More Ashland: The Tempest

Another Ashand note, this on The Tempest, with Denis Arndt as Prospero.

You've heard of him?  Just possibly.  He's not a celeb but he's 75 years old and by a survey of the evidence, he has a long history of employment in theatre, movies and TV.  More remarkably, I read that he played King Lear here in Ashland--twice, the most recent 28 years ago.  Any actor who outlives his Lear by 28 years gets points for, if nothing else, endurance.

His Prospero was what you might expect--or better "hope for" in someone with such a resume.  He makes  no effort to kid you about his age: he's bald and wrinkled.   Although he's also impressively fit (I read an interview somewhere where he speaks of acting as a kind of athletic event, and it's clear he approaches it that way).  Technically, his Shakespearean diction is excellent, although he does have a bit of a lisp which gets in the way of easy comprehension.  His presentation--I guess the best you can say is that it is entirely his own, the work of someone who knows who he is and what he can do and is willing to embrace the part on his own terms.

Put another way, I think the point is that his Prospero is  not anybody else's.  Specifically, my guess would be that for a couple of of generations now, actors have been trying to wiggle out from other the blanket of John Gielgud, who put a semi-permanent stamp on the role, with something like 30 renditions over a long career.  Arndt isn't Gielgud.  More important, he isn't trying to be Gielgud; he isn't even at war with him.  He's an old hoofer with a long resume and he brings to the part everything he knows about himself.

Fn.:  Several other lovely performances as well, not least Wayne T. Carr as Caliban. But I'm particularly pleased that they offered a shot to another old hoofer, this one cast somewhat against type. I'm talking about  Richard Elmore, a 30-year veteran of the Ashland company, who repaid this latest offering with a star turn as Stephano, the lord of misrule full of big dreams to take over Prospero's island for himself.

Fn to fn.: somebody must have done a dissertation comparing Stephano's princely aspirations with those of Sancho Panza , whose comic experiment at governance must have come into being at just about the same time.

Ashland Richard III

We took in the current Ashland offering of Shakespeare's  Richard III last night.   It was a polished and entertaining version of a famously somewhat-less-than-first-tier Shakespeare play.   Dan Donohue plays the villainous king with diabolic energy and topnotch diction, such that you could stay engaged with everything through the entire performance.   He also figured out how to add some touches of camp comedy, sufficient to satisfy the 21st-century taste for ironic detachment. One suspects the campy note was not part of Shakespeare's original plan but no matter; it didn't seem to transgress the central thrust.

So far fine, but Mrs. B offers an interesting fillip.  She said she noticed the lack of any effort to clue us into Richard's interior life executes his schemes (not to say his adversaries).  But you say: that is the problem with Richard: unlike Macbeth, with whom he is so often compared, Richard has no interior life; it's all "I, a villain, heh heh."  With Macbeth, 15 years later, he had simply learned how to do better.

True enough, says Mrs. B, but you can give him a bit of an interior life in the execution, with an approach that no more transgresses the original than does the camp.   A pause, a flick of the eyelid, maybe a sudden turn.   But perhaps you can't do that on a big stage; maybe you need the intimacy of a TV screen, or a movie shot as if it were a TV screen.

I think she was thinking Ian McKellen.  Still, it might be fun to go back and watch the old Olivier movie--one of the first bits of Shakespeare that first really dazzled me, coming on 60 years ago now.  Or maybe it wouldn't: sometimes revisiting a lost artistic love can convey the same sense of shock and disappointment you get from going to a high school reunion.  Anyway, I thought Donohue did a fine job, and if he wasn't McKellen, well which of us is?

Ashland Nails it Again

A couple of days back I wrote about what a great job the Ashland Shakespeare company did with a not-so-great Shakespeare comedy.  Last night I watched them do it again.  This time, the subject was Two Gentlemen of Verona--an amiable piece of juvenilia, perhaps Shakespeare's first play, of interest almost solely by virtue of the fact that it prefigures so many things Shakespeare would do again and better, later.  In good hands, these hands, it emerges not as a first rate play but as a rewarding entertainment and an instructive harbinger of what is to come.

