Author: Brandon J. Walker

The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton reached two milestones this season: the quarter-century mark and the completion of Shakespeare’s canon. All but two of the 38 plays we attribute to Shakespeare were published in the First Folio in 1623, and with its current production of Timon of Athens, ASC can claim performances of all of them.

Possibly Shakespeare’s most obscure and difficult play, Timon of Athens is rarely staged and even more rarely produced with love and skill. Scholars question whether the play was actually staged in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and many argue that a good chunk was written by Thomas Middleton. Speculation comes from Timon’s direct contrast to its canonical bookends, the psychologically intense and diversely plotted Measure for Measure (1603) and King Lear (1605). Focused on the singular peripeteia of Timon, who apparently lacks family and history, the story plays out like a medieval morality tale, full of dead ends and archetypes. The script is rich in language, however, and imbued with universal relevance, and it also offers the best collection of Elizabethan insults. “Were I like thee, I would throw away myself,” and “Would thou were clean enough to spit on,” are two favorites.

As part of the Actor’s Renaissance season, ASC’s production was staged in a classic Elizabethan practice: four days of rehearsal, no director, no stage lighting or set, and multiple, gender-blind casting.

René Thornton Jr. expertly carries the titular role, with genuine effusion and a deft shift into grounded misanthropy when he finds himself betrayed. Tim Sailer’s Flavius is high-strung, antsy, and endearing in his concern for Timon’s welfare, and Jonathan Holtzman treats Alcibiades, grateful friend and grim warrior, with austere, soldierly deference. The real standout is Josh Innerst’s Apemantus, played with wry wit, nuanced delivery, and impeccable stage presence. The few times I’ve seen Timons, Apemantus acts like a stodgy and disagreeable buzzkill, but Mr. Innerst invests contagious value in his character and seems to take real pleasure from his lot. ASC’s strong ensemble supports Timon’s chorus continuously.

As always, ASC treats this play with intelligence, skill, and passion. Artistic Director Jim Warren spoke with C-VILLE Weekly about the milestones and the future of the American Shakespeare Center.

C-VILLE Weekly: Was completion of the canon ever a conscious goal? Or was it more of an inevitability after 25 years of Shakespeare?

Jim Warren: We always said “eventually we’ll do them all,” but I didn’t have us on any kind of set schedule to make it happen. A few years ago, as I was putting together ideas for an upcoming year, I noticed how few we had left to do. I saw that if I put this title here and that title there, then we would be able to complete the canon during our 25th anniversary year.

Timon of Athens is a famously difficult play. What unique challenges does it present?

Timon gets a bad rap, in my opinion. I think it’s a magnificent play. It’s not very well known—most audience members probably won’t know the story when they come to see the show—and it takes the title character (and the audience) on a wild ride from the mountaintop of success to the deepest pit of despair.

Compared to a play like As You Like It, it’s a different kind of ensemble piece. Timon has four chunky roles and a ton of tiny roles; As You Like It is filled with more meaty roles and a lot less doubling among the troupe. Timon [also] has two different banquet scenes to stage, a cave, and a hole to dig, each with their own thorny staging issues. Most of all, you have to cast the right person as Timon, someone who audiences can understand, like, admire, and care about, so the play stays interesting when he gets crushed. Productions of this play fail when you don’t give a damn about Timon.

Is there a need to approach one of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays differently than one of his more popular ones?

Clarity of story is always priority one at the ASC, no matter how popular or obscure the play is. With a more popular title, we’re still going to have a lot of folks seeing it for the first time. Perhaps they read it in school and didn’t have a good experience, or they’ve been to other theaters and seen crummy productions where they couldn’t follow what was going on with the smoke machines, set changes, and modern special effects. But when it’s a more obscure title, we have a bit more pressure on us because even more folks will be seeing it for the first time.

Each of Shakespeare’s plays is a unique animal with its own particular challenges. We want all of our choices to be ones that help tell the story, help draw you in, help you become part of the world of the play so we can go on the journey together.

Twenty-five years and still going strong. What’s on the docket for the next 25?

We’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing: recovering the joy and accessibility of Shakespeare’s theatre, language, and humanity by exploring the English Renaissance stage and its practices. There’s a never-ending combination of plays, actors, costumes, props, use of our Blackfriars stage at home, and turning spaces on the road into the flavor of an Elizabethan/Jacobean playhouse. We will always bring fresh food to this never-ending banquet.

We’ll go through the canon again, eventually. We’re going to keep on top of the ever-evolving scholarship and continue to milk Shakespeare’s staging conditions for his plays and plays from other periods that thrive in this staging environment. Eventually we’ll try Chekhov, Ibsen, and Beckett, in addition to having new plays written for our space and staging style. Eventually we’re going to build a re-creation of Shakespeare’s 1614 Globe Theatre.

“I feel now the future in the instant” [Macbeth].

Rene Thornton Jr. plays the lead role in Timon of Athens. The play serves as ASC’s completion of Shakespeare’s canon.

