Lis and I saw "All's Well" last night
Apr. 30th, 2006 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasThe Actor's Shakespeare Project, our favorite Shakespeare troupe, is putting on "All's Well That Ends Well" through May 14th. If I say that, of the six plays they've done so far, this is the weakest, please understand that it is STILL amazingly good. It's just that it's very hard to follow up the best "King Lear" in 20 years in the United States.
I guess, if I had to rank them, I think I'd go
King Lear
Richard III
Measure for Measure
Julius Caesar
Twelfth Night
All's Well That Ends Well
Maybe I'd swap "Julius Caesar" and "Measure for Measure." Perhaps this simply means that I like tragedies better than comedies? I just don't feel that there's as much "meat" in "Twelfth Night" and "All's Well" as in the other ones -- although there IS enough, and the company and director find it, and use it.
Now that I've said that it's not as good as their other productions, let me tell you just how amazingly good it was.
Let me start by talking a little bit about ASP in general. It's a repertory company, so we get to see the same actors in role after role.
When my little sister,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sproutntad, was growing up, she and my mother would go to the ballet regularly. My sister got to the point that she recognized each of the dancers, and had favorites, and would make CERTAIN to go to various performances if certain dancers were dancing. She was a real fan of the company.
Lis and I have a somewhat similar relationship to this company. Except that EVERYBODY is our favorite.
One thing I want to mention is that, in my review of "King Lear", I mentioned that, "Allyn Burrows (who played Kent in this one, Glouscester in Richard III, the Duke in Measure for Measure) really does Upright Noble And Pure characters really well, and Ben Evett (who played Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Edmund in this production of Lear) does scheming bastards really well. And I'd love to see Burrows get a chance to play a scumbucket, and Evett get a chance to play a paladin-type, just 'cause I think the actors would have fun with 'em."
Well, Ben Evett directed this one, but didn't act in it. But Allyn Burrows got to play Parolles, so I got half my wish. And it certainly looked like he had fun.
Well, on to discussing the play itself. I should start where I usually start, talking about the space. In general, I'm convinced that the set designers who work with ASP are, to a person, insane-in-the-good-way. I mean, they must walk into a space, squint really hard, and say to themselves, "How can I use this space in a way that nobody's expecting, but will work better than anything which a NORMAL person could come up with?" Some day, we're going to walk into an ASP production, and discover that the seats are all duct-taped to the ceiling or something like that. And it's going to work, too.
The space they were using is the theater in the upstairs of the YMCA outside of Central Square in Cambridge. This poses some challenges for them, because, for instance, it's the same place that they performed "Julius Caesar". And so they clearly had to use the space differently.
So they built risers from the floor up the stage, and used that as stadium seating, and put the stage on the floor. Worked really well, partially because, as it is stadium seating, you never have to try to look through someone's head, and partially because of how they used the stage.
The stage had a backdrop of curtains emblazoned with symbols -- fleur-de-lises, stars, and the like. This reminded me of how the Rose and the Globe theaters were painted, according to the most recent research that I've heard of -- symbols on the walls and ceiling of the stage actually had meanings, which, perhaps, were used in the plays, although that's pure speculation. In any case, these symbols seemed appropriate -- a motif of fleur-de-lis showed that the play was set in France, for instance. The floor was painted in what appeared to be an abstract map, which matched the wide-ranging scope of the play -- people running from one country to another.
The other thing which they did, which was brilliant, was how they set up the curtains so that, at a certain point, they could swing them back and reveal a much larger area for the set, allowing them to do dances, and, in general, make a scene feel less claustrophobic. They used this emotional effect quite well.
So that's the space. Now let's talk about the sounds.
Music has been an important part of every ASP production we've seen so far, but mostly in a background, atmospheric context. But in "Twelfth Night", they had musicians onstage and part of the action, as you really HAVE to do for a play which starts, "If music be the food of love, play on!"
And they continued this. And improved on it.
The first thing we heard was the actors, backstage, doing vocal warmups. They've done things like this before -- "Julius Caesar" started out with actors, in groups, chanting lines, building up energy. So I didn't think much of it. They do these things on purpose, of course -- if they are doing warmups in front of you, it's because they want YOU warming up to see the play the same way they're warming up to perform it.
And the first we saw of the actors, the real START of the play (they always do interesting things to start the play) was four of the actresses standing in a circle, part-singing a folksong.
Between each scene, and, more than once, within a scene, actors would sing a song, which always related in theme to what was going on in the play, reinforcing it, and giving it more emotional impact. As they don't do proscenium arch staging, they change scenes in front of you, and this was, from a practical point of view, something to keep the audience involved during the changes.
