Midsummer Rain Site

The Riverdale Shakespeare Players, a new venture bringing together Riverdale Repertory Company and the University of Mount Saint Vincent, tonight had their debut performance, with a spectacular outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Well, the course of true love never did run smooth, and neither did the course of outdoor theatre. A flash-flood warning forced the Players to preform indoors at the Hayes Theatre at Mount Saint Vincent, rather than outside in Grace Plaza as originally planned.

Co-directors Sarah Stevenson and Esther H. Cohen put a positive spin on the matter, though, noting that if you have to move indoors, you might as well perform in a space with a chandelier (which the Hayes absolutely has). The stage was decorated with flowers and greenery, so the audience at least felt like they were outdoors.

The cast was game. Elana Weinberger was a regal Hippolyta opposite Alan Cutler as Theseus. Deborah Lupkin brought some magic as the Fairy Queen Titania, warring with King Oberon, played by James Duncan. Sam Yaggy brought the Fairy King some (questionable) assistance as Puck, who screwed up the poor lovers, played by Sadie Isseks (Hermia), Michael Kashtelyan (Lysander), Annie Cutler (Helena), and Aaron Levav (Demetrius).

Of course, it would be rude to leave out the Rude Mechanicals, led by Steven Pena as Peter Quince. Matt Gordon appropriately made an ass of himself as Bottom, Andrew Small found his inner falsetto as Flute, Jennifer Firestone built the wall as Snout, and Sarah Greenberg roared mighty roars as Snug.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will be back tomorrow at the Riverdale Y, and then on Sunday at Christ Church Riverdale. Hopefully, those performances will actually be outdoors, but there are rain sites for both, just in case.

For the latest weather-related announcements, you can check out the group's feed on Instagram.

Jack Cade on the Toy Stage

 In the past, I've written about toy-theatre adaptations of such plays as Black-Eyed Susan, The Castle Spectre, The Miller and His Men, Oliver Twist, and even William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

While all of those were popular on stages during the 19th century, toy theatres also presented less known stories, including that of Jack Cade's rebellion which is featured in the second part of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy.

The Boys of England journal published a script for a toy-theatre version of Jack Cade; Or, The Rebel of London that is loosely based on incidents from The Second Part of Henry VI, sometimes borrowing Shakespeare's language, or at least his jokes.

In the first scene, Cade proclaims: "By my blood and sword, there shall be seven halfpenny loaves sold for one penny, and the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and always be full." This is a paraphrase from Act IV, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play, though it leaves out the quip that follows it: "and I will make it felony to drink small beer."

Perhaps the most famous line in Shakespeare's play is "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." The script for the toy-theatre version shortens this to "Let us kill all the lawyers." A bigger difference is the portrayal of Alexander Iden, the man who killed Cade. Shakespeare shows him as a simple man content with a small inheritance who captures and kills Cade by chance.

The toy-theatre version of the play remakes Iden into a romantic lead in love with a young woman named Violet who has been accosted by Cade and his men. Shakespeare's Iden doesn't even realize at first that it is Cade he has slain, as he is simply trying to keep the peace. This contrasts greatly with the Iden in the toy-theatre play, who proclaims patriotically, "Thus perish all traitors and foes to old England and its monarch!"

It's not surprising that scripts for toy theatres frequently simplified plots, language, and characters, making them easier for young people to understand. I spoke about this two years ago in Glasgow at a conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies. An expanded version of that talk later appeared in Theatre Notebook, if you're interested.

Supposes

The Italian Renaissance writer Ludovico Ariosto is most famous for his verse epic Orlando Furioso. However, he also wrote plays, including the highly influential comedy I Suppositi, notable for a 1566 English translation by George Gascoygne called Supposes.

Ariosto's first comedy, La Cassaria (The Coffer), premiered in 1508 at the court of Cardinal Ippolito in Ferrara. It was a hit, and the next year Ariosto premiered I Suppositi at the palace of the duke. Both plays were originally in prose, though Ariosto later wrote verse versions of them.

Both plays are also examples of commedia erudita, the learned comedy of scholars, which differed from commedia dell'arte, which was produced by professionals. Commedia erudita looked to classical Roman drama for inspiration. I Suppositi borrows in part from Terence's comedy The Eunuch and even more from Plautus's play The Captives.

In the first act, we learn that the young scholar Erostrata has switched places with his servant Dulippo. (Gascoygne spells the names Erostrato and Dulypo.) This is similar to the way Philocrates switches places with his slave Tyndarus in The Captives, but in Ariosto's play the motive is different. The false Dulippo (really Erostrata) uses his servant disguise to sleep with the beautiful Polinesta (Polynesta in Gascoygne's spelling).

