The Cenci

The story of the Cenci family is perhaps best known from a verse drama by Percy Shelley. However, Shelley based his play on real-life events at the end of the 16th century.

Shelley wrote in his preface to the play that it was based on a manuscript "copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome" detailing the events of 1599 that "ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city."

An English translation of an account of the Cenci family from the 18th-century Annali d'Italia by Lodovico-Antonio Muratori exists partially in the hand of Mary Shelley (better known for writing other things). When it gets to the part where poor Beatrice Cenci is violated by her father, the translation glosses over the details, and a note by Mary Shelley states, "The details here are horrible, and unfit for publication."

Those details were not glossed over by Alexandre Dumas, who also wrote a play about the actor Edmund Kean in addition to some books about musketeers. In Les crimes célèbres, Dumas wrote about Count Cenci not only taking his daughter by force, but compelling her to take part in orgies involving men, women, and children. While Shelley shows Beatrice as escaping torture after she was arrested for the murder of her father, Dumas depicts her being interrogated while subjected to the rope and pulley, also known as the strappado.

An image of Beatrice being tortured also appears in the play about her by Antonin Artaud, which is based on Shelley's play but also contains elements from Dumas's version of the story. (It also might have been influenced by a historical novel by Stendhal on the ill-fated family.)

For many years, a portrait of a young woman attributed to the artist Guido Reni was thought to represent Beatrice Cenci. Even if it was not her, it certainly influenced Shelley and the many other artists who have endeavored to tell her story.

If you'd like to hear her story for yourself, Red Bull Theater will be putting on a reading of Shelley's play this November.

The Imaginary Invalid

Molière's final play, The Imaginary Invalid, is difficult to perform as written. Prior to last night, the only time I'd seen the piece on stage was in a creative re-imagining by Mabou Mines.

One of the biggest challenges of the play is that its plot-based scenes alternate with balletic musical sequences in the pastoral style. How on earth do you stage those interludes, especially when love-lorn shepherds no longer have the cultural power they used to enjoy?

The solution playwright Jeffrey Hatcher came up with for the adaptation Red Bull Theater Company now has playing at New World Stages is kind of brilliant. The play's characters end up singing some of the most stereotypically French songs ever composed with re-written lyrics all about sheep.

This goofiness is right at home on Beowulf Borritt's ridiculously fanciful set. The result is not exactly Molière, but very much in the comic spirit of the original play. Molière famously collapsed on stage while playing the hypochondriac lead Argan, later dying without receiving last rites, thanks to the controversy surrounding his earlier play Tartuffe. In the current production, the leading role goes to Mark Linn-Baker. (Who, unlike Molière, will hopefully outlive the run of the show!)

In many ways, though, the best role in the play is Argan's maid, Toinette. Red Bull's production features the tremendously talented Sarah Stiles as the put-upon servant who understands things far more clearly than her master. Stiles, best known for her performance as Jessica in Hand to God, finds comic gold in a messed-up medical system, as does Arnie Burton, who plays not one but three different doctors, each with their own unique quirks.

Argan's daughter Angélique was originally played by Molière's wife, Armande Béjart. Emilie Kouatchou, most famous as the final Christine in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, takes on that role in the current production. (When Kouatchou sings re-written Phantom lyrics to extoll the virtues of sheep, those in on the joke go into hysterics.) Equally hilarious in this production is Angélique's stepmother Béline, played by Emily Swallow (whom you will not recognize as the Armorer on The Mandalorian).

The show, directed by Red Bull's artistic director, Jesse Berger, is only playing through June 29th, so see it while you can!

The Jew of Malta

I hadn't planned on seeing Red Bull Theater's reading of The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe, but when my friend Susan told me she had an extra ticket, how could I resist?

Matthew Rauch starred as Barabas, the titular character who might have influenced not just William Shakespeare's Shylock, but also a slew of villains from Aaron the Moor to Richard III to Iago.

