't even realize then just how dirty (why, again, tell me, is Romeo and Juliet the main required Shakespeare text [even though there are other Shakespeare plays out there] in high schools, even when sleeveless shirts or shorts that don't come down to your knees are considered too inappropriate for school? I digress). That speech is usually just played as comedy, but here it became a frenzied bit, where Mercutio starts entering his own zone, which made the scene fall in an entirely different way from what I am used to seeing.

That concept of actors entering a zone reminded me of Hamlet last January.

And then I thought more of Hamlet as the play continued to unfold, greatly slimmed down. As I continually mention, I prefer Shakespeare's tragedies to his comedies. And though Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, it's still full of all of the comedy that I generally dislike. This production cut most of that away, leaving us with the core love story. Romeo and Juliet a love story again, a story where you can genuinely feel these two characters falling in love? Wow, that's impressive simply given how familiar this storyline is. It all had so much to do with the performances of Sasha Wilson as Juliet and Kyle Sorrell as Romeo. They did that thing of making the audience believe what we were seeing on stage, of entirely bringing us in.

Some versions of this play emphasize the youth of the two characters. This one didn't. Their age was mostly irrelevant. Their doomed love was central.

Maybe also watching this play brought all of the emotions of falling in love because of the music. Ben Vining provided live cello music. The cello is already one of those instruments that speaks with a human voice, and the way that the music was mainly subtle and yet always just perfect for the moment established the emotional tone. Cello music can be tender and it can be heartbreaking--like love.

Romeo and Juliet runs through this Saturday. And it's exactly the type of production I like to see from Southwest Shakespeare.

Twelfth Night at Taliesin

Southwest Shakespeare Company was back this past weekend at Taliesin West, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture up on the northeastern edge of Scottsdale. The show? The education touring show of Twelfth Night. That is, the show that students get to see performed at their schools (as opposed, of course, to when the schools go to the theatre to see a daytime performance of a regular production of the season).

As such, the show was shorter and kept the minimalist set approach. They also had more of what I want to call the modern approach: the actors moved in a way to create the storm at the beginning of the plot, things like that. And they all sat on chairs at the back of the stage when they weren't the ones up front performing. It all felt very actors' workshop to me, which I'm sure is the idea. Instead of just giving students a good play, they also want to give them a glimpse into what it's like to put a production together.

Sound familiar? My theme for yesterday's post (in which I focused on the behind the scenes look) continues into today. Particularly as I get into, once again, what came after the show ended. They also gave us a look at what it was like, in Shakespeare's day, for actors to receive only their own lines (along with cue lines). A few actors went up and performed unrehearsed scenes together based only on paper lines that they were given. That gave the audience an inside look not only on the history of Shakespeare but also on what it's like to perform: there is so much that an actor can bring apart from what a director might tell them to do.

My reaction to this evening's event is very similar to what I said about Aria Jukebox yesterday: I can't say I enjoyed it as much as usual, but I did enjoy getting that behind the scenes glimpse. And of course they were also giving us the opportunity to see what the education side of the company is up to, which is nice: touring shows can end up having to much influence on people.

The Three Musketeers Reimagined

What did I say about The Three Musketeers the book? That is was simply fun and entertaining? Well, that's exactly what Southwest Shakespeare's production of The Three Musketeers was. A solid piece of fun entertainment.

I will begin with a couple of comments on the adaptation. This play was written in in 2006 by Ken Ludwig, who wanted to capture the spirit of the book rather than each plot element. He absolutely did so, going off of seeing this particular production. It's a long book that can ramble a bit at times and you have to kind of just go along with the rambling and enjoy each scene on its own because it takes a while for the plot to really even form. The play, while still following the main scene of the book, has more of a plot to keep the audience's attention and to keep the pacing quicker. I mentioned before that there are politics and history to the book, but they're not really the main core of it; the play addressed this wonderfully by having the Musketeers always needing to remind one another of what the political situation is.

