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bard_in_boston]
I had always believed that you couldn't do a more-or-less straight production of Love's Labour's Lost -- the basic structure of it works for a modern comedy, but it's best used as a framework to hang your own work off of. I thought that a lot of the humor in this play was too much based in the peculiarities of the late sixteenth century to translate directly for a modern audience.
The Huntington Theatre Company has proven me wrong.
This is the third production of LLL that Lis and I have seen, and, like the other two, it's a musical -- Branaugh's movie version using Broadway classics, the Zero Arrow Street/ART production using Rat Pack crooner songs, and this one, with original music by Michael Friedman.
As we understand the story of how this production came to be, Huntington originally planned to do A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, but the person they originally cast for Pseudolus had a conflict, and the director's vision really hinged on that actor's portrayal. So, rather than recast the starring role, Nicholas Martin, having a fine cast already, decided that the emotional tone of LLL was similar to what he wanted to do, and the actors he'd assembled would do well in it.
I think he had a point.
So: let's start with the staging.
In recent years, I've seen fewer plays on proscenium arch stages than on other venues, and I've got something of a prejudice against them. I feel that they are constricting -- which works well for some plays (You Can't Take It With You is set entirely in one large, cluttered room, so it feels natural to have the walls of the stage be walls), and less well for others.
So I was impressed with the sense of freedom and openness that the set design portrayed for the outdoor scenes.
There are a number of clever and impressive bits of staging and set dressing. The opening scene, taking place in the library of Navarre, has for a backdrop the most impressive trompe l'oel painting I've seen in years. The staging of the arrival of the ship which carried the Princess of France and company was both impressive and adorable. And that tree which figures prominently in many scenes. . .
Similarly, their lighting designer clearly knows his business. Lighting effectively conveyed and reinforced emotional tones.
On to the performance itself.
I want to start by singling out an outstanding performance by Robert Jason Jackson as Holofernes. I believed that the role of Holofernes was among the main reasons why one couldn't do a straight production of this play. I mean, what was Shakespeare thinking? "Oh, I know! We'll make a boring, totally not funny, incredibly dull pedant! And he'll be boring, not funny, and dull! Won't that be funny?" Yeah, right. Shakespeare clearly had invented crack four centuries early and was smoking it.
Except, no, he wasn't. Now I know what Shakespeare was thinking. Jackson found the funny. It was there. I never saw it before tonight -- but it was there, and it was funny. Damn, it was funny.
I mean, here's a gag which I totally didn't get before tonight:
Okay. I'm going to explain the joke. And this is definitely one of those jokes where explaining it is like dissecting a frog -- you may know better how the frog works at the end, but it's unlikely to jump much afterward.
Right. So the last speech in a scene in Shakespeare is usually a cute little verse -- something that rhymes.
So:
"You shall not say me nay; pauca verba. Away!
The gentles are at their game, and we will to our play."
Except the gag is the Holofernes never uses a simple word where something more complex will do. So, when the scene-ending verse is given to Holofernes, it doesn't rhyme or scan anymore. . .
I totally missed that previously. I got it when Robert Jason Jackson said it. And now, if you see it, it won't be funny, because I just squashed the frog. Sorry. But there's a lot more where that came from -- and I never knew it before tonight. Major, major props to Jackson for finding the funny and showing the funny in a really challenging role that is nonetheless funny when done right. I never saw it done right before.
Neil A. Casey also gave a standout performance as Boyet. I was so tempted to write that he "minces churlishly" through his scenes, but I figured that most people wouldn't get the reference. Besides, while he does mince, the sense in which it was "churlish" was already out of fashion a hundred years before Shakespeare wrote the play. So it would totally be misleading and not worth it just to get a "Cowboy Wally" reference into the review.
His Boyet is wonderful, though.
In general, the cast are all competent and professional and understand the essence of their characters. But . . . I've gotten used to the acting from specifically Shakespeare troupes. Jackson, with credits including Othello, Banquo, Bolingbroke, Sir Walter Blunt, and Horatio, was the only actor with extensive prior Shakespeare experience listed in his bio in the program, and it showed. He was the only one who I felt really got all the dirty jokes. And, as I've said before -- if you don't get the dirty jokes, you can't deliver them. And unless you're experienced with Shakespeare, you're not going to understand how much of it is dirty.