Like Shylock, Barabas is a victim of unfair treatment, but his quest for revenge goes outside the bounds of what can be considered reasonable. At the beginning of the play he is stripped of all his possessions by Ferneze, the Governor of Malta. Ferneze was played in the reading by Derek Smith, who gave a memorable performance as Lodovico in Red Bull's previous production of the John Webster tragedy The White Devil.

While Barabas and Ferenze give unflattering depictions of leaders of the Jewish and Christian worlds, the Islamic world is represented by Selim-Calymath, the son of the Ottoman Emperor. While Marlowe doesn't make any of these leaders come off very well, I found Calymath to be the least odious, at least as portrayed by Jason Bowen, who was excellent a couple of years ago in Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy.

By far, however, the most sympathetic character is Barabas's daughter Abigail, played by Priyanka Kedia. Her father first forces her to become a nun so that she can retrieve a treasure hidden in a convent, then makes her the center of a love triangle that kills two young men, including Ferneze's son Don Lodowick, played by Samuel Adams. Distraught, Abigail converts to Christianity so she can enter a convent for real, earning the scorn of her father.

Barabas's partner in crime (who later foolishly betrays him) is a slave from Thrace named Ithamore. Steven Boyer, who is perhaps best known for playing an emotionally disturbed teenager with a penchant for puppetry in the Robert Askins play Hand to God, was delightfully evil in the reading as Ithamore.

The play, which had its first recorded performance in 1592, is famous for its use of a cauldron in which the protagonist is boiled alive. Philip Henslowe's prop list for the Lord Admiral's Men listed a cauldron that was likely used in the play's premiere and subsequent revivals.

Red Bull is not slated to revive the play in a full production anytime soon, but they will be presenting a new adaptation of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid beginning this May. It's on my list of things to see!

Sardanapalus

Last night, Red Bull Theater produced a staged reading of George Gordon Byron's Romantic tragedy Sardanapalus.

The play remained unperformed during Byron's lifetime, but it premiered in 1834 with William Charles Macready in the title role. Ellen Tree played Myrrha, a Greek slave who inspires the Assyrian emperor to rise to new heights.

At the time, no one in England had any idea what an Assyrian looked like, but excavations of Nineveh in the 1840s meant that ruins began to go on display at the British Museum. When Charles Kean staged a revival of the play in 1853, he could employ designers to meticulously reproduce Nineveh with a new level of historical accuracy never before seen.

Sketches for the sets--which were designed by William Gordon, J. Dayes, and Frederick Lloyds--can be found today in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Gordon painted scenery for the first and second acts of the play, showing an ancient city on the shores of a river. A second set, designed by Dayes, showed a chamber in the Royal Palace. Lloyds' image of the Great Hall of Nimrod shows the final scene of the play before the whole set appeared to burst into flames.

How the designers achieved this effect is a mystery. We do know that four years later the dramatist and theatre manager Dion Boucicault achieved a similar effect in his play The Poor of New York using quick burning "flash torches" which illuminated a large piece of fabric on which flames had been painted. This cloth was kept in constant motion to make the flames appear as realistic as possible.

However it was that set designers managed the feat, it was realistic enough to cause the insurers of the Princess's Theatre where the show was playing to send investigators to verify that the bursts of flames and falling rafters seen on stage did not actually constitute a threat to the building. Sadly, Red Bull did not have the resources to achieve such technical effects for a staged reading.

Still, the reading was quite enjoyable. Amir Arison played Sardanapalus while Shayvawn Webster took on the role of Myrrha. When she recited the monologue in Act III beginning "Now I am alone" (an echo from Act II, scene ii of Hamlet) I was entranced. From that moment on, the play seemed to move quickly from plot point to plot point right up to the grand finale.

This morning, I spoke on a roundtable about the play with noted scholar Michael Gamer and chaired by Omar Miranda. This was a part of the annual Stuart Curran Symposium. Mariam Wassif also delivered a great paper on the play there, noting how Byron's drama presented its protagonist as both an alternative to modernity and a warning about empire.

Sardanapalus has a lot to say to us here in the 21st century. I hope Red Bull will do a full production of it in the future. If they do, you won't want to miss it!