Polinesta's father Damon, who is similar to the parsimonious Pantalone in commedia dell'arte, wants to marry her off without having to pay a dowery. That's why he favors a match with the old doctor of law Cleandro (Cleander as Gascoygne has it). Cleandro is like the Dottore figure in commedia dell'arte, and similarly has some long, rambling monologues. In the first act, he says (in Gascoygne's translation):

It becometh not a man to praise him selfe; but, indeede, I may say, and say truely, that my knowledge hath stoode me in better steade at a pinche than coulde all the goodes in the worlde. I came out of Otranto when the Turkes wonne it, and first I came to Padua, after hither, where by reading, counseling, and pleading, within twentie years I have gathered and gayned as good as ten thousande ducats.

That incident in Otranto, which the Ottoman Turks seized in 1480, putting much of the population to the sword and enslaving the rest, will become important later. First, however, we get a plot where the false Erostrata convinces a gentleman traveling from Sienna to pretend to be his father. Things get complicated when the real Erostrata's father arrives from Sicily. If this sounds a lot like the subplot in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, now you know where the Bard picked up some of his ideas.

Of course, Ariosto was borrowing from others as well. The parasite character in I Suppositi, Pasifilo (or Pasyphilo according to Gascoygne), is based of Ergasilus from The Captives. Like Ergasilus, Pasifilo is always on the lookout for a free meal. When told he should supervise what is prepared for supper, he replies:

By the masse, if you should have studied this sevennight you could not have appointed me an office to please me better! You shall see what dishes I will devise.

Ariosto's borrowings from The Captives goes far beyond just the parasite character.  We learn that Cleandro's son was sold as a slave to Erostrata's father, just as Hegio's son was stolen and sold as a slave in Plautus's play. In the end, Erostrato married Polinesta (without Damon having to pay a dowery) and Cleandro is content having recovered a son and heir. All ends happily.

Ariosto went on to compose other comedies, including Il Negromante (The Necromancer) and La Lena (Lena). He left another play, I Studenti (The Students) unfinished at his death, though it was completed by his brother Gabriele. It is I Suppositi, however, that has had the most influence of his comedies, at least in the English-speaking world.

A Man of the People

I've written before about the actor Edmund Kean's working-class associations, including his membership in the notorious Wolves Club.

William Hazlitt, a theatre critic who admired Kean, frequently linked him with the common man. "Mr. Kean's acting is not of the patrician order," he wrote in the London Magazine in 1820, "he is one of the people, and what might be termed a radical performer."

Seeing Kean as the title character in William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Hazlitt deemed him a failure. Since "the prevailing characteristics of the part are inordinate self-opinion, and haughty elevation of soul," Kean simply lacked the aristocratic grace to play the role, Hazlitt thought. Instead, Kean "descended into the common arena of man," which might have been good for other characters, but not Coriolanus.

Similarly, Hazlitt was disappointed at seeing Kean in the regal title role of Shakespeare's King Lear. Of course, Kean wasn't exactly acting Shakespeare's Lear, as he was performing Nahum Tate's adaptation of the play with a happy ending. Still, Hazlitt found Kean's performance "altogether inferior to his Othello."

The parts of Kean's Lear that Hazlitt found most affecting were the ones where he was least royal and most human. He singled out this speech Lear has when reunited with Cordelia:

Pray, do not mock me;

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;

And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks, I should know you, and know this man;

Yet I am doubtful; for I'm mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nay, I know not

Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

Hazlitt wrote that on speaking the last words, the great actor "staggered faintly into Cordelia's arms, and his sobs of tenderness, and his ecstasy of joy commingled, drew streaming tears from the brightest eyes."

That was the Kean that Hazlitt wanted to see, and it appears to have been the Kean most of his other fans wanted as well.

"Chaos is come again"

Last weekend, I saw Atlas Shakespeare Company's production of Othello, starring William Oliver Watkins in the title role.

Watkins was one of the actors I worked with when developing my adaptation of Moby-Dick, and he does a wonderful job as Othello, an authority figure who inspires awe in all who meet him.

His undoing, of course, is Iago, played by Clayton Hamburg. He and Watkins had great chemistry in Atlas's previous production of William Shakespeare's Henry VI plays. As Warwick and the Duke of York respectively, they made a great team. In Othello, we get to see their team disastrously torn asunder by Iago's lies.

Desdemona is played by Charlotte Blacklock, who grew tremendously in the role of Margaret throughout Atlas's productions of the Henry VI plays and Richard III. One of Desdemona's foils is Emilia, who pushes back against her husband even as Desdemona endures shame and abuse from the man she loves. Leah Schwartz, who played Joan of Arc in the first part of Henry VI, sparkles as Emilia.