What I had more trouble accepting than any subtractions, though, was the addition of Sabine, d'Artagnan's sister. Presumably she's there because the main characters are mostly men--but when there are such good characters in Constance and Milady, I don't know that we really needed another female character. It's true, though, that I think she serves another purpose than just adding in a female element: she's there to help set the tone. When she shows up, one of the Musketeers asks a question to the effect of, "What's going on?" It's the same thing the audience wonders: why does d'Artagnan have a sister? Why? Because it's random and silly and unexpected and doesn't really make sense. Throwing Sabine in there and setting d'Artagnan up as a little goofier than I read him in the book, the audience knows right away that they're here to have fun and be entertained. Sabine almost even feels like an element of parody--except that adding humor into this story isn't making it into parody because The Three Musketeers is already so entertaining and often humorous. So while I'm still not completely on board with the addition of Sabine (or with that goofy angle for d'Artagnan), I do see how she helped set that tone for the play. And honestly, she didn't really detract from anything, either.

Now on to how the cast and the production team brought to life this play, directed by Jesse James Kamps. There were some familiar faces. In particular, I remember Andy Cahoon (d'Artagnan) most as Laertes in Hamlet, Melody Knudson (Constance) as Ophelia in the same production, and Alexis Baigue (Cardinal Richelieu) from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) last month. From the personal perspective, it's exciting to start to recognize actors and see how they approach different roles; you start to get a sense of their individual talents and what they in particular can bring to a character.

Probably all of the Musketeers (Aaron Blanco as Aramis, Spencer Dooley as Athos, and Keath Hall as Porthos) and Cardinal Richelieu were my favorites in the play. They really brought that sense of vanity, coolness, carelessness, and love of dueling that forms the Musketeers and their enemies (well, the Cardinal isn't always cool--usually he's just "the bad guy," but he was a delight to watch here). In fact, everyone in the play was well cast, and this was a fairly big cast at sixteen people.

They also worked well together, particularly in the big group scenes, whether at the ball or in the many fighting scenes. That fight choreography (also by Aaron Blanco)--it completely captured that sense of fun that's in the book. You would be watching them on stage, switching to this focus to that focus, this angle to that angle, and you'd be thinking, how are they being so silly? Such a particular lighthearted humor that went through the scenes.

Given that this is simply a hugely entertaining play to watch, it's a great introduction piece to live performance and also a good play to see if you don't make it out to very many. It's easy to watch and understand and the pace is quick and all of the scenes will set you smiling. I didn't really know what to expect from this one, but I ended up having a wonderful time. The play is running until the 28th, so there is still time to make it over.

The Rapid Shakespeare Comedy

Fall is coming upon us, and you know what that means: Southwest Shakespeare and the rest are starting in on their new seasons. Friday night was the opening of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) directed by Debra K. Stevens. The evening was particularly special as a sign that the company was still able to stay on schedule after the huge setback that was the fire in their warehouse over the summer. You can read more about the fire here and make a donation either there on their website or on their GoFundMe page, if you feel so led to help out the arts.

Whilst watching The Complete Works, I felt like I had the perfect perspective to come in to this show. I don't necessarily like Shakespeare. At one time, I disliked Shakespeare. Then I eventually conceded that I liked a lot of things about Hamlet. Then I realized that I like the tragedies more than the comedies. Then I admitted that there is plenty of literary content to analyze in the plays. And then finally I found that it's the performance that also gives meaning to the text, and a performance can be great to watch even if the text isn't necessarily your favorite to read.

This play is marketed as being for everyone: those who do like Shakespeare, those who don't, and those who hold neither opinion. It's absolutely true, too.

It's a comedy and a parody, performed by three actors (in this case, Breona Conrad, Louis Farber, and Alexis Baigue). They condense the plays down into quickly presentable forms, and they give some "background information" on Shakespeare and his plays. This leads to some discussion here and there about all of the various topics (artistic, literary, historical, and social) that come along with the plays; while it's all comedic, there is true content in there, as well. That's the heart of good parody, after all: good parody gets to the heart of its subject, leaving that part intact while adding fluffy or silly extensions here and there like feathers stuck into a central sphere.

This play isn't just about the actors trying to quickly run through the dialogue of thirty-seven plays at lighting speed. It isn't that kind of show. Instead, they spend a good portion of time on Romeo and Juliet because it's one of the most widely read and viewed. They cover Titus Andronicus and Macbeth a little more quickly--I don't know about everyone else, but I'm familiar with both of those plays. They comedies all get lumped together into one wacky composition, and Hamlet delightfully gets the entire second act because it's also one of Shakespeare's biggest plays.