History on Stage

Today is the Feast Day of Joan of Arc, a historical figure who has inspired a number of plays, including Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Jane Anderson's Mother of the Maid, and my own Dark Night of the Soul.

History has always been an inspiration for dramatists, and this Saturday another history-inspired play of mine, Snip o' the Shears, will have a staged reading at the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library.

Snip o' the Shears is based loosely on accounts of Betsy Ross, the Philadelphia-based upholsterer who according to legend sewed the first modern flag of the Uniter States. She will be portrayed this Saturday by Rebecca Ana Peña. Rachael Langton is directing the reading.

Later this summer, I'll be presenting a paper on plays inspired by historical slave revolts. I'll be discussing J.H. Amherst's The Death of Christophe King of Hayti, as well as W.H. Murray's Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack. This will be at a conference by the British Association for Romantic Studies in Glasgow.

That conference will be in July, and then in August I'll be giving a paper online for the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism on Felicia Hemans' historically inspired play The Vespers of Palermo. Hemans was literally writing about a massacre that occurred in medieval Sicily, but the 1823 play was also referencing the recent turmoil of the French Revolution.

George Gordon Byron wrote dramas inspired by history as well, and this fall I will be speaking on a panel at the annual Curran Symposium, co-sponsored this year by the Keats-Shelley Association of America and the Byron Society of America. The roundtable I'll be on will discuss Red Bull Theater's staged reading of Byron's Sardanapalus, about the ancient Assyrian king.

That's a long ways off yet, but I hope you can join me for the reading on Saturday. After that, I'll be off to a conference in Dublin... but more on that later!

Knight of the Burning Pestle

Many years ago, when I was a student at Drew University, I directed an abridged version of the Jacobean comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle for the medieval revels.

That's why I was so excited when I found out that Red Bull Theater and Fiasco Theater would be doing a co-production of the play. Last night, I finally got a chance to see it.

If you're not familiar with the piece, it's the first instance I know of where members of the audience are scripted to invade the stage. As the play begins, a humble grocer and his wife object to the piece about to be performed and demand that the actors put on a play about someone like them.

At first, the actors want nothing to do with these rowdy audience members, but then the grocer produces his apprentice, who recites a passage from The First Part of Henry IV by William Shakespeare. Seeing he can act, they incorporate him into their show. Since grocers used mortars and pestles to prepare ingredients, they dub his character the Knight of the Burning Pestle.

If you're sensing similarities to Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, you are not alone. In fact, the would-be knight even has a battle with a barber, as does Quixote. This type of silliness is perfect for Fiasco, which uses creative ensembles to produce often hysterical results. Noah Brody and Emily Young directed this production, but I got the feeling that everyone on stage contributed to the zany creation.

Paco Tolson plays the titular character as a big lug with a giant heart--if not a lot of brains. He is accompanied on his quests by a squire, Tim, played by Ben Steinfeld. In the original, he is also joined by a dwarf, but this production changes that to a horse, played hilariously by Royer Bokus. The cast also includes Teresa Avia Lim, who was featured in Red Bull's production of The Alchemist in 2021, which occasions a rather funny in-joke during the play.

This production adds plenty of music, along with ad-libbed lines never penned by Francis Beaumont, who originally wrote the play (with or without the assistance of John Fletcher, who was credited on the play's title page when it was first printed, but is not thought by modern critics to have been a co-author). In addition to being silly, it's also surprisingly moving in parts, including the piece's closing song.

Unfortunately, the play closes on Saturday, so see it while you still can!

Animal Magnetism

Elizabeth Inchbald made her playwriting debut with The Mogul Tale in 1784, but her 1788 play Animal Magnetism had a longer-lasting influence on the stage.

There have been multiple stagings of the play in recent years, including one done last year at St. Hugh's College, Oxford and now available to watch on YouTube. I got to see a different staging tonight, which was performed by the Red Bull Theater Company at the Players Club and streamed online.

José Zayas, who directed my adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol in Saratoga Springs directed the staged reading for Red Bull, so I knew it would be well done. I also knew it would feature Carson Elrod, who has shone brilliantly in past Red Bull productions, including The Alchemist.