The rest of the cast is game as well, and Adriana Alter's direction is fresh and original, especially in the final act. The murder scene is shocking, and the final moments get the audience to question if the cycle of violence will ever end.

Othello is playing through June 28th, so make sure to see it while you still can.

Henry VI

The Atlas Shakespeare Company recently performed William Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy in two parts, combining the first two plays, and then performing the third as a stand-alone production.

When the Public Theater announced they would be hosting NAATCO performing Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts, I knew I'd have to check it out, if for no other reason than to compare how the companies divided up the material differently.

The current production reduces The First Part of Henry VI into a single act. Joan of Arc, who is clearly a witch and a sorceress in Shakespeare's text (since there's no way the French could possibly beat the English without cheating), is cleaned up considerably when played by Myka Cue. One could almost mistake the play for being historically accurate.

In the second act, the production further develops the characters of Henry VI (Jon Norman Schneider) and Queen Margaret (Teresa Avia Lim). It is Margaret who ultimately takes over the kingdom, as well as the play, and Lim is more than up to the task. She was recently featured in Gingold Theatrical Group's Pygmalion, but has appeared in a slew of other classical works as well.

The same can be said of Rajesh Bose, who previously shared the stage with Lim in Caesar and Cleopatra and now plays the ambitious Duke of York. Possessing a better claim to the throne than the current king but reluctant to openly defy him (yet), the Duke of York is forced to seek out allies, chief among them the Earl of Warwick, who came to be known as the Kingmaker. Anna Ishida plays Warwick wonderfully, as the Earl attempts to navigate the changing political landscape and also keep his head.

York's dark monologue in which he plots the uprising of Jack Cade both ends the first part of the current production and begins the second part. Did Cade's popular revolt in 1450 have anything to do with York? Probably not, but Shakespeare was never one to allow history to get in the way of a good story. Cade did use the name of John Mortimer, an earlier claimant to the throne, and this production cleverly has Orville Mendoza play both the real Mortimer in the first part and later the fake one.

The second act of part two of this production ties up the later scenes of The Third Part of Henry VI, which display a parade of slaughter. After the Duke of York it given a paper crown and had his head lopped off, the war is continued by his son Edward, played by David Shih. In NAATCO's co-production of Bus Stop at Classic Stage Company, Shih played the somewhat comic character of the bus driver, but while Edward is not above cracking jokes, he can also be terrifying, as when he and his brothers murder the young prince (Tommy Bo).

Shakespeare also gives ample space to the Clifford Family, whose power base was in the north of England, but who owed their allegiance to the Lancastrian King Henry VI. James Yaegashi, who plays the villainous Bishop of Winchester in the first part, returns terrifyingly as Old Clifford in the second part. He is succeeded by a son just as bloody, Young Clifford, played by David Lee Huynh (whom the audience previously saw as the Dauphin of France).

For the most part, Henry VI is like a well-written soap opera: good, escapist fun. However, this tale of incompetent leadership, broken promises, and disastrous foreign wars can't help but resonate with contemporary America. Though the adaptation by director Stephen Brown-Fried cuts a great deal to trim a trilogy down to two evenings, it doesn't needlessly alter Shakespeare's words. Perhaps that's why the audience appeared shocked when Warwick delivered this speech written centuries ago:

    Alas! how should you govern any kingdom,

    That know not how to use ambassadors,

    Nor how to be contented with one wife,

    Nor how to use your brothers brotherly,

    Nor how to study for the people's welfare,

    Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?

Once again, Shakespeare proves to be our contemporary.

Much Ado in the Bronx

Last night I was at the Bartow-Pell Mansion to watch Red Monkey Theater Group perform William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in the ladies' parlor of the historic Bronx home.

As I learned during a tour of the museum, the Bartow-Pell Mansion was built with two nearly identical parlors, though the one designated for men was decorated with eagles, while the ladies' parlor was given cherubs instead.

Pocket doors in the walls could open up to unite both parlors into one large room, when it was needed for balls, for instance. Open space was necessary for the performance, not for the dancing (though there was some) but to provide room for the stage manager who ran sound cues.

The audience sat on three sides of the room, not on historic chairs and sofas, which had been cleared away, but on (rather nice) folding chairs. This created an intimate space for the stripped-down, 90-minute, intermission-free performance. Co-directors Tal Aviezer and Amy Frey also took on the roles of Benedick and Beatrice in the play.