While I had no problem with any of the acting, and enjoyed it, I found myself recasting the play with some of the ASP's actors, asking myself things like, "How would John Kuntz have delivered that line if he were playing Berowne?"
So not all the humor was delivered that could have been. But most of it was. This was the first time, in the three times we've seen the play, that we actually saw the Nine Worthies play-within-a-play. Well, the Four Worthies, Then Everything Goes To Heck And Falls Apart Before They Can Finish.
And what of the drama?
As I've said before, what makes Love's Labour's Lost a play for the ages, rather than just a piece of light froth is the last part of the last act. The Nine Worthies play has been heckled to death, and folks have started brawling -- it's all wacky fun -- and then, WHAM. Emotional whiplash.
And it's the grounding of the emotional whiplash that actually makes the play something special. I've talked about this before -- had all the lovers happily gone on and gotten married, it would have been one of Shakespeare's apparently-happy-but-actually-when-you-think-about-it-really-more-is-that-REALLY-a-good-idea? endings, like All's Well that Ends Well. But with the king of France dead, and the lovers separated for a year in which they will all grow up and THINK and decide if this is something they REALLY want to do -- it becomes a much more satisfying ending, by being less frivolously happy.
And yet, even after that, there remains ANOTHER emotional change. And, once again, this was a part of the play that I though was unstageable, emotionally inaccessible, and gratuitous. And, once again, Huntington proved me wrong.
After this grounding of separation and mourning, the passel of clowns who had been putting on the Nine Worthies play show up again, and ask if they can sing the song that was supposed to close their pageant, a song about the Cuckoo and Spring, versus the Owl and Winter.
Gratuitous, no? A song AFTER the emotional climax?
No, not gratuitous. Not when sung as they sang it, not with the setting they composed. Instead, it recapitulates the emotional whiplash, with a bright and cheery first verse, and a sober and pensive second, reinforcing and strengthening the grounding after the comedy.
So, that's what we saw: a more faithful adaptation that I thought possible, a production which used the genius of their own actors and composers to bring forth and explicate much genius in the play that I had never previously seen nor been aware of.
bard_in_boston]I had always believed that you couldn't do a more-or-less straight production of Love's Labour's Lost -- the basic structure of it works for a modern comedy, but it's best used as a framework to hang your own work off of. I thought that a lot of the humor in this play was too much based in the peculiarities of the late sixteenth century to translate directly for a modern audience.
The Huntington Theatre Company has proven me wrong.
This is the third production of LLL that Lis and I have seen, and, like the other two, it's a musical -- Branaugh's movie version using Broadway classics, the Zero Arrow Street/ART production using Rat Pack crooner songs, and this one, with original music by Michael Friedman.
As we understand the story of how this production came to be, Huntington originally planned to do A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, but the person they originally cast for Pseudolus had a conflict, and the director's vision really hinged on that actor's portrayal. So, rather than recast the starring role, Nicholas Martin, having a fine cast already, decided that the emotional tone of LLL was similar to what he wanted to do, and the actors he'd assembled would do well in it.
I think he had a point.
So: let's start with the staging.
In recent years, I've seen fewer plays on proscenium arch stages than on other venues, and I've got something of a prejudice against them. I feel that they are constricting -- which works well for some plays (You Can't Take It With You is set entirely in one large, cluttered room, so it feels natural to have the walls of the stage be walls), and less well for others.
So I was impressed with the sense of freedom and openness that the set design portrayed for the outdoor scenes.
There are a number of clever and impressive bits of staging and set dressing. The opening scene, taking place in the library of Navarre, has for a backdrop the most impressive trompe l'oel painting I've seen in years. The staging of the arrival of the ship which carried the Princess of France and company was both impressive and adorable. And that tree which figures prominently in many scenes. . .
Similarly, their lighting designer clearly knows his business. Lighting effectively conveyed and reinforced emotional tones.
On to the performance itself.
I want to start by singling out an outstanding performance by Robert Jason Jackson as Holofernes. I believed that the role of Holofernes was among the main reasons why one couldn't do a straight production of this play. I mean, what was Shakespeare thinking? "Oh, I know! We'll make a boring, totally not funny, incredibly dull pedant! And he'll be boring, not funny, and dull! Won't that be funny?" Yeah, right. Shakespeare clearly had invented crack four centuries early and was smoking it.