Parody or not, I found myself wishing that Shakespeare were performed like this more often. I'm not referring to the rap song or the tap dancing bit or the lightsabers. While those worked great for this play, what I want to see more of is this kind of delivery. These three actors all owned the stage, the scenes, and the dialogue. Part of their parody work involved real Shakespeare quotes, and they knew how to deliver the lines like words spoken by characters (as opposed to those performances where you're not even sure if the actors know what the words mean or if they were too busy trying to memorize difficult dialogue to even be able to interpret it). There was life in this performance. Sure, they purposefully overdid the enthusiasm a bit, but I don't think that's entirely un-Shakespeare of an approach. I think productions in general could use a little more of that style.

While I'm on the subject of the actors, let me also mention how quick, on point, and versatile these three actors were. Like with Wittenberg back in April, it was a small group where every person played an important role and played it well. Wittenberg used comedy to make the audience think, but The Complete Works uses comedy as the result after thinking. We've all formed opinions on Shakespeare; the play gives us a time to sit back and smile and laugh over it all. From half smiles all the way to uncontrollable laughter.

This was a tiny theatre, one of the spots in the Mesa Arts Center that I had never been in before (the smallest one they have there, I believe). Wittenberg had a small theatre at Taliesin West, as well--but that was different seating. This seating made you feel more like you were hanging out with the rest of the audience and with the actors. There was more of a physical connection among everyone, which of course worked well given that this play does involve a bit of audience involvement. Maybe all of this is part of the reason why the show built momentum as it moved along: the actors weren't just performing a script; they were feeding off of the audience's enthusiasm (this was such an enthusiastic audience, too, I might add). Sit in the front rows if you want to; don't if you don't. Involvement aside, I prefer the back rows because they're tiered and I'm short, so I get a better view from tiered seats. It's open seating, so if you want to be able to choose the place that suits you best, arrive early.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is running through the end of the month; click here to see all the performance dates on Southwest Shakespeare's website. Go see it for a compilation of laughs; you'll just walk out happy, still glowing from that delightful treatment of Hamlet at the end.

Comedy and Drama Meet at Wittenberg

I have come, over time, to love Hamlet's indecision, his crisis over life and death, and simply his overall dramatic conflict. This January I left the theatre entirely captivated after Southwest Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which William Wilson played the title role. How excited was I then to see their latest production, Wittenberg directed by Kent Burnham, in which Hamlet (once again played by Wilson) is a student at Wittenberg before his father dies and his teachers are John Faustus and Martin Luther. Intriguing, no?

Rather than their usual setting at the Mesa Arts Center, Southwest Shakespeare brought Wittenberg to Taliesin West (which is the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture). As this was my first time seeing Taliesin, I must give a nod to the beautiful location and the notable architecture of the place. Simply driving in at sunset was gorgeous.

The theatre itself was smaller than what I'm used to. It was open seating, by the way, so it is advisable to arrive early if you want to be able to choose your seat. I sat in the fourth row because I'm not used to being so close to the actors and because this seemed more at eye level, anyway. As the play began, I found that the small setting worked well for this play: there are only four actors and the content of the play revolves around statements and explorations of their personal viewpoints.

That is, Hamlet is troubled (as Hamlet gets), and Faustus is trying to get him to rely on reason and to simply live life as he wants, while Luther is advising him to rely on religion. And all the while, Luther is himself questioning religion and Faustus's way of living that he so loves is not always turning out the way he thinks it should. So Hamlet is caught in the middle, not sure to whose advice to listen.

Probably it goes without saying that you'll want to have at least basic familiarity with these three figures. The play is full of references to their lives and their quotes. There are plenty of references to other material, as well, but those are the types of details that you can go either way with recognizing or not recognizing; you'll still enjoy the play.

And enjoyable it is. It's a comedy because it's full of laughs. And it's a drama because the characters are asking deep questions. I suppose it's also a tragedy because we know what will happen to Hamlet and Faustus afterward.

Especially for including so many literary, historical, and theological references, this play does not feel heavy at all but rather flows smoothly, thanks no doubt to the performances by the actors. All four of them, William Wilson as Hamlet, David Dickinson as Faustus, Marshall Glass as Luther, and Allison Sell as the Eternal Feminine (she played four different female roles throughout the play), gave top tier performances. They instantly showed the tone of each character, they gave all the right comedic timing, and guided our way through all of these philosophical questions.