I'd previously seen Aviezer as Sherlock Holmes in Red Monkey's production of The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet. Aviezer himself wrote that adaptation of the A.C. Doyle short story, which Frey directed. Clearly, they have a rapport offstage. Similarly, onstage they have tremendous chemistry as the the two bickering lovers in Much Ado. They were supported last night by some other actors I recognized from Beryl Coronet, Derek Tarson as Leonato and Ariel Francoeur as Margaret.

The production also uses some clever doubling. Sean Coffey, who plays the cynical villain Borachio, returns as the holy Friar Francis in the infamous non-wedding scene. Sean David Demers, who plays Borachio's vile patron Don John, later comes back as the officer Dogberry, who arrests Borachio toward the end of the play. Sadly, we never get the rest of the watch, but with a cast of only nine and only an hour and a half to perform, some cuts have to be made.

Red Monkey will be returning to the Bartow-Pell for a special Dungeons & Dragons fundraiser, and then again for a one-man version of A Christmas Carol that I previously saw Coffey perform at the Van Cortlandt House Museum.

You don't have to wait until December to see the company, though. Much Ado About Nothing continues to play at Bartow-Pell until June 7th, and then will be running at Wildcliff in New Rochelle until June 28th.

Uncle Vanya

This summer, there are two free outdoor productions of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Last night, I saw the first of them to begin performances, Hudson Classical Theater Company's staging by the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park. I can't speak for the other production that hasn't opened yet, but this one is definitely worth seeing.

Hudson Classical has done some great work in recent years, including Henrik Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea, William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal. This is their 23rd season presenting summer theatre, and Uncle Vanya is the 80th play they've produced. Audience members sit on the stone steps of the Monument, but fortunately there are cushions.

The unique setting adds to this production, since there is a natural backdrop of trees as the characters discuss the disappearing forests of Russia. Dr. Astrov, played by Jeff Dylan Garrett, speaks eloquently of his plans to restore nature to its former grandeur. Unfortunately, the beautiful Yelena, played by Silvia Bond, seems incapable of understanding him. Astrov remains fixed on Yelena, in spite of the attention paid to him by her stepdaughter young Sonya, played by Charlotte Nichols.

At the center of this whirling cast of characters is Sonya's depressed Uncle Vanya, played by Dan McVey. Vanya is also in love with Yelena, though she remains married to Professor Serebryakov, who is played in all his annoying petulance by John L. Payne. The professor, who writes virtually unread books about Realism and Naturalism without understanding a bit about art, remains to this day a biting attack on the inanity of certain academics.

Nicholas Martin-Smith directs the production to run swiftly from scene to scene in an intermission-free performance that gets to the heart of Chekhov's text with such rapidity the audience doesn't mind the cramped legroom on the Monument steps. The show runs through June 21st, so see it before it closes!

Red Monkeys and Beryl Coronets

A couple years ago, I saw Sean Coffey of Red Monkey Theater Group perform a one-man version of A Christmas Carol at Van Cortlandt House Museum in the Bronx.

Last night, I was back at Van Cortlandt House where Coffey played John Watson in Red Monkey's production of The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, adapted from the Sherlock Holmes short story by dramatist Tal Aviezer, who also played Holmes.

The adaptation takes some liberties with the original story by Arthur Conan Doyle, but in some fun and amusing ways. As in the story, the coronet ends up in the home of the banker Alexander Holder to secure a loan for "one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names in England" as Doyle writes. Presumably, this is the Prince of Wales, but in Aviezer's adaptation it is Queen Victoria herself, played by Ariel Francoeur.

Derek Tarson is wonderfully obtuse as Holder, who when three beryls of the coronet go missing, immediately zeros in on his son Arthur (played by Collin Orton) as the prime suspect. Holmes is more clever and decides he needs to question Holder's niece Mary (Grace Maddox in this production). There are later a few twists and turns in the script that keep the play interesting even for those who already know the outcome of the story.

Red Monkey will be bringing the play to Harrison Public Library on Sunday, April 19th. If you miss it, you can catch another Red Monkey show this summer when they perform William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Bartow-Pell Mansion May 30th through June 7th.

Titus Andronicus

I've long been interested in William Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus, so I was excited when Red Bull Theater announced they would be producing the play with Patrick Page in the title role.

Last night, I saw the show, which is playing at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Page is excellent as always, but I found myself (as I often am) most fascinated by the role of Lavinia, played in this production by Olivia Reis.

Poor Lavinia not only has her hands chopped off, but her tongue is ripped out, too, rendering her mute for most of the play. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities for fine acting, though, and Reis excels in using a simple smile or a small groan to speak volumes.

The play is filled with references to Ovid's Metamorphoses, a work Shakespeare went back to again and again. When Shakespeare's actors included the piece in the First Folio of his work, they confidently attributed the play to him, but its bloody stage effects and straight-forward verse have led many critics to want the play to have been written by someone else.