But, if you remember from my review of Theater@First's production of "Merry Wives of Windsor", I felt that doing open scene changes like this, in Shakespeare, often disrupts the flow, and kind of dissipates the energy and momentum that the plot builds up. By matching the music to the plot and the emotional tone, they avoided this problem, and, instead of dissipating the energy with each scene change, they intensified it.
This is partially because of the brilliance of Sara Stackhouse, the music director, in choosing the works, and partially because the actors in ASP have voices that range from pleasant through oh-my-ghu-get-this-man/woman-a-recording-contract-NOW.
I don't know why I'm so surprised by this. I mean, the folks in ASP are consistently amazingly talented. I should have expected that they could sing. At this point, I should just expect that they can do anything. If, next season, in their production of "Hamlet", they all demonstrate that they can fly, shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or turn into giant robots, well, they've shown that they can do everything up to that.
In any case, now that they've demonstrated that they can sing, and have a brilliant music director, I want them to sing in EVERY play they do from now on. At least the comedies. (They're doing "Titus Andronicus" next season. Think that would work as a musical? You could call it "TITUS!" With the show-stopping number, "Bake The Kids A Pie", and the downbeat "Sing Without a Tongue", with the unforgettable lines, "Ah ha a ahh gaaa ahhh ahh/Aa aaah a aahha." I mean, if we've learned anything from "Sweeney Todd", it's that musicals about cannibalism are always big hits. Um. Yeah. Back to the review.)
So let me talk a little bit about the play itself. Both their performance, and what Shakespeare wrote.
The play is made up of pretty typical Shakespearian bits, but put together interestingly. It's by-the-numbers -- but the numbers are put together not entirely as you'd expect. It starts with a head-fake.
Okay, simple setup. Boy = Bertram, just made the new Count of Rossilion (a county in southeastern France, although it's actually spelled "Roussillon", but we can forgive Shakespeare that, as he lived before regularized orthography), as his father just died. Girl = Helena, a young, virtuous, beautiful woman whose father, also recently deceased, was a brilliant doctor, who left his recipes for medicines with her. She's being fostered with the Countess of Rossillion, Bertram's mother, and loves Bertram, but doesn't want to say anything because he's a count and she's a commoner. Bertram's mother, no dummy, takes about thirty-eight seconds to figure out that Helena loves Bertram, and, since Helena is a beautiful, smart, virtuous woman who would really make a fantastic wife for her son, is not at all displeased by this. The Countess encourages Helena to follow her plan: go to Paris where the King of France is very sick, and see if she can heal him. If she can, she can make a deal with him -- he can gentrify her, and she'll be able to marry Bertram.
She gets to Paris, shortly after Bertram (who has to go there 'cause he's the new count), and strikes a deal with the king: he gets better, she gets to marry any nobleman she pleases; but, if he doesn't, she dies.
So, that's the plot, right? You know how it's going to go: she's going to have a great deal of trouble curing him, and it's going to be all suspenseful to see if she dies or if there's a happy ending, right?
Nope.
It's a head-fake. The king's cured in the next scene. And she chooses Bertram.
And Bertram freaks.
And THAT'S where the plot starts.
See what I mean? It's by-the-numbers -- but not the numbers you were expecting.
Enough of that -- I'm sure you can find plenty of discussion of Shakespeare's use of tropes in "All's Well" on your own. So let me talk about THIS performance.
Slapstick, and lots of it. The humor in "All's Well" -- most of it isn't on the page. Some is -- there's a scene where a bunch of folks stage an abduction of Parolles, the cowardly braggart, which is almost as funny when you read it as when you see it -- but most of the humor is in the delivery. And, in this production, in the physical comedy.
John Kuntz, who plays Bertram and The Clown, got his start in comedy, but, in ASP, his purely comedic roles have been minor ones so far. So this is the first time we got to see him, as The Clown, cut loose and go totally over-the-top nuts. He adds some physical humor to his portrayal of Bertram, too, largely in scenes which would otherwise be boring since they consist entirely of exposition.
Parolles, too, is done with a good deal of physical humor. But Allyn Burrows is too good an actor to just leave Parolles as nothing more than a comic relief character -- although he does that part admirably. But along with the comedy, he adds enough to the character that we have a bit of sympathy for this variant of Il Capitano.
It's been commented that the ending of "All's Well that Ends Well" is a bit ambiguous. I mean, as the play ends, everything looks like it's been tied up neatly and everything is all beautiful and hunky-dory. It's not until you're thinking about it later on that you start to wonder whether everything did end well, and whether all is well. . . .
This production doesn't shy away from that ambiguity, and, in fact, has a beautifully staged grace note between Helena and Bertram, no words, which intensifies it.