Like The Mogul Tale, Inchbald's Animal Magnetism is a farce that draws inspiration from the science of the late-eighteenth century. In The Mogul Tale, Inchbald portrays aeronauts who ascend in a balloon in England and (apparently after getting caught in a jet stream) come down in India. Her later farce deals instead with mesmerism, which was called at the time animal magnetism.

Today, we equate mesmerism with hypnosis, but Franz Mesmer—who originated the practice—believed he was manipulating an invisible fluid that penetrates all organisms. In Inchbald's play, the quack Doctor Mystery describes it this way:

This fluid is like a river, that—that—runs—that—goes—that—gently glides—so—so—so—while there is nothing to stop it.—But if it en|counters a mound or any other impediment—boo—boo—boo—it bursts forth—it overflows the country round—throws down villages, hamlets, houses, trees, cows and lambs; but remove obstacles which obstruct its course, and it begins again, softly and sweetly to flow—thus—thus—thus—the fields are again adorned, and every thing goes on, as well as it can go on.

Doctor Mystery, however, is actually La Fleur, the valet of a marquis who loves the play's heroine. He performs fake deeds of mesmerism in order to foil the heroine's guardian. Needless to say, the marquis and the heroine end up together, and La Fleur gains the affections of her maid.

Much of the play's humor comes from the two women pretending to be under the influence of mesmerism. Dickens, who practiced mesmerism himself, found the play hysterical, and it was frequently performed alongside his friend Wilkie Collins's play The Frozen Deep.

Animal Magetism is based on a French play, Le Médecin Malgré tout le monde by Antoine-Jean Bourlin (Dumaniant). It is not Inchbald's only adaptation, though. Perhaps her most famous play, Lovers' Vows, was adapted from a melodrama by August von Kotzebue.

The Relapse

The Red Bull Theater Company recently announced that they will be presenting a reading of The Relapse, John Vanbrugh's sequel to the Colley Cibber play I recently blogged about: Love's Last Shift.

I don't think I'll be able to make it to the reading on October 24th, but the cast sounds great. It includes Stephen DeRosa, Jacob Ming-Trent, and Reg Rogers, who were all wonderful in Red Bull's production of The Alchemist last year, Michael Urie, who headlined the company's production of The Government Inspector, and Amelia Pedlow, who is always a delight to see on stage.

Personally, I find Cibber's play to be superior, but I'm in the minority. Many people found the last-minute reformation of its rake-hero Ned Loveless to be unconvincing, Vanbrugh among them. Within weeks of seeing the play in 1696, he penned a sequel in which Loveless relapsed to his old ways, carrying on with his wife's cousin, Berinthia, who comes to live with the couple after she is widowed.

The scene in Act IV where Loveless sneaks into Berinitha's chamber is shocking even today for its sexual frankness. Though Berinitha has already expressed her desire for Loveless, he resolves to "attack her just when she comes to her prayers." When she sees him, she cries out, thinking she's seen a ghost. When her maid comes, however, she convinces Loveless to hide again and sends the maid away so they can be alone.

Berinitha pretends to have virtue, but Vanbrugh makes it clear she is more than willing to have an affair with her host. The stage direction "very softly" accompanies her line "Help, help, I'm ravished, ruined, undone! O Lord, I shall never be able to bear it." Actually, she appears to bear it quite well, and not content with committing adultery with her cousin's husband, she plans to get her cousin to have an affair as well, scheming to get her together with Mr. Worthy.

Cibber's original play features two brothers with the last name Worthy, but it's unclear which (if either) of them is supposed to be the Worthy in the sequel. George Powell, who originated the role in Vanbrugh's play, was not in the original cast of Love's Last Shift, so audiences would not have immediately recognized him as one of the previous characters. In any case, Mr. Worthy in The Relapse starts out as anything but his name, openly trying to seduce the heroine, Amanda Loveless, in spite of being married himself.