Red Bull included a program note by Ayanna Thompson speculating the piece was co-written by George Peele, one of numerous rivals postulated by critics at one time or another as a possible author of the piece. This is in spite of precisely zero external indications of the play being authored by anyone other than Shakespeare. Since there is no objective evidence, Thomson notes "several resonances" with the anonymous play The Battle of Alcazar, which has been attributed to Peele.

Idle speculations about authorship aside, this tale of narcissistic leadership and senseless bloodlust has much to say to us in the 21st century. Red Bull's production is mostly faithful to the original, though it cuts quite a bit and changes Andronicus's brother Marcus into a sister, Marcia, played memorably by Enid Graham. (Similarly, the noble Roman Aemilius is transformed into Aemilia, played by Blair Baker.)

Other fine performances are delivered by McKinley Belcher III (who was wonderful in A Soldier's Play) as Aaron and Amy Jo Jackson as the nurse, a role that couldn't help but make me remember that character's resurrection in Taylor Mac's play Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus.

The production has been extended through May 3rd, so you still have a chance to see this lovely staging by Jesse Berger before the whole thing goes to the Goths.

Protectorate Drama

With the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, Parliament officially closed the theatres. Though the Red Bull attempted to put on some plays, the Globe was torn down, and drama was effectively banned.

That doesn't mean no one tried to stage dramas during this period, though. Strolling players might still attempt to perform skits at fairs and both private halls and public taverns might host actors for brief plays.

Those plays had to be kept brief, as authorities might intervene at any moment. Once Oliver Cromwell was declared Lord Protector of the Realm, the authorities had a firmer hand than ever. Rather than performing full plays, actors mined longer dramas for brief sketches they called drolls.

In 1662, after the monarchy had been restored, many of these drolls got collected together in a book called The Wits, or, Sport upon Sport. The entertainment presented by Bottom and his friends was excerpted from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and other scenes were ripped from John Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

A famous illustration for the book portrays Sir John Falstaff, who appeared in The Bouncing Knight, a droll based upon the Gad's Hill episode in The First Part of King Henry IV. With him is the Hostess, who appears in the same playlet. Other stock characters include a Simpleton and a French Dancing Master. These sketched-in characters, often reduced to a simple bumpkin, a testy lord, or a dull college professor, had a tremendous influence on Restoration drama once the theatres were reopened in 1660.

One droll, The Humour of Bumpkin, shows not just the forbidden art of theatre, but repressed dancing as well, and even makes references to Maypoles, a tradition the Puritans must have abhorred. In it, Bumpkin makes up his mind to fall in love, and is fortunately obliged by three country wenches who pull upon him, each wanting to be his sweetheart.

The drolls that persisted during the Protectorate were hardly great art, but they prove that theatre can never be completely repressed.

Into the Light

Marc Castle's new play Into the Light (which I'm directing) opens tonight, so get your tickets while you can!

In addition to writing the play, Marc Castle is starring as Sol, a newly departed soul who arrives in the hereafter only to find that none of the people waiting for him there are the ones he expected. Marc's previous plays have been done at EST, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and La Mama. In another age, he toured as a child actor in the first national company of the musical Camelot. He later wrote about it in his one-man show One Brief Shining Moment.

Acting opposite Marc is Terri Campion, who also wrote My Girl, one of the one-acts going up together with Into the Light. She's perhaps best known for her novel, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, but she also has a long list of acting credits, including Hetty in Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones at Metropolitan Playhouse and Clytemnestra in Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis with Greeks & Company.

Ralph Pachoda appears in the play as Jake, an old acquaintance of Sol's. Ralph is a regular at ARTC's weekly developmental workshop, but he also has had a long career as a classical actor. He appeared Off-Broadway as Creon opposite James Earl Jones in Oedipus by Sophocles. He also did a national tour of Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly with Maryanne Plunkett.

Rounding out the cast is Jeannie Dalton, who plays Sol's mother Goldie. She's a brilliant comic actress who has played everything from Dunyasha in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to Raina in Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man to Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Fanny in Eric Overmyer's On the Verge to Elmire in Moliere's Tartuffe. 

After tonight, we have only three more performances as part of the Two by Four festival playing at HB Studio's 124 Bank Street Theater. We're on again tomorrow, January 24th at 7pm, Sunday the 25th at 3pm, and then our final performance is on Tuesday the 27th at 7pm. I hope to see you there!

Stoppard's Legacy

Yesterday, the world learned of the death of Tom Stoppard, who was probably the world's greatest living playwright. As it so happens, I had a ticket that night to see Archduke by Rajiv Joseph, who like all dramatists today could not help but be influenced by Stoppard.

