Merry Wives of Winsor
Nov. 13th, 2005 02:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, I just got back from the Theatre@First production of "Merry Wives of Winsor."
One line summary is "It was good, go see it." But I'll go into more detail about what did, and didn't work. And one thing that sucks is that, when I talk about things that didn't work, they'll be things done by friends of mine, some of whom may be reading this. Just so you're not going to worry too much, I loved the acting; the things I had some problems with were some set design choices and some directorial choices. Given that the director and the set designer are both people I know and like, it's kind of tough to criticize, but I'll do my best. Even so, while reading anything critical, please note that I was roaring with laughter, as was the whole audience, and that one of my friends, who had also never seen the play before, was missing a really good show at the Avalon, with a band that he's not seen in ten years that he LOVES, and afterward was raving about how, as much as we wanted to see that band, seeing this play was a much better choice.
Anyway, this will be in no particular order, since I'm just sort of stream-of-consciousness-ing it as I'm thinking about what I saw.
So, let's start with some general comments, about the form and format of the play. Elizabeth Hunter's production was presented on a fairly standard proscenium arch with a thrust stage, in a room that looks like it would be a fundamentally difficult room to work with -- there were support columns which blocked line-of sight from some points in the audience to points on the stage, and a support column in the stage itself. This, obviously, presents huge difficulties in staging and set design that I don't feel were completely well dealt with.
It seemed to me that the best spots to work on the stage were the places at the sides -- most stages have sort of "live spots" and "dead spots" where, for whatever reason, action works or doesn't work -- and it felt like the weakest part of this stage was the dead spot at center stage. The action tended to work better when it was off at the sides -- partially because of sight lines, but perhaps also from that sort of nearly mystical concept of "dead stage". And a lot of the action was presented at center stage.
The biggest problem I felt with the production, however, was the scene changes. They were done quite professionally and rapidly -- lights down, an efficient crew moving the props and changing the scene, and lights up, with recorded Elizabethan music playing. But even though the crew did a fine job, the very fact of scene changes brought the momentum of the play to a screeching halt a dozen times.
What with Lis starting up![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bard_in_boston and us trying to see most of the Shakespeare presented locally, we've started to notice things about Shakespeare plays in general. And I think that the Theatre@First folks may have been hindered here by being a general theater company, rather than a Shakespearian company specifically. Shakespeare himself didn't actually do scene changes -- he wrote his works as a sort of seamless cacophony of activity in which, as soon as something finished happening, something else would start happening immediately -- no breaks, no downtime. Sure, there are faster bits and slower bits, but he knew that, if ever everything STOPPED, well, the audience would start throwing things, and he'd damn well better keep everyone distracted so that didn't happen.
So my feeling is that the ANY scene changes in Shakespeare are harmful. Modern plays are sequences of self-contained scenes, each with an emotional completeness -- each scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and has an emotional tone. It's a little story, which tells part of a bigger story. Every scene has an emotional flow, which, taken together, adds up to an overall flow.
And I got the impression that that was how the Theatre@First folks were approaching Shakespeare -- and, in my experience, Shakespeare doesn't work that way. Shakespeare's stuff is much more. . . organic, perhaps. Less neatly constructed. Sloppier, even. With a play from the 19th or 20th century, scene changes give you a chance to regroup, internalize what you've seen, and get ready to go on to the next scene. With Shakespeare, a scene change just destroys your momentum. And Shakespearian comedies are about momentum, the way that the Three Stooges are about momentum.
It was for this reason that, as nifty as a lot of the set dressing was, I found myself resenting it. I kept asking myself -- "Does having different colored walls for different locations really add anything?" And, of course, it DOES add something -- but I found myself resenting it more than I liked it. I'm used to a Shakespearean scene change being indicated by, as one group of characters walks off stage left, another group walks on stage right, maybe a lighting cue, and the new group says something like, "Well, here we are in blah blah blah . . ." -- trusting the dialog and the actors, and trusting the audience.