In one particular scene, Faustus gives Hamlet one word at a time, asking him to say the first word that comes to mind for each one. Talk about comedy and drama tied into one. It's a funny scene and yet it builds up to the darkness of Hamlet's inevitable fixation on death until it becomes something so tangible that no description of what theatre is seems like enough. I was talking about the fourth wall earlier this week, and this play was more like gazing through the fourth wall until all the walls become a bubble and you're focusing on this sphere of quasi-reality that takes precedence, for this moment, over everything in the real world. That's all thanks, once again, to the actors.

I'll finish with a note on the questions that these characters struggled with throughout the play. We all, at times, feel the conflict between opposing viewpoints. Maybe we align more with one side versus the other, or maybe we really have no idea which makes more sense--but we've all experienced being able to see the two sides. Sometimes it's confusing. Sometimes it's discouraging: even if we know which side we've chosen, it isn't always easy to know how we relate to the opposing side. So I loved seeing these three characters caught up in the opposition, tossing and turning until finally something begins to make sense to them.

Questions. Questions go on as long as life does. We don't need all the answers--we just need the right answers to make clear the uncertainty.

Wittenberg is playing until the 29th. As one of my favorite productions that I've seen from Southwest Shakespeare, I would definitely recommend going to see it. It's one of those plays that you won't forget.

Much Ado About Nothing Takes the Stage

I couldn't resist, after how deeply moving Southwest Shakespeare's production of Hamlet was, to follow up with their other Winterfest play, Much Ado About Nothing. True, the chances were that I would still prefer Hamlet because I generally prefer the tragedies to the comedies and because I am more familiar with Hamlet than with Much Ado. Still, as Shakespeare's comedies go, Much Ado is a fun one.

Director Tracy Liz Miller chose to set the play in the WWII era, complete with period-style singing throughout. All of this adds a lighthearted feel to the production. Whereas some versions might play more on the drama and emphasize Hero's victimization, if you will, and Don John's evil in a much more tragic way, this production aims not to tear at heartstrings. That was for Hamlet. Instead, Much Ado as a companion piece is the brighter piece.

The message, then, seems to say more that we each have the power of reaction. Claudio chose to believe the lies formed against Hero--and that caused both of them pain. Benedick and Beatrice chose to believe the lies they were fed about each other's love--and that led them to fall in love. I suppose this means that we're all susceptible to lies, but what do we do when we then learn the truth? And what do the liars do? Borachio seemed genuinely to regret the part he played in promoting lies, and by his regret he was able to confess the truth and reunite Hero and Claudio. He and Claudio were both able to make amends for the ill they did to Hero.

Many of the same actors were in both Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. My favorite remains William Wilson; instead of Hamlet, here he played Borachio and Friar Frances. He had all the audience laughing with his first lines as Borachio and brought, once again, both comedy and seriousness to Friar Frances. In fact, because of his excellent line delivery (he can give such weight to every word), it was Friar Frances who brought in the lines to give meaning and context to the events of the play.

Melody Knudson returned as the gentle Hero, standing in contrast to her impassioned Ophelia. Andy Kahoon played not this time her brother but her lover, Claudio, which was an interestingly similar role. Jordan Letson and Cisco Saavedra played the warriors at wit turned lovers Beatrice and Benedick, adding plenty of visual comedy to accompany the wit. One of my favorite moments was when Benedick rose from his hiding place (overhearing the others talk about how much Beatrice supposedly loved him) with the table legs still stuck to him and began, the tabletop against his back, his reaction speech.

Yes, I admit, I enjoyed the intense drama and soul-searching of Hamlet more than the lighthearted fun of Much Ado About Nothing. But I like how the two worked as companion pieces. One dark and one light. One more poetic and one more straightforward. One devastatingly deep and one just deep enough for an evening's entertainment. We all had a good time watching this play.

Hamlet on Stage

As you know, I've been planning my move back to Scottsdale for the past month and a half. This week I finally made it over, and you know how I celebrated? (Well, besides going to see Moana, which I hadn't had time to go see before and which I loved and which will get its own post later.) I went to watch Southwest Shakespeare's production of Hamlet.