Except, no, he wasn't. Now I know what Shakespeare was thinking. Jackson found the funny. It was there. I never saw it before tonight -- but it was there, and it was funny. Damn, it was funny.
I mean, here's a gag which I totally didn't get before tonight:
Sir, I do invite you too;
you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away!
the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation.
Okay. I'm going to explain the joke. And this is definitely one of those jokes where explaining it is like dissecting a frog -- you may know better how the frog works at the end, but it's unlikely to jump much afterward.
Right. So the last speech in a scene in Shakespeare is usually a cute little verse -- something that rhymes.
So:
"You shall not say me nay; pauca verba. Away!
The gentles are at their game, and we will to our play."
Except the gag is the Holofernes never uses a simple word where something more complex will do. So, when the scene-ending verse is given to Holofernes, it doesn't rhyme or scan anymore. . .
I totally missed that previously. I got it when Robert Jason Jackson said it. And now, if you see it, it won't be funny, because I just squashed the frog. Sorry. But there's a lot more where that came from -- and I never knew it before tonight. Major, major props to Jackson for finding the funny and showing the funny in a really challenging role that is nonetheless funny when done right. I never saw it done right before.
Neil A. Casey also gave a standout performance as Boyet. I was so tempted to write that he "minces churlishly" through his scenes, but I figured that most people wouldn't get the reference. Besides, while he does mince, the sense in which it was "churlish" was already out of fashion a hundred years before Shakespeare wrote the play. So it would totally be misleading and not worth it just to get a "Cowboy Wally" reference into the review.
His Boyet is wonderful, though.
In general, the cast are all competent and professional and understand the essence of their characters. But . . . I've gotten used to the acting from specifically Shakespeare troupes. Jackson, with credits including Othello, Banquo, Bolingbroke, Sir Walter Blunt, and Horatio, was the only actor with extensive prior Shakespeare experience listed in his bio in the program, and it showed. He was the only one who I felt really got all the dirty jokes. And, as I've said before -- if you don't get the dirty jokes, you can't deliver them. And unless you're experienced with Shakespeare, you're not going to understand how much of it is dirty.
While I had no problem with any of the acting, and enjoyed it, I found myself recasting the play with some of the ASP's actors, asking myself things like, "How would John Kuntz have delivered that line if he were playing Berowne?"
So not all the humor was delivered that could have been. But most of it was. This was the first time, in the three times we've seen the play, that we actually saw the Nine Worthies play-within-a-play. Well, the Four Worthies, Then Everything Goes To Heck And Falls Apart Before They Can Finish.
And what of the drama?
As I've said before, what makes Love's Labour's Lost a play for the ages, rather than just a piece of light froth is the last part of the last act. The Nine Worthies play has been heckled to death, and folks have started brawling -- it's all wacky fun -- and then, WHAM. Emotional whiplash.
And it's the grounding of the emotional whiplash that actually makes the play something special. I've talked about this before -- had all the lovers happily gone on and gotten married, it would have been one of Shakespeare's apparently-happy-but-actually-when-you-think-about-it-really-more-is-that-REALLY-a-good-idea? endings, like All's Well that Ends Well. But with the king of France dead, and the lovers separated for a year in which they will all grow up and THINK and decide if this is something they REALLY want to do -- it becomes a much more satisfying ending, by being less frivolously happy.
And yet, even after that, there remains ANOTHER emotional change. And, once again, this was a part of the play that I though was unstageable, emotionally inaccessible, and gratuitous. And, once again, Huntington proved me wrong.
After this grounding of separation and mourning, the passel of clowns who had been putting on the Nine Worthies play show up again, and ask if they can sing the song that was supposed to close their pageant, a song about the Cuckoo and Spring, versus the Owl and Winter.
Gratuitous, no? A song AFTER the emotional climax?
No, not gratuitous. Not when sung as they sang it, not with the setting they composed. Instead, it recapitulates the emotional whiplash, with a bright and cheery first verse, and a sober and pensive second, reinforcing and strengthening the grounding after the comedy.
So, that's what we saw: a more faithful adaptation that I thought possible, a production which used the genius of their own actors and composers to bring forth and explicate much genius in the play that I had never previously seen nor been aware of.