Upholding a sexual double standard, the play has Amanda find out about her husband's infidelity but remain faithful to her own marriage vows nonetheless. In an extraordinary scene in the fifth act, Amanda converts Worthy from his sinful intentions and guides him back toward the path of virtue. The scene is written in verse, which is unusual for Restoration comedy. It ends with Worthy expressing chaste admiration for Amanda and rejecting "the gross desires of flesh and blood." Amanda gets virtue to triumph with her admirer, but alas not with her own husband.

If that sounds like a downer to you, know that the play's other plot revolves around the character of Sir Novelty Fashion, played by Cibber himself in Love's Last Shift, and promoted by Vanbrugh to Lord Foppington in The Relapse. (Apparently, Sir Novelty Fashion wasn't on-the-nose enough for Vanbrugh, who also named a character Sir Tunbelly Clumsey.) Cibber reprised his role in the sequel, in spite of not writing it himself.

Cibber might have been open to someone else writing a sequel to his play since Love's Last Shift was the first piece he ever wrote. However, Vanbrugh wasn't any more experienced, and The Relapse was his first play, too. (Would we all could have such success with our first plays!) 

Best Productions of 2021

New York City theatre isn't completely back yet, especially with omicron scares cancelling shows right and left, but at least things are better than last year, when I had to write a list of the top 10 shows I did NOT get to see.

So now I'm back to my annual tradition of coming up with a list of the top shows I saw that opened this year in New York City. Obviously, my own adaptation of A Christmas Carol doesn't count, since it was in Trenton, and neither do virtual performances, though some of them were quite fun.

Here are my picks, in reverse order:

10. The Alcestiad - Magis Theatre Company lived up to its name with this magical outdoor production on Roosevelt Island this summer. Thornton Wilder's take on a Greek myth involving death and plague came alive with the ruins of a smallpox hospital providing the backdrop. It was a joy to behold.

9. King Lear - New York Classical Theatre decided to do William Shakespeare's most depressing tragedy this year, but with the happy ending rewritten by Nahum Tate. Once again, the outdoor setting added to the experience, though it also meant that my first two attempts to see the show were cancelled due to rain. The third time was a charm, and this show was nothing if not charming.

8. The Book of Moron - Robert Dubac's one-man show was closer to a stand-up comedy routine than your typical Off-Broadway fare, but it rose beyond simple jokes to become an engaging and thought-provoking piece of theatre. This was in part due to flawless direction by comedy legend Garry Shandling and a surprisingly innovative set designed by Melissa Burkhardt Moore. I'm glad I saw it.

7. Trouble in Mind - Alice Childress at last made it (posthumously) to Broadway with Roundabout's production of her most famous play, a backstage drama about actors rehearsing a dreadful script by a conveniently absent playwright. During intermission, I overheard one audience member say, "Chuck Cooper makes everything he's in even better." How true! Cooper's performance in the play is not to be missed, so if you haven't seen it yet, get your tickets. It's still playing, but only through January 9th!

6. Merry Wives - Jocelyn Bioh's adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor was the Public Theater's sole offering at the Delacorte this summer, but it was worth seeing, if for no reason other than Jacob Ming-Trent, who played the larger-than-life character of Falstaff. Bioh appropriately adjusted the text to make Shakespeare's comedy of rural life in England work when reset among African immigrants in contemporary Harlem. The sight of Ming-Trent as an overgrown man-child playing video games was not only a witty sight gag--it was amazingly appropriate for the character of Sir John Falstaff.

5. Flying Over Sunset - When James Lapine has a new play, it's usually worth seeing, and when it's got music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Michael Korie, you definitely want to be there. This imagined meeting of Aldous Huxley, Clare Boothe Luce, and Carey Grant at a rented Malibu beach house where they go on LSD trips together delivers both soaring melodies and beautiful stage pictures. It also features innovative choreography by tap master Michelle Dorrance. Harry Hadden-Paton, Carmen Cusack, and Tony Yazbeck all provide stellar performances that go beyond mere impressions of celebrities. This show is still playing at Lincoln Center, so get your tickets while you can!