Do you know how excited I was?

Here's the thing. They did Hamlet before--I think it was my senior year of college. But for this and that reasons, it wasn't convenient for me to go and I was a little disappointed by that. So when I realized that it was going to be playing as soon as I moved back, well, it was like they were putting on the show just for me.

That is, I didn't like Hamlet the first time I was forced to read it. I was fifteen, and there just wasn't much to draw me in. (By the way, I also think that Romeo and Juliet is a terrible first introduction to Shakespeare and I don't see why it's the first one that all high schoolers must read. Just because the characters are teenagers doesn't mean it speaks most to teenagers. But I digress.) I, however, kept returning to the play over the years. At seventeen, I read it again and my topic of analysis for my paper and presentation was Hamlet's attitude toward death. Given that I now had more experience in literary analysis and was all set to study literature in college, I was able to approach the play in a more mature way. It was getting to be an interesting play. And, of course, in college I read it one more time; we watched one or two film versions (including the fantastic one with Patrick Stewart and David Tennant). So by this time I was able to conclude that not all Shakespeare plays are the same and however hesitant I feel about much of Shakespeare's material (I don't usually like the comedies), I do like Hamlet (Macbeth is cool, too).

My, that was a long intro. Can you tell that I haven't been posting lately? All the words want to slip from my fingers, as if I haven't spoken to all of you in ages and must make up for the lost time.

Back to Southwest Shakespeare, the company I have adored ever since I saw their production of Pygmalion around ten years ago. (Before the play started last night, they talked a little about the upcoming shows and the high school program. They mentioned that people who don't see a live production before they get out of high school are I think 75% less likely to ever see one in their lives. Wow, what a statistic. And he's right: while I always liked live things, seeing that play with my high school is what spurred me on to keep an eye on future productions from this company.) David Barker directed, and William Wilson starred as Hamlet.

The stage was very interesting, and caught my attention right away. Ropes dangled from the ceiling in various curves and arcs, one shaped subtly like a noose so that you might not notice it right away. These are metaphors for the ropes tying down the characters. There are more ropes, too. There are ropes in their clothing--something that at first seemed odd to me but came to make more sense as the play went on. The types of ropes or the the way in which they're draped over or with the clothing varies for each character, expressing something about each one's personal bondage. There are also ropes that sometimes physically tie them, ropes that stretch from backstage and that the characters must struggle to stand or walk with. With the Ghost, these ropes tie him to the world of the dead. With Ophelia, they keep her locked in her father's will.

The directer made interesting comments in his director's notes. Basically, he wanted to cut down the long dialogue and keep the action going. He succeeded wholeheartedly: my attention was drawn in the whole time. Scenes go together with scenes, and always the emotion of the moment keeps moving and keeps developing.

Right away, William Wilson shows himself as a talented actor. He plays Hamlet as a man in grief--not just a depressed youth or a madman but someone who is truly grieving and overcome by that grief. Not everyone does that, but the approach makes sense (especially to me, with my memories of that paper I did about Hamlet's attitude toward death). Not only, however, did Wilson play the drama well; he also played wonderful comedy. Many of Hamlet's lines have such wit about them and Wilson also added physical comedy and various voices that all rounded out his scenes into a full range of emotions. He really did have me laughing and crying. I can't even describe how much I loved his performance.

Now we come to Ophelia, played by Melody Knudson. Ophelia is usually on the sidelines, the girl Hamlet had a fling with and then left behind. Not so in this production. Here Ophelia is someone you can actually see Hamlet falling in love with, someone who would fall in love with Hamlet. She watches his moments of anguish and is touched by his sorrow. She feels deeply, too, as he does. She ponders deeply, and her "mad" speeches aren't so much from a girl who went mad for love as companion speeches to Hamlet's. They're both not quite mad but distraught.

The rest of the cast was also good, though I haven't enough space to talk about all of them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were hilarious as women and that casting choice fit in surprisingly well, even better than leaving them as men. I was a little sad to see Polonius die because he was a good actor and played well opposite Hamlet.

Another note on the production. Perhaps the most modern touch (other than the ropes) was the use of pauses. The actors physically pause while one of them speaks to the audience or to highlight a particular moment, such as the dread when Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup. Sometimes the pauses are longer and sometimes they are short, but they all made sense for each moment and helped to highlight the emotion of the action.