So, that's this production. Extensive use of slapstick, music, and emotion. Actors and directors who truly care about their characters. A play which is far more ambiguous and complex than it seems on the surface, and a production which recognizes and highlights that fact.
You can get performance times and buy tickets here.
And you should.
I guess, if I had to rank them, I think I'd go
King Lear
Richard III
Measure for Measure
Julius Caesar
Twelfth Night
All's Well That Ends Well
Maybe I'd swap "Julius Caesar" and "Measure for Measure." Perhaps this simply means that I like tragedies better than comedies? I just don't feel that there's as much "meat" in "Twelfth Night" and "All's Well" as in the other ones -- although there IS enough, and the company and director find it, and use it.
Now that I've said that it's not as good as their other productions, let me tell you just how amazingly good it was.
Let me start by talking a little bit about ASP in general. It's a repertory company, so we get to see the same actors in role after role.
When my little sister,
sproutntad, was growing up, she and my mother would go to the ballet regularly. My sister got to the point that she recognized each of the dancers, and had favorites, and would make CERTAIN to go to various performances if certain dancers were dancing. She was a real fan of the company.Lis and I have a somewhat similar relationship to this company. Except that EVERYBODY is our favorite.
One thing I want to mention is that, in my review of "King Lear", I mentioned that, "Allyn Burrows (who played Kent in this one, Glouscester in Richard III, the Duke in Measure for Measure) really does Upright Noble And Pure characters really well, and Ben Evett (who played Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Edmund in this production of Lear) does scheming bastards really well. And I'd love to see Burrows get a chance to play a scumbucket, and Evett get a chance to play a paladin-type, just 'cause I think the actors would have fun with 'em."
Well, Ben Evett directed this one, but didn't act in it. But Allyn Burrows got to play Parolles, so I got half my wish. And it certainly looked like he had fun.
Well, on to discussing the play itself. I should start where I usually start, talking about the space. In general, I'm convinced that the set designers who work with ASP are, to a person, insane-in-the-good-way. I mean, they must walk into a space, squint really hard, and say to themselves, "How can I use this space in a way that nobody's expecting, but will work better than anything which a NORMAL person could come up with?" Some day, we're going to walk into an ASP production, and discover that the seats are all duct-taped to the ceiling or something like that. And it's going to work, too.
The space they were using is the theater in the upstairs of the YMCA outside of Central Square in Cambridge. This poses some challenges for them, because, for instance, it's the same place that they performed "Julius Caesar". And so they clearly had to use the space differently.
So they built risers from the floor up the stage, and used that as stadium seating, and put the stage on the floor. Worked really well, partially because, as it is stadium seating, you never have to try to look through someone's head, and partially because of how they used the stage.
The stage had a backdrop of curtains emblazoned with symbols -- fleur-de-lises, stars, and the like. This reminded me of how the Rose and the Globe theaters were painted, according to the most recent research that I've heard of -- symbols on the walls and ceiling of the stage actually had meanings, which, perhaps, were used in the plays, although that's pure speculation. In any case, these symbols seemed appropriate -- a motif of fleur-de-lis showed that the play was set in France, for instance. The floor was painted in what appeared to be an abstract map, which matched the wide-ranging scope of the play -- people running from one country to another.
The other thing which they did, which was brilliant, was how they set up the curtains so that, at a certain point, they could swing them back and reveal a much larger area for the set, allowing them to do dances, and, in general, make a scene feel less claustrophobic. They used this emotional effect quite well.
So that's the space. Now let's talk about the sounds.
Music has been an important part of every ASP production we've seen so far, but mostly in a background, atmospheric context. But in "Twelfth Night", they had musicians onstage and part of the action, as you really HAVE to do for a play which starts, "If music be the food of love, play on!"
And they continued this. And improved on it.
The first thing we heard was the actors, backstage, doing vocal warmups. They've done things like this before -- "Julius Caesar" started out with actors, in groups, chanting lines, building up energy. So I didn't think much of it. They do these things on purpose, of course -- if they are doing warmups in front of you, it's because they want YOU warming up to see the play the same way they're warming up to perform it.
And the first we saw of the actors, the real START of the play (they always do interesting things to start the play) was four of the actresses standing in a circle, part-singing a folksong.
Between each scene, and, more than once, within a scene, actors would sing a song, which always related in theme to what was going on in the play, reinforcing it, and giving it more emotional impact. As they don't do proscenium arch staging, they change scenes in front of you, and this was, from a practical point of view, something to keep the audience involved during the changes.
But, if you remember from my review of Theater@First's production of "Merry Wives of Windsor", I felt that doing open scene changes like this, in Shakespeare, often disrupts the flow, and kind of dissipates the energy and momentum that the plot builds up. By matching the music to the plot and the emotional tone, they avoided this problem, and, instead of dissipating the energy with each scene change, they intensified it.