So, let's talk about the actors. There is nobody who did a bad job. So, let me just do a couple thoughts. . .
Derek Henderson's Sir John Falstaff was good, but not world-class. He hit all the notes he had to and played a perfectly good lovable good-looking sleazeball. And yet . . . I can't exactly put my finger on WHAT it is, but I felt that there was SOMETHING . . . not missing, exactly, but something else that could have been there in the performance. Henderson's Falstaff was simple and one-dimensional, and that's all that you need for the play, and it worked fine. But, I don't know -- I got a feeling that someone really could do something more with the character. But I don't precisely know what. I suppose I'll have to do research and thinking, and, if I figure it out, direct my own version.
David Policar, as the unfairly jealous Frank Ford, on the other hand -- I felt that he DID add whatever it is that I felt was missing in Falstaff. I suppose it's possible that Policar was given more to work with -- Master Ford is written as a two-note character. But somehow, I felt like he was a little more fleshed-out, a little "real-er".
I quite liked the completely gormless Abraham Slender. Jason Merill's characterization reminded me of how Hugh Laurie played the Prince Regent in "Blackadder the Third".
Obviously, the play "Merry Wives of Winsor" is dependent on said merry wives, and Katie Leeman and Gilly Rosenthol turn in, by far, the two strongest performances in the cast.
Elizabeth Hunter stripped out a lot of scenes, and even a few characters, and, flipping through the original text and comparing it to what I saw, I feel confident that she did quite well in doing so.
The opening scenes of the play feel choppy. It's a rough beginning, even in the original text. It's not clear what's going on, who the people are, and what they're doing until you're well into the first scene. So it takes a bit for the audience to get into it -- this is often the case; you need to wait for the audience's brains to switch into hearing the language anyway. But that meant that there were a couple of funny bits at the beginning that I, at least, wasn't quite "into" the play enough to really get -- so they were lost on me. It's not until the merry wives themselves show up and start talking that they sort of pull the audience into the play, and the rest of the cast starts clicking, and it all starts REALLY hanging together.
There were a couple points where lighting was used incredibly well.
I really felt like the cast actually GOT the jokes -- Lis and I have seen a couple Shakespearean comedies where we felt like the actors actually didn't get why stuff was supposed to be funny, so they clearly didn't deliver it well -- there is little more frustrating than watching someone deliver a joke that they don't get. So the fact that this cast DID -- well, that helps a lot. . .
Okay, I'm not getting really tired, and I'm posting this to my LJ right now. Anyone who saw the play, or was in the play, or anything, who wants to make comments or ask questions or so forth, please do so. I intend to actually turn this meandering into a review at some point and post to bard_in_boston.
One line summary is "It was good, go see it." But I'll go into more detail about what did, and didn't work. And one thing that sucks is that, when I talk about things that didn't work, they'll be things done by friends of mine, some of whom may be reading this. Just so you're not going to worry too much, I loved the acting; the things I had some problems with were some set design choices and some directorial choices. Given that the director and the set designer are both people I know and like, it's kind of tough to criticize, but I'll do my best. Even so, while reading anything critical, please note that I was roaring with laughter, as was the whole audience, and that one of my friends, who had also never seen the play before, was missing a really good show at the Avalon, with a band that he's not seen in ten years that he LOVES, and afterward was raving about how, as much as we wanted to see that band, seeing this play was a much better choice.
Anyway, this will be in no particular order, since I'm just sort of stream-of-consciousness-ing it as I'm thinking about what I saw.
So, let's start with some general comments, about the form and format of the play. Elizabeth Hunter's production was presented on a fairly standard proscenium arch with a thrust stage, in a room that looks like it would be a fundamentally difficult room to work with -- there were support columns which blocked line-of sight from some points in the audience to points on the stage, and a support column in the stage itself. This, obviously, presents huge difficulties in staging and set design that I don't feel were completely well dealt with.