The emotion. That brings us to the final bit. Very touching ending. More than anything, this particular production was about each character having to come to terms with mortality but also with judgement and redemption. They're the same lines that are in other productions--but everyone gives more or less emphasis to certain elements to move forward their particular focus. This theme was moving. You see Claudius there praying, the Gravedigger there making his comments about death, and Hamlet dancing around the topic of mortality from every angle. It really makes you pause and see this very familiar play as if you're seeing it for the first time.

Well done, everyone. Well done.

For their winter season, they're switching off between Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. Given how much I enjoyed this one and given that many of the actors are in both plays, I might just have to see Much Ado, as well.

A Merry Christmas Carol

Oh, I do love watching things live. Plays and such. And ever since I watched their production of Pygmalion in, oh, 2008, I think, I've had a bit of a crush on the Southwest Shakespeare Company. The problem is, I still don't watch very many of their productions. (I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream earlier this year, but it seems I didn't post on it.) I have, for instance, been wanting to watch A Christmas Carol from the first year they started it. Was that four years ago? Or only three? Then, finally, this year was the year.

A Christmas Carol is kind of like Romeo and Juliet--it's done so much, in so many different ways and with so many references to it, that it is sometimes overdone. But it's unlike it in this way: I think more people get at the essence of A Christmas Carol. Maybe it's just because Charles Dickens has a more direct message and Shakespeare is more up for interpretation. So Dickens created a story that has become so very familiar--and yet still so very touching.

Southwest Shakespeare had an interesting production. It was traditional and simple in a heartwarming way. I think it ran for about an hour and a half, so of course it's abridged, but still with all of the basic scenes. The main angle that this play took was music. The actors enter as carolers--which makes for a nice play on the title of the story. They sing several songs throughout the course of the play, whether in the context of the story or again as introductions or during transitions. Not just live acting, but also live singing. Though they're traditional Christmas songs, still I had to admire that these actors sing so much better than I ever will. The music added an extra touch of life to it all.

Ah, why don't I see more plays. What's so nice is getting to see a story that you know unfold right in front of you, to experience it anew, to see it happen. It's heartbreaking all over again to see how Scrooge has treated the son of his sister he loved so much; it's endearing to see the Cratchit family interacting; it's horrifying to see what the future can be. And it's so very uplifting to see how happiness and joy can come back into life and back into people's relationships.

To all of the cast and crew, thank you for the Merry, Merry Christmas Carol.

Love's Labour's Lost

About four years ago, I went to see the Southwest Shakespeare Company's rendition of George Bernard Shaw's play Pgymalion with school; I liked it so much that I had to go see it again--I think I was very afraid of forgetting anything about it. I was afraid of temporality.

I have no idea how I haven't managed since to see another play by this company--I have wanted to, very much wanted to, even. So it was a happy sort of occurrence that I was required to see Love's Labour's Lost for one of my classes this semester; given that we also have to write a short paper on the production, I won't be going into much critical detail here, but I do want to give a few thoughts.

A few thoughts perhaps on how wonderful it is to see a live performance unfold before you. I don't generally like Shakespeare much (sacrilege for a literature major, perhaps), but I love seeing things live (though I don't often get the opportunity). Reading one of this plays is like staring at puns on a page, but watching one is watching what the actors (and everyone else involved) bring to the stage. Their gestures often cause more laughs than their words themselves.

I was a little disappointed, overall, by Berowne: I was expecting him to be more vibrant and silly like he was in another (recorded) production, so he didn't stand out so much to me. But Costard, Costard was great--the actor's biography mentions how much he loves Shakespeare and it shows. He was a scene-stealer because of his tactile approach to the role. Armado and Moth were also great in their scenes. Do you notice the trend here? I found myself enjoying the "lower classes"/the comedic roles more than the main gentry characters.

I also realized that I was seeing, for the first time live, many things I knew much about. When I first read the play-within-the-play, I was bored to see it once again (it's also in Hamlet), but it was entirely different to see onstage. There was a musical component to this play, culminating in the ending song that almost acted like a bridge between the play's world and our world. So that's it: colliding of worlds, worlds of fiction and reality--that's what's amazing about seeing plays live.