I think it's fair to say that Archduke couldn't have been written without Stoppard's plays, which brought high comedy to intellectual niche issues. Stoppard burst onto the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which brought the sensibility of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot together with William Shakespeare's best-known tragedy, telling the whole story through the eyes of seemingly insignificant characters.

Stoppard followed up that success with The Real Inspector Hound, which skewered the mysteries of Agatha Christie with the same intellectual vigor he had used with Shakespeare. It also happens to be one of the funniest one-act plays you'll ever encounter. His 1972 play Jumpers satirized passing fads in British politics, but also probed the deepest recesses of human emotion. One of my favorites of his plays, Travesties, imagines unlikely meetings involving author James Joyce, revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara.

Critics who had accused Stoppard of lacking emotion had to eat their words when he premiered Arcadia in 1993. He followed that up with other successes, including the three-part epic The Coast of Utopia, the deeply personal Rock 'n' Roll, and most recently the sprawling Leopoldstadt. All of those plays re-imagine historical events in intensely theatrical ways, something Joseph tries to do in Archduke.

While I didn't find Archduke up to the standards of some of Joseph's other plays like Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, it clearly has ambition, and I have to applaud it for that. The play portrays Gavrillo Princip, the assassin whose bullets ultimately started the First World War. Rather than directly portray the farcical manner in which that assassination unfolded, Joseph shows what happened before the fateful day.

Newcomer Jake Berne plays Princip, but the real star of the play is Patrick Page, who plays Dragutin Dimitrijevic, leader of the Black Hand Society. Page's fast past, sharp wit, and impeccable timing would make him perfect for a role in a Stoppard play. How sad we'll never get another one again.

The Lady From the Sea

When I found out that Hudson Classical Theater Company would be performing an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea, I knew I'd want to see it.

I missed opening weekend since I was at the Shaw Symposium in Canada, which is perhaps ironic, since this adaptation by Hudson Classical's artistic director, Susane Lee, resets Ibsen's play in Canada, in a town along the Saint Lawrence.

Well, I finally caught up with the production last night, and I wasn't disappointed. Hudson Classical is best known for their outdoor productions of plays by William Shakespeare, including standout stagings of Richard II and Coriolanus. In addition to their recent Shakespearean triumphs, they did a much better job adapting Ibsen than some other productions I've seen recently, and Lee's script is faithful to the spirit of the original play.

Aya Ibaraki stars as Ellida, the second wife of the esteemed physician Dr. Wangel, played by Quint Spitzer. Ellida feels trapped between two worlds, longing for the freedom of the sea, as personified by a mysterious stranger (Drew Brock Baker), but also feeling gratitude and affection for her husband and the small town filled with summer tourists where she lives with him and his family.

Yes, it's definitely his family, not hers. Ellida's two stepdaughters don't exactly go all out to make her feel at home. The younger daughter Hilda, played by Katrina Dykstra, even plays a cruel joke on her, leaving Ellida to awkwardly accept flowers as if it's her birthday. The elder daughter Bolette, played by Maya Small, is more sympathetic, but still has trouble feeling much of anything for her stepmother.

The play relies on a mysterious sense of the supernatural, embodied by the stranger from Ellida's past who returns to collect on a promise made long ago. The production is skillfully directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith, so be sure to see it before it closes on August 17th.

The City Madam

In the plays of William Shakespeare, the colony of Virginia (named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen) shows up only indirectly. Caliban in The Tempest isn't technically a Native American in the New World, though he can certainly be understood that way, and might have been by some of the play's original audience members.

Philip Massinger's play The City Madam gets us a little closer to portrayals of the natives of Virginia, though again somewhat indirectly, since in the context of the play, people are only pretending to be natives. At the end of Act III, Sir John Frugal and his two prospective sons-in-law Lacy and Plenty enter "as Indians." Sir John's plan is to pretend to have retired to a monastery while he grants his estate and the care of his family to his wayward brother Luke.

In the first half of the play, Luke's character seems a bit ambiguous. In his youth, he squandered away his money, but now he is living with his brother. Lady Frugal (the titular City Madam) and her daughters abuse Luke. Has Luke ultimately reformed, or if given the chance, would he once more fall back into his old ways? Sir John plans to test him, and at the same time test his wife and daughters, who have been acting proudly, trying to follow the fashions of the court rather than just live humbly as a citizen of the City of London should.

What the fake "Indians" would have looked like on a 17th-century London stage, I don't know, but the play does give us some idea of how British people in that period might have felt about Virginia. Lacy's father, who is in on the plot, entreats Luke on behalf of Sir John:

            Receive these Indians, lately sent him from

            Virginia, into your house; and labour

            At any rate with the best of your endeavours,

            Assisted by the aids of our divines,

            To make 'em Christians.