It seemed to me that the best spots to work on the stage were the places at the sides -- most stages have sort of "live spots" and "dead spots" where, for whatever reason, action works or doesn't work -- and it felt like the weakest part of this stage was the dead spot at center stage. The action tended to work better when it was off at the sides -- partially because of sight lines, but perhaps also from that sort of nearly mystical concept of "dead stage". And a lot of the action was presented at center stage.
The biggest problem I felt with the production, however, was the scene changes. They were done quite professionally and rapidly -- lights down, an efficient crew moving the props and changing the scene, and lights up, with recorded Elizabethan music playing. But even though the crew did a fine job, the very fact of scene changes brought the momentum of the play to a screeching halt a dozen times.
What with Lis starting up
bard_in_boston and us trying to see most of the Shakespeare presented locally, we've started to notice things about Shakespeare plays in general. And I think that the Theatre@First folks may have been hindered here by being a general theater company, rather than a Shakespearian company specifically. Shakespeare himself didn't actually do scene changes -- he wrote his works as a sort of seamless cacophony of activity in which, as soon as something finished happening, something else would start happening immediately -- no breaks, no downtime. Sure, there are faster bits and slower bits, but he knew that, if ever everything STOPPED, well, the audience would start throwing things, and he'd damn well better keep everyone distracted so that didn't happen.So my feeling is that the ANY scene changes in Shakespeare are harmful. Modern plays are sequences of self-contained scenes, each with an emotional completeness -- each scene has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and has an emotional tone. It's a little story, which tells part of a bigger story. Every scene has an emotional flow, which, taken together, adds up to an overall flow.
And I got the impression that that was how the Theatre@First folks were approaching Shakespeare -- and, in my experience, Shakespeare doesn't work that way. Shakespeare's stuff is much more. . . organic, perhaps. Less neatly constructed. Sloppier, even. With a play from the 19th or 20th century, scene changes give you a chance to regroup, internalize what you've seen, and get ready to go on to the next scene. With Shakespeare, a scene change just destroys your momentum. And Shakespearian comedies are about momentum, the way that the Three Stooges are about momentum.
It was for this reason that, as nifty as a lot of the set dressing was, I found myself resenting it. I kept asking myself -- "Does having different colored walls for different locations really add anything?" And, of course, it DOES add something -- but I found myself resenting it more than I liked it. I'm used to a Shakespearean scene change being indicated by, as one group of characters walks off stage left, another group walks on stage right, maybe a lighting cue, and the new group says something like, "Well, here we are in blah blah blah . . ." -- trusting the dialog and the actors, and trusting the audience.
So, let's talk about the actors. There is nobody who did a bad job. So, let me just do a couple thoughts. . .
Derek Henderson's Sir John Falstaff was good, but not world-class. He hit all the notes he had to and played a perfectly good lovable good-looking sleazeball. And yet . . . I can't exactly put my finger on WHAT it is, but I felt that there was SOMETHING . . . not missing, exactly, but something else that could have been there in the performance. Henderson's Falstaff was simple and one-dimensional, and that's all that you need for the play, and it worked fine. But, I don't know -- I got a feeling that someone really could do something more with the character. But I don't precisely know what. I suppose I'll have to do research and thinking, and, if I figure it out, direct my own version.
David Policar, as the unfairly jealous Frank Ford, on the other hand -- I felt that he DID add whatever it is that I felt was missing in Falstaff. I suppose it's possible that Policar was given more to work with -- Master Ford is written as a two-note character. But somehow, I felt like he was a little more fleshed-out, a little "real-er".
I quite liked the completely gormless Abraham Slender. Jason Merill's characterization reminded me of how Hugh Laurie played the Prince Regent in "Blackadder the Third".
Obviously, the play "Merry Wives of Winsor" is dependent on said merry wives, and Katie Leeman and Gilly Rosenthol turn in, by far, the two strongest performances in the cast.