4. Mrs. Warren's Profession - Gingold Theatrical Group scored again with their production of Bernard Shaw's devastating comedy about capitalism and prostitution, which turn out to be pretty much the same thing in this play. Karen Ziemba was able to shine in the title role, even when sharing the stage with other acting stalwarts like Raphael Nash Thompson and Robert Cuccioli. The more challenging roles in the play, however, go to the younger performers playing Vivie and Frank. Nicole King made her Off-Broadway debut as Vivie Warren, a "New Woman" whose enigmatic intelligence Shaw explored but thankfully never tried to solve. She was complimented by David Lee Huynh as Vivie's caddish love interest, Frank. Director David Staller made certain this production was just as charming as GTG's 2019 offering, Caesar and Cleopatra.

3. The Disciple - Thirdwing is a relative newcomer to NYC theatre. Their productions--which are sometimes live, sometimes virtual, and sometimes both--can be hit or miss. The Female Genius, a series of filmed shorts by Rachel Carey, provided the basis for this full-length play about author and philosopher Ayn Rand and her devoted much younger lover, Nathaniel Branden. Unlike some other plays about sexual exploitation by the famous and powerful, The Disciple finds nuance, in part by flipping traditional gender politics on their head, and showing a woman who is willing to be just as selfish and brutal as any man. Maja Wampuszyc is perfect as Rand, and Cameron Darwin Bossert plays Branden with both humanity and humor. Alas, the in-person show came and went without much fanfare, but fortunately, you can still see a filmed scene from it streamed through Thirdwing's website.

2. The Alchemist - The funniest new play of 2021 was Ben Jonson's old Jacobean comedy The Alchemist, made new again in a brilliant adaptation by contemporary dramatist Jeffrey Hatcher. Red Bull Theater Company, which has been remarkably active online during the pandemic, thankfully returned to the live stage with this side-splitting production directed by Jesse Berger. The cast featured Jacob Ming-Trent--who was so hilarious as Falstaff in this summer's Merry Wives--as well as Manoel Feliciano, Reg Rogers, Teresa Avia Lim, Nathan Christopher, Carson Elrod, Allen Tedder, Louis Mustillo, and Jennifer Sanchez (who literally shimmered in a costume designed by Tilly Grimes). Jonson's play is hysterical, but its cast of 12 (plus assorted extras) makes it difficult to produce for a professional company. Hatcher did a great job getting to the core of the humor while also reducing the cast size and making the play feel topical for those of us living through the plague of the 21st century.

1. The Streets of New York - Of all the New York companies that took their work to the virtual world to keep theatre alive during the pandemic, none were more prolific and innovative than Irish Repertory Theatre, which experimented boldly with the online format, and frequently with great success. I intensely looked forward to their return to the live stage, though, and was greatly pleased when they announced that they would be performing Dion Boucicault's The Streets of New York, especially after they had done such a magnificent revival of the same author's comedy London Assurance. What I was not expecting was for the show to be a musical! Director Charlotte Moore provided a number of delightful songs to transform Boucicault's classic melodrama into a holiday treat. She couldn't have done it, however, without a delightful cast that includes Ben Jacoby, David Hess, Justin Keyes, Jordan Tyson, Ryan Vona, Delaney Westfall, and (most winningly) Amanda Jane Cooper. It's still playing until January 30th, so be sure to grab tickets.

That's my list! Honorable mentions go to Blackbird, Radium Girls, and The Overcoat. Let's hope the virus recedes soon, and we can have a more robust season in 2022!

Sor Juana at the Grolier Club

In September, Red Bull Theater Company sponsored a virtual reading of the play Love is the Greater Labyrinth by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Juan de Guevara. That play is just one of the many works by Sor Juana, a 17th-century nun from "New Spain" (now Mexico).

If you happen to be around the Grolier Club in Manhattan, they currently have a free exhibition called "Treasures from the Hispanic Society Library" which showcases, among other things, some of the early printed work by Sor Juana. She was particularly well known for her Villancicos, dramatic carols sung in Spanish inside the cathedral on feast days.