Luke, however, worships only money, and makes no attempt to convert the "Indians" to Christianity. Instead, they tell him they have a special arrangement with the devil. If he sends them a virtuous matron and two virgins to be sacrificed in Virginia, they'll send him back an entire mine of gold.

When Luke starts at the name of the devil, the chief "Indian" (Sir John) tells him, "if you / Desire to wallow in wealth and worldly honours, / You must make haste to be familiar with him." The satire here strikes me as more directed at British greed than at the actual religion of native Virginians. Still, the fact that Luke readily believes the natives can supply huge amounts of gold in return for female sacrifices might speak to the fantastic tales Britons received back from the New World.

Luke tells the women that the two daughters will be married off to Indian royalty, but they scorn the idea of emigrating to Virginia. According to one daughter, the people shipped to Virginia are "Condemn'd wretches, / Forfeited to the law" while the other calls them "Strumpets and bawds, / For the abomination of their life, / Spew'd out of their own country." Though the daughters had been portrayed as snobs, I imagine this was a common perception of the British colonists. In fact, Luke says that "Such indeed / Are sent as slaves to labour there."

At the end of the play, Sir John reveals himself. His wife and daughters are repentant, and Sir John turns out his wayward brother. "Hide thyself in some desert, / Where good men ne'er may find thee," he says, "or in justice / Pack to Virginia, and repent." Certainly, in the 17th century, Virginia must have seemed a wild place to Londoners, and a fitting wilderness in which to repent one's sins.

Academic Criticism on Armstrong

Not long ago, I received an email asking me if I'd written a play about Delia Bacon. The person had heard about it through the website Academia.edu.

It turns out, an academic scholar had published a paper analyzing my play The True Author... Revealed. Natalia Vysotska, a professor at Kyiv National Linguistic University, wrote a paper called "'I Am Not a Freak!' Delia Bacon as a Dramatis Persona" that appeared in American and European Studies 2017, which is published by Minsk State Linguistic University.

The paper cites this blog, as well as my play, which appears in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2010. Katherine Harte-DeCoux has appeared in the one-act play at a couple of different venues in New York, and the piece also had a student production in Ottawa. It portrays Delia Bacon giving an imagined lecture at the U.S. Consulate in Liverpool, arguing that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by Sir Francis Bacon.

Vysotska correctly writes that the aim of the play is "not to take part in the long-lasting authorship debate" concerning the plays of Shakespeare. Rather, the piece "urges us to see the Bacon phenomenon not merely as a historical curiosity, still another 'mad woman in the attic', but as a dramatic figure at the intersection of cultural, gender, and power relations in the mid-19th c. USA going through crucial transformations."

It's gratifying to see my play analyzed in an academic paper, particularly one that also cites Nathanial Hawthorne and the renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro. If you'd like to read the play, you can order a copy of the collection it appears in here.

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!

The 47th

When I was in London in 2022, I just missed being able to see The 47th, a new verse drama by Mike Bartlett that imagined a Presidential contest two years later between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Interestingly enough, I was back in the UK when President Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, meaning that in some respects, Bartlett's play was prophetic. Of course, just like Bartlett's previous drama King Charles III, many of the details proved inaccurate, even if other aspects were bourn out by events.

With the real Harris-Trump race heating up, I decided to pick up a copy of The 47th from The Drama Book Shop. The play opens with Trump speaking a denigrated iambic pentameter, since the conceit here is--like with King Charles III--the imagined future is told in the form of a Shakespearean chronicle play. Lear-like, Trump tests his three adult children to see who loves him the most. (As in real life, Trump never mentions Tiffany in the play.) After Don Jr. and Eric gush about how much they love their father, Ivanka says nothing. This might appear to be a nod to Cordelia in King Lear, but then Ivanka delivers a startling speech:

          If as my father you know not my love

          Then words will not identify your daughter.

          Your rightful heir will never beg, but trade.

          You know my talent, and my promise, too.

          I'm grateful for all that you have bestowed

          And vow that I'll repay that loan not just

          In full but with my share of interest.

One thing the play got wrong was envisioning a world in which the 2024 Republican nomination didn't belong to Trump from the beginning. Instead, Bartlett shows Ted Cruz as the front runner and presumed nominee. Trump offers to endorse him, but once in front of a crowd, he starts turning people against Cruz, referring to him as "an honourable man" just as Marc Antony does of Brutus is Julius Caesar. Trump ends up with the nomination, and though Act II does feature a Republican Senator from Ohio, it is not J.D. Vance but Ivanka who becomes Trump's running mate in the play.