And the reason it worked so well last night would be?  I'm not completely clear in my own mind: the cast was all women.  Yessiree folks, every creature on stage--even the one who could have qualified for an NBA tryout-- was presented as a guaranteed, bona fide, female (although I guess actually I am not clear about the dog).  The result was good a production of Two Gents as ever I've seen (surprisingly to me, I have seen a few):  tightly integrated, nicely paced, with a proper mix of pathos and  brio.  In short, all you would want of a Shakespeare comedy anywhere, ever.

I said I'm not completely clear why it was so good.  I suppose the natural response is just that "oh, girls just do everything better."  Could be: the performance offers nothing to contradict such view.  But I offer a slightly different spin.   Recall how Ashland too often doesn't trust the text and feels it has to lay on interpretations or devices that just get in the way of the real thing.  But here, of all places, they had the ultimate device.  Once having made their point ("Oh look!  We're casting women!"). they had the freedom to let the play go on its own. And that is exactly what it did.  With talented players, able direction, good coaching (the diction was top notch), they gave the audience a chance to explore everything that Shakespeare had to offer.  The fact that "what Shakespeare had to offer"  was not much--that fact is really beside the point.  It's a good natured, if limited, entertainment in its own right.  

Still, it is important to put the point in perspective  So, while the play may be weak by Shakespeare standards, it may be strong by anyone else's.  My guess is that Shakespeare had written nothing else, he still might be remembered for having written one engaging piece of work.   It's interesting also in that it really does display so many of the themes and devices that he explored and developed later.  You can almost see him in the audience watching his own product and thinking "I see possibilities here"--and unlimbering his own formidable capacity for self-correction.   You need a good production to get the point and that was precisely what was on display last night.

Ashland Nails It

I've whined more than is seemly about the ways in which they waste their resources at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.  About how they don't trust themselves with the Shakespearean text: they feel they have to tart it up with doohickeys.  And especially about farce: about how they're good at farce, but it's insidious--the very fact that they're good at farce means that they use it where it doesn't belong. I might have (although I don't think I actually have) complained about the way in which they use minority actors and actresses, particularly black. They've made a commendable effort to seek out and showcase good minority talent. But too often they've thrown them away on works are parts that are merely earnest and commendable, not really fun.

But in the new  Comedy of Errors, for once they get everything right.  For starters, CE really is farce, although ironically, not every director seems to grasp the point. Ashland does get it, and no pratfall, no silly little dance routine goes underappreciated.  Add one more element to the mix: the almost impossibly rich tradition of black stage comedy which white folks didn't know anything at all about until a generation ago, probably know way to little about now.  Think of Flip Wilson doing Geraldine; think of Sammy Davis Junior doing "Here Come Da Judge:" move CE from Syracuse/Ephesus to New-Oreleans/Harlem and you have an jive updating that works on almost every level.  

All of which makes CE on the whole about the most satisfying production I've seen at Ashland in several years.  As an added bonus, they have the good sense to do it in a single act, no intermission. Which makes perfect sense: it is one of only two Shakespeare plays that obeys the classic unities (the other is The Tempest).  It's also the shortest of Shakespeare plays--just ninety five minutes in this run, exactly enough to squeeze the juice out without getting mired in the rind,.

One irony: they're presenting it in the small theatre across the street--the one they often save for productions that are experimental or which (you suspect they suspect) just aren't going to sell.  Might have been a mistake.  I've seen only a couple of productions here this spring but this one surely counts as one you wouldn't want to miss.

Footnote:  We also took in the Ashland rework of the Marx Brothers' Cocoanuts in the big indoor theatre across the street.  More farce.  Polished to perfection and remember what they say: dying is easy but comedy is hard and farce is even harder.  Not the best of the Marx Brothers' movies: it is the first of the canon and I think they hadn't figured out how to do it yet. A bit on the long side: wpuldn't have been worse if twenty minutes shorter. But still, worth the ticket; keep it on the list.

Another footnote: A companion alerts me to the insight that "the Duke of Harlem" in CE is pretty clearly the Duke of (as he might be called) Ellington. Take the "A" train, baby, and enjoy.