PAT JARRET

Liz Duffy Adams’ Or, is Live Arts’ latest offering, a deftly minced hodge-podge of a play, primarily consisting of what may be incompletely described as a retroactively considered Restoration comedy. Now, when was the last time you had a serious hankering for a Restoration comedy? Some ambivalent theater-goers find Shakespeare intimidating and obscure (they shouldn’t, by the way), but seriously, a Restoration comedy? Here’s the thing, though: Most of them are brilliant, full of wit, humor, and humanity, if you can follow them, and some of the best contributions to the genre came from a woman in 17th century England named Aphra Behn. And it just so happens that she’s the protagonist of the aforementioned play.

Aphra Behn was a woman of her time, one of those poorly behaved women who tend to make history; she was England’s first professional female playwright, a spy in the service of King Charles II, and an accomplished poet and novelist, among other things. Much of her history is guesswork, but it is rumored (though not confirmed) that she was openly bisexual. But the veracity of her biographical information isn’t important. She was a lady shrouded in myth, and that’s where Or, comes from.

Adams’ script is a strange cocktail. Premiered in 2009, its structure is clearly influenced by Restoration comedy, though it wantonly snubs some of its most hallowed conventions, namely that it employs only three actors, two of whom play multiple parts. Many of the themes and plot devices are taken directly from the Restoration style in which Behn carved out her spot in history, and yet the whole thing is rife with Molière-style French farce. It’s built on the shoulders of Tom Stoppard and his quasi-historical treatments, and therefore houses intentional anachronisms in speech and convention, but goes just that little bit further by capturing a semblance of the original presentation style instead of re-contextualizing. All in all, it’s a good script worth its level of acclaim, though it does cultivate one of my theatrical pet peeves: It plays somewhat to the exclusionary, in-joke nature of theater communities, and some of the most incisive and humorous moments would be lost on someone who didn’t have an extensive theatrical background.

The play is directed by Christina Courtenay and I applaud her on handling as much as this production required. It’s a boisterous script played out in a black box theater, so the inherent energies are immediately at odds. I’m a stickler for motivated blocking and, truth be told, there were times where I felt almost none of the movement on stage was warranted by the script, yet I do understand the need to keep this play moving and share the genuine fun of watching lustful characters throw each other about onto settees and the like while spouting brilliant witticisms. The production also benefited from the broken fourth wall humor necessary in a space too intimate to completely mask the stagecraft. Characters make breathless entrances after quick changes behind curtains that we can see fluttering from backstage activity, but the entrance is all the more enjoyable for being tongue-in-cheek.

As for the actors, I’m becoming more and more a fan of Chris Patrick every time I see him. He plays his characters not only with intelligence and sincerity, but with careful sensitivity to the overall aesthetic of the play, mindful of his place in the production, and that’s something only instinct carries. Also, his Lady Davenant was so hilarious that it made my face hurt from laughter. Claire McGurk Chandler was fun to watch, and not that overbearing, forced kind of fun either. She was sweet, sexy, and likeable. My primary note, though, is that I never saw any real vulnerability from her. She had it right under what she was doing the entire time, but either her choices or the nature of the production prevented it from coming through.

The play revolves around Aphra, though. Jen Downey’s performance was insightful and precise, all the more admirable considering she never actually leaves the stage during the show. Anyone who’s ever played a part like that knows how surprisingly exhausting it is and with good reason: Actors often cite the sustained development of character throughout a show as one of the primary advantages of stage performance. In film, you’re only a character between takes, but with a part like Aphra Behn, you essentially follow about two hours of the most important moments in your character’s life, and you do it every night. I also give her a huge commendation for embracing the somewhat foreign meter/cadence and vocabulary of the time and script, delivering it with casual ease. My only complaint is similar to that about Ms. Chandler: I didn’t see enough vulnerability, though I did see some. Much of her performance was so precise that it came off excessively practiced and lost the verisimilitude that grounds a seemingly silly, yet thoughtful play like this. That being said, I watched her onstage for the entire show and never tired of her, and that’s really what it boils down to.

Overall, Live Arts’ production of Or, is good. Not the best it’s ever done but worth the time to see it, worth the effort to produce and perform it, worthy of the obvious labor of love it required of its all-volunteer cast and crew. It’s this kind of show that theater people will continue to stubbornly mount because it’s good and it says something worthwhile. It’s theater for people who love theater.

 

Or, Live Arts, Through May 4.

Poetry emotion

The best new plays are always hard to categorize, and Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear is no exception. Staged by UVA’s drama department, it is a powerful and intentionally disjointed examination of deep loss and finding ways to cope. Beneath the plot is a mosaic of language, bursting with fractured thoughts that tether the characters to a fleeting reality rife with playfully mournful fantasies of GI Joe as the family therapist and the Tooth Fairy as a singing confidant.

Through 3/2 $8-14, 8pm. Helms Theater, 109 Culbreth Rd., UVA. 924-3376.

Catty lady

If you can’t quite place Paula Poundstone, try imagining her with a red brick wall behind her while she dishes out a brilliantly composed cat joke. There’s also a pretty good chance you’ve heard her yucking it up as a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.” Poundstone holds the honor of first female comedian to win the CableACE Award for best stand-up comedy special, has hosted numerous HBO comedy features, and is currently looking forward to her second book release in which we can expect more intelligent wit about politics and pop culture.

Saturday 2/23 $29.50, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w3NwND6wZc