The play also features a funeral for President Carter, who is thankfully still with us and hopes to cast his ballot this November. At the funeral, Trump whispers into Biden's ear, "I know about Jill." This small hint worms its way into Biden's brain, leading him to sleepwalk through the White House like Lady Macbeth. One advisor even worries aloud that the President will not be able to debate his opponent in such a condition. The play has Biden not just drop out of the race, though, but resign his office entirely, making Harris the 47th President, and thus the title character.

After the Trump in the play lets loose chaos on the streets, he is momentarily placed in jail. Bartlett begins a scene in Act IV quoting directly lines from Richard II. Trump immediately renounces the Shakespeare, however, saying that sitting upon the ground and telling sad stories of the death of kings is for "losers" not people like him. The fifth act returns to King Lear, with a reporter appearing having lost his eyes like the Earl of Gloucester. Ultimately, order is restored, but the audience is left wondering if what comes next might actually be worse.

The 47th didn't get everything right, but in its broad outline, it is uncomfortably close to the election currently going on in the United States.

Fable

The Broadway musical Gypsy has been revived numerous times, including with Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, and soon Audra McDonald. But how did this classic come to be written?

Doug DeVita's play Fable, now showing at FreeFall Theatre Company, tells this story, albeit through the eyes of a woman who thought the whole thing was a lie. That woman was June Havoc, an amazing actress and author who is probably best remembered as the character "Dainty June" in Gypsy.

DeVita's play actually has three different Junes. Bonnie Agan plays June in 2008, as Gypsy is about to be revived again with LuPone. Liz Power plays June in 1959, as the musical is being workshopped in preparation for its Broadway run. Mya Simkins plays June as a child, as she is pressured by her mother (played by Melissa Minyard) to succeed in vaudeville.

From her career as a child star on the vaudeville circuit to her negotiations with Broadway producer David Merrick over the rights to her life story so that Gypsy could go on, June Havoc had an adventurous existence. During the Great Depression, she performed in dance marathons (the subject of Havoc's own play Marathon '33), which is alluded to in Fable. The oldest of the three Junes continually reminds herself that she must always keep moving.

Later, she originated to role of Gladys Bumps in Pal Joey, but Fable spends more time on the failed musical Sadie Thompson, which was supposed to star Ethel Merman, until she quit the show in rehearsals to be replaced by none other than June Havoc. Ironically, Merman then played Havoc's mother when Gypsy opened on Broadway, a turn of events DeVita milks for all it's worth.

As Gypsy fans know, June was later eclipsed by her older sister, Gypsy Rose Lee, played in Fable by Heather Baird. Lee became a renowned burlesque performer, while her kid sister was stuck acting in plays by hack writers like William Shakespeare.

FreeFall's production is magnificently staged by director Eric Davis, with musical direction by Michael Raabe. They were also the team behind FreeFall's previous hit Oz, so if you're in St. Petersburg, don't miss it!

Enrico IV

When Luigi Pirandello wrote his play Enrico IV (or Henry IV as it is generally translated into English) there must have been some confusion in the audience about which Henry IV the play was portraying.

In fact, there's confusion on stage in the play about which Henry IV is being discussed. English-speaking audiences might immediately think of England's King Henry IV, the subject of multiple plays by William Shakespeare. The character of Berthold in the play, however, at first thinks the monarch in question is Henry IV of France.

How could the characters in the play not know which king it is they're dealing with on stage? As the audience learns in the first scene, the Henry IV in the play is not the real Henry IV, a Holy Roman Emperor who famously feuded with the Pope, but rather a wealthy man who was thrown from his horse while enacting the role of Henry IV in a pageant. Waking up after severe head trauma, he thinks he really is the man he was portraying.

For years now, the man's family and friends have been keeping up the act that he really is Henry IV to appease his madness. He later reveals, however, that he recovered his memory and is well aware that he's not an emperor. In order to appease his family and friends, though, he continues to play the role. Everyone in the play is acting, and is even aware that they are acting, but none of them are able to give up the roles and just be themselves.

All of this is a metaphor for society as a whole, as Pirandello makes clear. Pirandello began his playwriting career as a part of an Italian movement known as the Theatre of the Grotesque in which characters resemble puppets with no control over their own destinies. That certainly sounds like Enrico IV! The movement was known for a number of other tropes as well, such as irresolvable love triangles and unfaithful women. Yup, the play has those, too.

Pirandello went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and today the Pirandello Society of America keeps his memory alive in this country. They also publish PSA, a journal that published my own Pirandello adaptation, Wedding Night, based on one of his short stories. That play, however, doesn't have people pretending to be dead emperors.