Friday, December 5, 2008

Well, then, that's the humour of't.

When I first started out on my quest to see all of Shakespeare’s plays performed on stage, the theatre-going experiences were so wonderful that I, in my naïveté, assumed that Shakespeare was such a genius that a director could not go wrong. Could there be such a thing as bad Shakespeare? To me, it was like asking “Could there be such a thing as bad chocolate?” But when you are a child, you see as a child. And taste as a child. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. What I mean is, when I was a child and we used to go to the movies, our parents would let each of the kids buy a treat from the snack bar. I usually got Flicks. I used to think Flicks was premium, A-1 chocolate, the best money could buy. Later, I was introduced to See’s (and even later to Godiva). I thought “Chocolate just gets better and better”, and I came to the conclusion there was no bad chocolate. But I stand before you (not really) today to say that all such illusions were shattered the first time I had a hollow Easter bunny. It was such a disillusioning experience, one to which the word “hollow” could be applied in a variety of ways.

So, I don’t mean to say that the first Shakespeare plays I saw were Flicks in a tube. What I mean to say is that they were good, and so I foolishly thought all Shakespeare would consequently be good. I learned later that such is not the case, but there’s still a part of me that hopes, every time I go to a play, that the production will be a Godiva, or at least a See’s. Please, heaven, no more hollow Easter bunnies.

After the great experience (definitely a See’s) that was the Old Globe’s Cymbeline, I was excited to learn that A Noise Within, an acting company usually based in Glendale, had recently moved a little closer to my home by making some kind of agreement with Cal State Los Angeles. (Alas, the arrangements did not work out, and a couple of years or so later the company returned to Glendale.) The reason I was excited was that they were doing Cymbeline. Wow, a great company and a great play. How could anything go wrong? And it didn’t.

At this point in time (the year 2000), Gary was of the opinion that, if you’ve seen one production of a Shakespeare play, you’ve seen them all, so he declined to go. (He has since seen the light and repented.) So I took the four children and off we went to the wilds of Los Angeles, by which I mean driving on the freeway. We arrived in a timely manner and had dinner in a restaurant – part of the means by which I bribed my children to accompany me. Actually, it didn’t take too much bribing because they really had enjoyed the last version of Cymbeline they saw. I did tell them, though, that every director has a different idea of how to do a play and that this one might not be quite so hilarious.

So we walked into the theatre under the gaze of the ticket taker, who was impressed that children aged 8 to 14 were interested in a Shakespeare play that wasn’t A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The set was simple: on a raked stage were five rectangular objects about 15 feet high and six feet wide, arranged in a semi-circle across the back part of the stage. The objects reminded me of the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The bottom third was covered in a material that looked like a black rock wall; the top third was wrapped in black gauze or burlap; but the middle third was transparent, like a terrarium, and inside were leafless, grey branches. The effect was to create a surrealistic barren landscape. Cast members would carry on the occasional bench, bed, table, or trunk, but most of the time the stage was bare. The lighting was a little dark at times, casting shadows from above and giving the actors a stern appearance. The costumes hinted at a medieval look: the men in trousers and belted tunics, the women in simple floor-length gowns and robes. Cymbeline wore a silver circlet on his head and a blue robe. Some of the men carried long swords and daggers.

Now. From the moment that Dr. Cornelia and her associate (taking the lines of the two gentlemen in 1.1) began to speak, until the play ended, I was very impressed with the company's ability to make sense of the lines. It's not simply that they sounded like they knew what they were saying. I've been to Shakespeare festivals and college productions and some of them sounded like they knew what they were saying, too. There was just an additional quality to the ANW performances that I don't know how to describe except to say that it sounded like the actors loved the language. It was really a delight to listen to them.

I know I said I enjoyed the Old Globe production of Cymbeline very much, but I thought afterwards that I'd like to see a production where things were taken a little more seriously. And that's what A Noise Within did here. I appreciated it. I did. But as things went along, I found a niggling dissatisfaction growing within: they weren't bringing out the humor that was there. Has anyone heard of balance? Of the Happy Medium?

Imogen is, to me, a funny person. I mean, during the course of the play, she has cause to be angry and sad and passionate and depressed, but she also has a real sense of humor. The actor who played her Thursday night got the passion and the depression down good, but a lot of the humor was missing. Not that she was completely unfunny. You'd have to try real hard not to get a laugh out of "I see a man's life is a tedious one" (3.6). And I, for one, thought her whole bit of rapturous delight in 3.2, starting with "O for a horse with wings!" was funny (although the rest of the audience didn't agree with me that I could tell). But I've always thought there was humor to be found in many other of her lines. Sometimes it's bittersweet or sardonic, but it's there.

My complaint about the lack of humor applies to the whole production, however, not just Imogen. Even Cloten wasn't very funny, and he’s supposed to be the comic relief. Until he loses his head, anyway. And the final scene can be a hoot. In fact, I think it was demonstrated in this production that, if you don't invite the audience to laugh with you during 5.5, they're probably going to laugh at you.

There were some unintentional comic moments. One involved Cloten's head. When Guiderius brought it on and showed it to his brother, it was so obviously fake that several members of the audience burst out laughing. The other was when Imogen awoke from her drugged sleep and remarked upon the headless nature of the corpse lying next to her. Unless you have a budget for really good special effects, I think it would be better not to show Cloten's head – carry it around in a blood-stained bag or something. As for the headless body, I don't know. Having a visible corpse can be effective – it certainly presents forcefully to the audience Imogen's cause for error in identifying it as belonging to Posthumus. But it'd have to be a very realistic corpse in terms of weight and movement. The one we saw that night was too obviously a mutilated mannequin.

I've read several comments on the difficulty of performing the end of 4.2, where Imogen mourns over the corpse. I'm afraid it didn't quite come off in the ANW production and people laughed. As I said, Imogen had been passionate all right, but there wasn't quite enough difference between her earlier distress and her distress over the body to give any sense of heightened emotion under the horrific circumstances. I don’t know. Is there a way to show these somewhat outrageous – but not impossible – events on stage (like the headless body, and the bear eating Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale) and have them be taken seriously? I’ve never seen King Lear on stage. Do people laugh at the “vile jelly” scene? Or are people supposed to laugh, and I just don’t get it?

Still, Imogen’s weeping over the body afterwards was very moving. In fact, except for the nightmare-corpse scene, the actor playing Imogen did very well. Besides the vocal delivery that I mentioned appreciating so much, it was enjoyable watching her because of her facial expressions. The actor playing Iachimo was especially good, too. He made all his long (and sometimes strange) speeches worth listening to, and he was really creepy when he crawled, shirtless, out of the trunk to inspect Imogen's bedroom. I also liked the Queen, who seemed seriously dangerous and not just a fairy tale wicked stepmother.

The battle scene at 5.2 was well done – very good fight choreography. And I was pleased to see that Posthumus's dream at 5.4 was not omitted. The four ghosts stood in shadows between the mini monoliths to deliver their lines, while Jupiter appeared – suddenly and brightly lit – behind the center monolith. There was no eagle for him to ride on; he was raised up on some kind of platform, and his voice was amplified. Actually, he looked more like Apollo than Jupiter, but that was okay, too.

Two good Cymbeline productions in a row! I left the theatre impressed enough to think that maybe here was a play you couldn’t go wrong with. A different flavor, but a See’s truffle nonetheless.