Generally, only works in Latin could be performed in the cathedral repeatedly, so each year a new Villancico had to be composed for each feast day celebration. Being written in the vernacular, the pieces were meant to appeal to all classes of people, including not just colonists of Spanish descent like Sor Juana herself, but also Indigenous people, enslaved people of African descent, and those of mixed background.

Many of Sor Juana's Villancicos use conventional dialects and smatterings of Indigenous languages to note the differences among the diverse population coming to the cathedral, but the works always emphasize the commonality of the worshippers, who are equal in the sight of God. In a Villancico written for the Feast of Saint Peter, for instance, after several verses, a Black man enters, playing upon a gourd and proclaiming salvation for those who have been enslaved. Then, an educated Spaniard with a heavy Castilian accent enters, sprinkling his speech with Latin. Then a Mestizo singer come on, speaking both Spanish and Nahuatl.

Sor Juana had already anonymously published three other Villancicos when her Villancico for the Feast of Saint Peter was published in 1677, but it was the first printed work to actually bear her name. There are only two copies of this printing known to exist, one of which you can see on display at the Grolier Club:

Sor Juana was equally known for her secular verses. In fact, the 20th-century Mexican poet Octavio Paz later identified her as the Founding Mother of Latin American poetry. Here's a picture of a book of poems Sor Juana published in 1689, including some rather biting indictments of the foolishness of men:

Perhaps Sor Juana's most well known work, however, is her religious play The Divine Narcissus. She famously added to this allegorical drama a loa, or introductory piece, which was conventionally quite simple, but in Sor Juana's hands, the loa grew into a full one-act play, in this case staging the conquest of America and the conversion of Indigenous people. The Divine Narcissus was originally published in Madrid as part of a collection of her work, but it was subsequently printed in Mexico City in 1690.

The exhibition at the Grolier Club is running until December 18th, so if you haven't seen it, make your plans to go soon. Tickets are free, but they ask that you make reservations in advance and bring proof of vaccination.

The Alchemist

The prologue to Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist begins: "Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours / We wish away..." It is a reminder that Jacobean plays rarely ran much over two hours.

If you have the good Fortune to see Red Bull Theater Company's production of The Alchemist, currently running at New World Stages in an adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, those hours will seem short indeed.

The cast is entirely game, and they bring off Jonson's witty comedy with remarkable aplomb. The setting, a London house abandoned by its owner during an outbreak of the plague, seems remarkably apt for New Yorkers in 2021, especially those of us who stuck it out during the height of COVID-19 deaths, having no country houses to retreat to when the going got rough.

Staying in the house are a trio of con artists: a servant named Face (Manoel Feliciano, who played the villainous De Flores in Red Bull's production of The Changeling), a fraudulent alchemist named Subtle (the oily Reg Rogers), and a cunning vixen named Dol Common (a stunning Jennifer Sanchez). It is Dol who takes the lead in this production, though, using her wit, beauty, and sexual prowess to get what she wants.

And what is it she wants? The same thing everyone wants in the world of The Alchemist: GOLD! Few people lust after the yellow metal as much as Sir Epicure Mammon, though, who is perhaps Jonson's most memorable character in the play. Mammon is a larger-than-life figure whose appetites rival those of nearly any other character from the period. In order to find his equal, one would have to look to such behemoths as William Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff.

Fortunately, Mammon is played in this production by Jacob Ming-Trent, who starred as Falstaff this summer in the Public Theater's production of Merry Wives. He fills the stage with laughter whenever he appears, aided by over-the-top costumes designed by Tilly Grimes (who also designed Red Bull's hysterical production of The Government Inspector, likewise adapted by Hatcher).

Other brilliant cast members include Stephen DeRosa as the anabaptist Ananais, Nathan Christopher as the tobacconist Abel Drugger, and Carson Elrod as the gambler Dapper. The plot picks up steam when Face and Subtle both get designs on a rich, sexy widow named Dame Pliant, played by Teresa Avia Lim (Cleopatra in GTG's Caesar and Cleopatra). But to get to her, they'll have to deal with her choleric brother Kastril (Allen Tedder) and the appropriately named Surly (Louis Mustillo).