This is partially because of the brilliance of Sara Stackhouse, the music director, in choosing the works, and partially because the actors in ASP have voices that range from pleasant through oh-my-ghu-get-this-man/woman-a-recording-contract-NOW.
I don't know why I'm so surprised by this. I mean, the folks in ASP are consistently amazingly talented. I should have expected that they could sing. At this point, I should just expect that they can do anything. If, next season, in their production of "Hamlet", they all demonstrate that they can fly, shoot laser beams out of their eyes, or turn into giant robots, well, they've shown that they can do everything up to that.
In any case, now that they've demonstrated that they can sing, and have a brilliant music director, I want them to sing in EVERY play they do from now on. At least the comedies. (They're doing "Titus Andronicus" next season. Think that would work as a musical? You could call it "TITUS!" With the show-stopping number, "Bake The Kids A Pie", and the downbeat "Sing Without a Tongue", with the unforgettable lines, "Ah ha a ahh gaaa ahhh ahh/Aa aaah a aahha." I mean, if we've learned anything from "Sweeney Todd", it's that musicals about cannibalism are always big hits. Um. Yeah. Back to the review.)
So let me talk a little bit about the play itself. Both their performance, and what Shakespeare wrote.
The play is made up of pretty typical Shakespearian bits, but put together interestingly. It's by-the-numbers -- but the numbers are put together not entirely as you'd expect. It starts with a head-fake.
Okay, simple setup. Boy = Bertram, just made the new Count of Rossilion (a county in southeastern France, although it's actually spelled "Roussillon", but we can forgive Shakespeare that, as he lived before regularized orthography), as his father just died. Girl = Helena, a young, virtuous, beautiful woman whose father, also recently deceased, was a brilliant doctor, who left his recipes for medicines with her. She's being fostered with the Countess of Rossillion, Bertram's mother, and loves Bertram, but doesn't want to say anything because he's a count and she's a commoner. Bertram's mother, no dummy, takes about thirty-eight seconds to figure out that Helena loves Bertram, and, since Helena is a beautiful, smart, virtuous woman who would really make a fantastic wife for her son, is not at all displeased by this. The Countess encourages Helena to follow her plan: go to Paris where the King of France is very sick, and see if she can heal him. If she can, she can make a deal with him -- he can gentrify her, and she'll be able to marry Bertram.
She gets to Paris, shortly after Bertram (who has to go there 'cause he's the new count), and strikes a deal with the king: he gets better, she gets to marry any nobleman she pleases; but, if he doesn't, she dies.
So, that's the plot, right? You know how it's going to go: she's going to have a great deal of trouble curing him, and it's going to be all suspenseful to see if she dies or if there's a happy ending, right?
Nope.
It's a head-fake. The king's cured in the next scene. And she chooses Bertram.
And Bertram freaks.
And THAT'S where the plot starts.
See what I mean? It's by-the-numbers -- but not the numbers you were expecting.
Enough of that -- I'm sure you can find plenty of discussion of Shakespeare's use of tropes in "All's Well" on your own. So let me talk about THIS performance.
Slapstick, and lots of it. The humor in "All's Well" -- most of it isn't on the page. Some is -- there's a scene where a bunch of folks stage an abduction of Parolles, the cowardly braggart, which is almost as funny when you read it as when you see it -- but most of the humor is in the delivery. And, in this production, in the physical comedy.
John Kuntz, who plays Bertram and The Clown, got his start in comedy, but, in ASP, his purely comedic roles have been minor ones so far. So this is the first time we got to see him, as The Clown, cut loose and go totally over-the-top nuts. He adds some physical humor to his portrayal of Bertram, too, largely in scenes which would otherwise be boring since they consist entirely of exposition.
Parolles, too, is done with a good deal of physical humor. But Allyn Burrows is too good an actor to just leave Parolles as nothing more than a comic relief character -- although he does that part admirably. But along with the comedy, he adds enough to the character that we have a bit of sympathy for this variant of Il Capitano.
It's been commented that the ending of "All's Well that Ends Well" is a bit ambiguous. I mean, as the play ends, everything looks like it's been tied up neatly and everything is all beautiful and hunky-dory. It's not until you're thinking about it later on that you start to wonder whether everything did end well, and whether all is well. . . .
This production doesn't shy away from that ambiguity, and, in fact, has a beautifully staged grace note between Helena and Bertram, no words, which intensifies it.
So, that's this production. Extensive use of slapstick, music, and emotion. Actors and directors who truly care about their characters. A play which is far more ambiguous and complex than it seems on the surface, and a production which recognizes and highlights that fact.
You can get performance times and buy tickets here.
And you should.