Elizabeth Hunter stripped out a lot of scenes, and even a few characters, and, flipping through the original text and comparing it to what I saw, I feel confident that she did quite well in doing so.
The opening scenes of the play feel choppy. It's a rough beginning, even in the original text. It's not clear what's going on, who the people are, and what they're doing until you're well into the first scene. So it takes a bit for the audience to get into it -- this is often the case; you need to wait for the audience's brains to switch into hearing the language anyway. But that meant that there were a couple of funny bits at the beginning that I, at least, wasn't quite "into" the play enough to really get -- so they were lost on me. It's not until the merry wives themselves show up and start talking that they sort of pull the audience into the play, and the rest of the cast starts clicking, and it all starts REALLY hanging together.
There were a couple points where lighting was used incredibly well.
I really felt like the cast actually GOT the jokes -- Lis and I have seen a couple Shakespearean comedies where we felt like the actors actually didn't get why stuff was supposed to be funny, so they clearly didn't deliver it well -- there is little more frustrating than watching someone deliver a joke that they don't get. So the fact that this cast DID -- well, that helps a lot. . .
Okay, I'm not getting really tired, and I'm posting this to my LJ right now. Anyone who saw the play, or was in the play, or anything, who wants to make comments or ask questions or so forth, please do so. I intend to actually turn this meandering into a review at some point and post to bard_in_boston.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-13 12:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-13 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-13 05:23 pm (UTC)I find this true of scene changes in general, not just with Shakespeare. You get the audience moving along with you, caught up in the momentum and then - blam, slam on the brakes! - scene change!
This is a particular problem of amateur theater, where inexperienced directors (often directing older, multi-scene plays) are sometimes unable to get past the directions in the script and come up with more imaginative ways to suggest shifts in place and time than "close the curtains and move everything around" while the audience sits in the the dark."
One reason I usually design my own sets when I direct is that it gives me the ability to control such things. And more and more, the sets are becoming fragmented abstractions that allow a change of light or an actor carrying on a prop or two as part of the action to suggest a change in setting without an actual scene change.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-13 05:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-13 06:00 pm (UTC)Since you spent so much thought on the scene changes, I thought I would respond to that a bit. Part of editing the play for this production was coming to some kind of accommodation with how to set the scene for the various moments. We thought about having no scene changes and we thought about having a lot more of them and what you see is a compromise between the two. From twenty-three scenes and maybe twelve different settings in the original, we cut it down to twelve and four. Most of the scenes as produced are a combination of several scenes, with the changes indicated, as you suggest, by having one set of characters walk off and another walk on. We did consider doing it on a single set, but decided that the scenes are long and that it made more sense to do the few changes that we did. While Shakespeare's original scenes do not have the kind of arc that modern scenes usually have, one of the efforts I made was to cut the show in such a way to accentuate the arcs of the plot.
Working in the hall at First Church does have its challenges (we compare it to going to the movies in Warsaw). We have worked with several different stage configurations there and ended up going with the one we chose because it provided the maximum stage space for what is a very large cast. That meant that every seat in the house will be obstructed-view, in a sense. What you get to see depends greatly on where you are sitting in the house. The folks nearer the center aisle get good views of the action happening on the sides of the stage and the people closer to the edges have better lines of sight for center stage action. You comment that much of the action takes place center stage, but that's probably because those were the parts that were the most blocked from your area. We worked to keep the action moving and give everyone a chance to see as much of the key interactions as possible.
All of that said...again, thank you very much for coming to the show and I'm very glad that you enjoyed it, overall. Comments from our audience help us to make future compromises with our constraints with greater perspective as to what works and what doesn't and we'll hope to continue improving our productions. Given the interest in Shakespeare from our casts and audience, and the fun we've had on this show, I think we will probably continue to attempt the Bard's work and to learn from each experience.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-14 02:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-14 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-19 07:03 am (UTC)