Sunday, March 17, 2024

Censoring Marino Faliero

The latest issue of The Byron Journal recently arrived, including my article "Shaping a New Marino Faliero for Drury Lane."

I first encountered the censored version of Marino Faliero, the only one of George Gordon Byron's plays to be performed during his lifetime, when I was in California for a reading of my play Bones of the Sea at Pasadena Playhouse.

Technically, the play was self-censored, as there is no indication that John Larpent, the Examiner of Plays at the time, demanded any more cuts than the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane willingly provided. Still, the theatre was effectively forced to make some of the most devastating cuts for political reasons.

You can read all about it in the article, which appears alongside some other brilliant pieces, including an analysis of Byron and slavery by Christine Kenyon Jones. She was the co-author of a great book on portraits of Byron, and recently wrote a new book on Jane Austen and Lord Byron.

Other articles in the issue include Ioannes P. Chountis on Byron and Edmund Burke and Konstantina Georganta on the Victorian reception of Byron's "The Isles of Greece."

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Warrior Sisters of Wu

During the second century, a mysterious disease was identified in China, soon causing a devastating epidemic. (Sound familiar?) The chaos caused by the disease led to the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the emergence of three new kingdoms in China.

The events of this period are related in the historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which has in turn been dramatized over and over again. Now, Pan Asian Repertory is back with a fresh new adaptation by playwright Damon Chua.

Last night I finally saw Chua's play, Warrior Sisters of Wu, which sadly closes today. This fun romp through an already fictionalized history of China focuses on two sisters in Eastern Wu, one of the three titular kingdoms of the novel. The sisters, Wan and Qing, are only minor characters in the original, but have come to take on greater importance over time.

In Chua's version of the story, Qing is the feisty older sister who longs to fight in battle. Played by Kim Wuan, Qing is much better with her sword than she is speaking to people, particularly the young general Sun Ce (David Lee Huynh), whose perceived antipathy for her veils a deep-seated crush. Qing's younger sister Wan (Nancy Ma) is much more easy going, but is still ready and willing to take up a sword when needed.

All of this takes place against a background of religious conflict between Confucianism and Daoism. The fact that Sun Ce is a follower of Confucian values while Qing is a devout Daoist doesn't help matters. Still, we can see their attraction develop throughout, aided and abetted by Wan and her fiancé Zhou Yu (Vin Kridakorn). 

The result is a delightful romantic comedy with some amazing stage combat. Warrior Sisters of Wu deserves to be taken up by regional theatres across the country.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Provincetown Players

I was supposed to see Jeffery Kennedy speak on the Provincetown Players earlier this week, but circumstances intervened, and I missed his talk.

Fortunately, Kennedy's talk is now available on YouTube. He spoke about material in his new book, Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players.

On the cover of the book is a recently rediscovered painting by Charles Ellis showing  a number of the original players, including Christine Ell, George Cram Cook, James Light, Eugene O'Neill, and O'Neill's childhood friend, Hutchinson Collins.

It was Cook who founded the Provincetown Players and led a group of people that included Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bryant, John Reed, Djuna Barnes, and others. He had been at a theatre in Chicago in 1913 that performed The Playboy of the Western World, barely escaping a riot due to the piece's controversial subject matter. He immediately knew he wanted to create an American theatre that had the same energy as that exciting performance.

After marrying the writer Susan Glaspell, Cook put his ambitions into action, starting the Players in 1915. The first plays they produced were Neith Boyce's Constancy and Suppressed Desire by Glaspell and Cook, both presented at a vacation house in Provincetown, Massachusetts with sets designed by Robert Edmond Jones.

The performance was so popular, that the plays were staged again at a wharf, and two more plays were done that summer. Over the following year, the participants drummed up interest in Greenwich Village where they lived. The next year, a whole slew of artists vacationed in Provincetown, including O'Neill. At the wharf that summer, O'Neill's play The Moon of the Caribbees was performed for the first time. Other plays by O'Neill followed, including Bound East for Cardiff and Thirst.

In 1916, the group decided to produce a season in New York City as well. They converted the first floor of a brownstone into a very small theatre with extremely uncomfortable benches for seating. The stage was only 10 feet by 14 feet, but it played host to some of the great plays of the early American theatre.

The Provincetown Players' first full-length play was Cook's The Athenian Women, inspired by Aristophanes' old comedy Lysistrata. The play premiered on March 1, 1918, with a full 33 people packed onto the tiny stage in Greenwich Village. Eventually, the company moved into a larger space, an old stable that had recently been used for bottling wine.

On November 22nd, 1918, the new theatre opened, only days after the Armistice that ended World War I. It was here that the company premiered such break-through plays as Millay's Aria da Capo and O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.

By 1922, the company had premiered nearly a hundred new American plays and opened new opportunities for African Americans on stage. While short lived, it had a permanent impact on the American stage. 

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

The Forces of Destiny

Last night I saw the premiere of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of La Forza del Destino by Giuseppi Verdi.

The opera has a reputation for being unlucky at the Met, given that the baritone Leonard Warren died on stage while performing it in 1960. No such disasters occurred last night, and the audience particularly cheered soprano Lise Davidsen, who played the heroine Leonora.

Though the role of the young gypsy Preziosilla (who in this contemporary-set production, is simply an entertainer) might not be as coveted as that of Leonora, it still gives performers a chance to shine. In this production, it was played by a singer making her Met debut, Judit Kutasi. Hopefully she'll be returning to the Met frequently in the future.

Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave based the opera on a Spanish play by Ángel de Saavedra called Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino. The 1835 drama was important for bringing Romanticism (a bit belatedly) to the Spanish stage. The opera also adds a scene with a pedlar selling goods to soldiers, based on Friedrich Schiller's drama Wallenstein's Camp.

The Met utilized a modern-looking setting, which aided by massive projections, seemed to me to echo the war in Ukraine. The characters are battered about by war and fate, caught up in forces of destiny they cannot control. In the end, Christian forgiveness seems to be the only way out of the cycles of vengeance portrayed in the opera.

This production is playing until March 29th. If you're a fan of opera in the grand manner (and at four acts, it's not exactly short), I heartily recommend it.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Illustrations of Toy Theatres

The Society for Theatre Research sponsored a lecture today by Alan Powers on British toy theatres, and fortunately they also streamed it online, which meant that I was able to watch.

Powers is the Chair of the Pollock’s Toy Theatre Trust, which has issued reprints of classic toy theaters, including one of Oliver Twist. He discussed his long association with the trust and the role of Benjamin Pollock in the revival of toy theatre during the 20th century. 

British toy theatres had their heyday during the Regency period, but they tend not to show up in illustrations until a bit later. One of the earliest depictions of a toy theatre in action comes from The Poetical Present published by William Cole in 1829.

More famous, however, are the illustration's from John Leech's picture book Young Troublesome, or Master Jacky's Holiday, published in 1845. In one double illustration, Leech shows a toy theatre being presented to a boy, and then adults and children alike preparing for a toy production of The Miller and His Men.


A later illustration shows the climactic ending of that performance, which appears to disturb the whole household. The Miller and His Men, which was the most popular play by far for toy theatres, ended with the mill exploding on stage. In the illustration, the proprietors of the toy theatre pull out all of the stops to make the explosion as realistic as possible.


By the 1850s, however, the toy theatre trade had run into difficulties, and the art form declined over the later Victorian era. However, there was renewed interest in the 20th century. Gordon Craig published an article about toy theatres in 1912 in his magazine The Mask. Pollock placed a copy of that magazine in the window of his shop, where he sold toy theatres during their revival prior to the Great Depression and World War II.

Since the war, there have been efforts to bring the art form back, but it's been an uphill battle. Still, it's nice to see people like Powers bringing attention to these wonderful relics of the past.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

In Dahomey

I just got back from 54 Below, the classic cabaret spot that tonight was presenting songs from the legendary 1903 musical In Dahomey.

The first full-length musical both written and performed by African Americans on Broadway, In Dahomey provided a star vehicle for comedians George Walker and Bert Williams. It also introduced a number of songs that became hits. As the play originally opened on February 18, 1903, tonight was the 121st anniversary of its premiere.

Caseen Gaines and Pier Lamia Porter produced the evening, with musical director Gary Mitchell, Jr. leading a band that played its Ragtime-infused music. This included the song "The Czar" sung by James Jackson, Jr. The number was originally sung by Walker's character about being an important figure in Black society, a major theme in the musical.

Other numbers included the love song "Molly Green," the satirical "Leader of the Colored Aristocracy," and the rousing "On Broadway in Dahomey Bye and Bye." Toward the end, the cast sang "Emancipation Day," with lyrics by the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and music by Will Marion Cook, who had studied with the composer Antonín Dvořák. Yes, this was a show that had some heavy hitters involved in its genesis!

I think my favorite song, though, was "I Wants to Be a Actor Lady," which was originally sung in the show by Aida Overton Walker (wife of George Walker and the reputed 'Queen of Cakewalk'). It was a pre-existing song by Harry von Tilzer that got added to the show, but it was beautifully sung tonight by Kimberly Marable, who was seen most recently on Broadway as Velma Kelly in Chicago.

In Dahomey achieved moderate success when it originally opened on Broadway, but then transferred to London, where the show became an unqualified hit. There was even a command performance for the Prince of Wales in honor of his son's birthday!

Many thanks to all of the artists involved tonight in bringing this music back to life for contemporary audiences.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

The Good Soldier Švejk

It was a little over 100 years ago that the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek died, leaving his satirical novel The Good Soldier Švejk unfinished, and providing theatre artists with the raw material for some of the most influential stage adaptations of the 20th century.

Director Erwin Piscator famously brought the novel to the stage as a piece of epic theatre in the 1920s, collaborating on the script with Max Brod, Hans Reimann, Erwin Piscator, Felix Gasbarra, and Bertolt Brecht. Švejk later became the inspiration for the 1936 musical Johnny Johnson by Kurt Weill and Paul Green.

The story follows Josef Švejk, a muddle-headed man who volunteers to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the breakout of the First World War. Authorities aren't sure if he belongs in the army or a mental institution. Eventually, however, he is shipped off to the front, but after he misses his train, he decides to walk there... only in the wrong direction.

Last night, I saw a puppet adaptation of the novel performed by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre. In this adaptation by Vít Horejš, different performers take on the role of Švejk in turn, as the Švejk puppet is passed from one person to another. While this might keep audience members from identifying with the protagonist, it also prevents them from getting bored with any one actor, as Švejk's voice changes periodically throughout the performance.

If you want to see the production, it's running until February 18th at Theater for the New City.