Director Jesse Berger ably conducts this magnificent cast, and the set designed by Alexis Distler looks nice enough to live in--even if you have to weather a plague in order to stay there. Tickets are available now, so get them soon. The show is currently only running through December 19th.

The White Devil

John Webster's play The White Devil is a bit of a mess. Webster usually collaborated as a playwright, and The White Devil, which premiered at the Red Bull Theatre in 1612, might have been his first solo work, which could explain its rather complicated nature.

The plot, based loosely on events surrounding the historical Italian noblewoman Vittoria Accoramboni, is ridiculously complicated, and filled with the fantastical instruments of death Webster helped to make popular in Jacobean revenge tragedies. According to the play's printed preface, it was a failure when first performed at the open-air Red Bull. When it was revived at the indoor Cockpit Theatre in 1630, however, it was a success.

Webster seems to have been ahead of his time. The play requires the intimacy of a small, indoor theatre to get its full effect, and it looks forward to other bloody revenge tragedies like Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women, Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling, and Webster's own The Duchess of Malfi, as well as John Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. A portrait is perfumed with poison, and when a woman kisses it, she is murdered. A death is faked with bullet-less pistols. In the final bloody slaughter, a brother and sister bound to a pillar meet their ends with tragic defiance.

Years ago, when I saw the show performed by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, it was a revelation. In spite of the labyrinthine plot, I was able to follow every twist and turn. When a conjuror had a character put on a charmed nightcap and see visions of murders being committed far away, the audience just went with it. Seeing the dumb shows performed before our very eyes in a dark, intimate space, created an atmosphere charged with electricity. We were being treated to a glimpse of what might have happened in the Cockpit so many years ago. The costumes were a mixture of modern and period, but the feel of the play was pure magic.

I was very excited when I heard that the Red Bull Theater Company was going to be doing The White Devil this year. The company is named for the open-air playhouse where the show was first performed, and Red Bull specializes in the Jacobean aesthetic. Lately, the company has strayed a bit from its mission statement to focus on Jacobean drama and related work, stretching concepts of Jacobean aesthetic to produce such plays as Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector. They usually do good work, though, and while I was a bit surprised that Red Bull founder Jesse Berger wouldn't be directing, the director for The White Devil, Louisa Proske, has a long list of opera credits, so I remained hopeful.

While the play is still worth seeing, it didn't quite measure up to the Pittsburgh production of my memory. The piece is done entirely modern, with beautiful contemporary costumes designed by Beth Goldenberg. Virtual Reality goggles replace the charmed nightcap, and a tournament becomes a video game the characters play in celebration. The opening scene takes on the feeling of a video conference call, with a massive projection of a character's face on the set. The video, complete with intentional slips into poor quality for verisimilitude, isn't poorly done, but the production tends to lean on it like a crutch.

There are some good performances, though, chief among them Derek Smith as Lodovico, the banished count who enacts revenge upon Vittoria and her brother Flamineo. Lisa Birnbaum is stunning as Vittoria, the titular White Devil, though that part can be upstaged by the role of her cunning brother Flamineo, played here by Broadway veteran Tommy Schrider. The other part that tends to shine is Monticelso, the powerful cardinal who later becomes pope in the play. Robert Cuccioli plays the churchman with a perfect mixture of gravitas and hypocrisy.

The White Devil isn't the only literary work to tell the story of the ill-fated Vittoria. The French novelist Stendhal and the German Romantic Ludwig Tieck both had their own takes on the 16th-century beauty who came from a family of impoverished nobility, went to Rome to make her fortune, and married the nephew of a cardinal. The powerful Duke of Bracciano fell in love with her, and her husband ended up murdered, probably with the help of Vittoria's own brother.

That history is closely followed by Webster's play, though The White Devil does take some liberties later on for dramatic effect. If you'd like to see it on stage, check out the Red Bull Theater website. You can also put in for $20 rush tickets through TodayTix, though you might have to pay some pretty steep fees.