Westword July 29, 2010 : Page 34
theater they don’t turn up in TV commercials; we endure bad renditions in a thousand ama-teur productions; and we occasionally stop to marvel that these melo-dies — “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” “This Nearly Was Mine” — emanated from the inspired brain of one man, Richard Rodgers. But aside from its music, Bounty T BY JULIET WITTMAN I’d been thinking that the play, written in 1949, was a dated old warhorse, with a plot that made light of war and touched rather timidly — though high-mindedly — on is-sues of race. It seemed that sitting through a performance would be like chewing your way through a sawdusty muffin, enlivened only occasionally bya juicy blueberry of song. Director Bartlett Sher thought other-wise, though, and his revival, which first appeared on Broadway in 2008, supplies not only a feast for the senses, but serious food for thought. Under his hand, the script’s daring and intelligence, the connections between words and music, celebration and grief, become gloriously clear. There’s a real awareness here of the mores of the time. Bloody Mary isn’t cute; she’s as ferocious as the shrunken human heads she sells suggest, sake, if you don’t like the damn play, don’t stage it. For this Colorado Shakespeare Fes-tival production, Scott Williams has tarted up Measure for Measure with all kinds of extraneous trickery: red umbrellas and vinyl boots; swags of cloth hanging from the ceil-ing; an in-the-round presentation that has audience members seated on stage behind the action so that those in front can watch them wince as the actors come too close, or snooze a little, or movetheir legs restlessly; storm sound effects (left over from King Lear?); something that looks like confetti raining down now and then and turning red at the end; a taser in the courtroom scene because Williams apparently thinks tasers are funny (he might want to ask inmates who recently said they saw Marvin Booker held down and tased by Denver deputies until he stopped breathing about that). A few characters are traditionally dressed; the costume pieces of others look like discards from TV shows of the ’80s and ’90s. And the low-life characters, with their Brooklyn accents, seem to have wandered in from TrickedUp T 34 he songs from South Pacific are part of our daily diet. We hum them; we pray Anderson Davis and Sumie Maeda in South Pacific. a Mother Courage profi teering on war.The sailors are cut-ups, but they also display all the irresponsibility, blindness and hostility representative of troops in foreign lands, and the handful of black sailors are never seen speaking with the whites, let alone singing or dancing with them. The racism that underlies so much of the action moves to the fore when Nellie Forbush realizes that Emile De Becque, the French plantation owner with whom she’s fallen in love, has children bya Polynesian an audition for The Sopranos. Or perhaps Guys and Dolls. None of this would matter if the leads here are times when I want to scream at a director doing Shakespeare: For God’s werestrong or had genuinely come to grips with the material, but they weren’t and they hadn’t. Measure for Measureis called a problem play for a reason. The action begins when the Duke of Vienna, fearing his city has become too licentious under his kindly rule, cedes power to a rigid, puritanical deputy, Angelo, and leaves to pursue a life of contemplation. Angelo immediately decides to enforce the state’s ban on for-nication and sentences to death a young man named Claudio, who has impreg-nated his fiancée. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, is about to enter a convent. She comes before Angelo to plead for Claudio’s life and, seeing in her the saintliness he longs to possess himself, Angelo falls — in every sense of the word. He will spare Claudio’s life, Angelo tells Isabella, in return for the use of her body. A prolonged meditation on justice and mercy, shadowed at every turn by tragedy, wife, who’s since died. Nellie may be a high-spirited charmer, but she’s also prejudiced to the core, trapped in the assumptions of her time, place and class. Lieutenant Joseph Cable, who falls for Bloody Mary’sbeautiful, silent daughter Liat, is usually portrayed as a doomed and moony dreamer; now I realize he’s a Philadelphia upper-cruster, as trapped by privilege as Nellie is by provincialism. “They say it never works,” Nellie says when Cable tries to imagine bringing Liat home with him. Later, there’s a fraught, powerful encounter between Cable and De Becque. Shaking with fever, fi lled with grief, Cable comes to the realization that “We’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,” while De Becque, mourning his beloved — lost to the same forces Cable has just decried — sings “This Nearly Was Mine.” The voice of Da-vid Pittsinger, who plays De Becque, is operatic in scope, the orchestration full and rich, and the song purely beautiful. The tears that came to my eyes at that moment weren’t the usual easy tears you shed at musicals, however; rather, they werethe kind that send you inward, opening doors to some of your deepest memories. Every element of this production is stun-ning: the elegant, flexible sets by Michael Yeargan (who also designed Sher’sThe Light in the Piazza) and the way Donald Holder’s South Pacific Presented by Denver Center Attractions through August 1, Buell Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 303-893-4100, www.denvercenter.org. lighting plays around and against them; Catherine Zuber’saccurate, expressive cos-tumes; the way the actors are grouped and movein space. None of these elements draws attention to itself; each supports the overall theme and tone. Pittsinger is a dignified, sexy, ironic De Becque, and you believe as fully in his unswerving lovefor Nellie as you believe in hers for him. Carmen Cusack gives Nellie depth, quirkiness and intelligence as well as comic energy, and the sheer exhilara-tion with which she sings of her “Wonder-ful Guy” sends you to the moon. Matthew Saldivar’s Luther is both an operator and an inspired goof; Anderson Davis makes Cable far more introspective than the usual musical-comedy young lover.And I’ll never hear “Bali Ha’i” again without thinking of the amazing, squatly scowling Keala Settle. Sher may have shifted a few scenes and songs, but he hasn’t come up with a radical reinterpretation of the original. Instead, he has coaxed forth what was al-ready in the work, the way you’d take a treasure from the attic, wipe off the dust and gently polish until the shining contours become visible. The last line comes as De Becque, having watched Nellie serve his children dinner, reaches under the table to take her hand. “Mange, Nellie,” he says. Eat. Partake. And so we have. Richly. Measure for Measure Presented by the Colo-rado Shakespeare Festival through August 6, Univer-sity Theatre, University of Colorado at Boulder, 303-492-0554, www. coloradoshakes.org. Measure for Measure is a comedy only in that it ends in marriage rather than mur-der. This means a director must be entirely clear about the tone he wants to set: when to go for laughs, when to let the language and action speak for themselves. He faces interpretative diffi culties, too. The Duke does not leave Vienna as he says he will, but lingers to watch from the sidelines and, when he sees the injustices Angelo has put in motion, begins plotting to set things right. He could do this with a snap of his fingers, but instead, he torments both Claudio and Isabella almost to madness. Is he testing them? Is he less virtuous than we’re initially led to believe? In the Denver Center’sfi ne production a few years back, John Hut-ton (currently CSF’s Lear) made the Duke an amiable doofus who simply didn’t understand the effects of his machinations on oth-ers. But neither Williams nor Robert Sicular, who plays the role here, seems to havefi gured out the Duke’s char-acter or motivation. Sicular simply walks through the play saying his lines as if they had no meaning. As Angelo, Chip Persons affects a mask-like inpassivity throughout, even while fl ogging himself. (That’sanother distracting directorial decision. I’ve seen a couple of Angelos fl og themselves in the past, but how do you justify this medieval trope in a world of red umbrellas and business suits?) The protestations of Lenne Klingaman’s Isa-bella feel actor-y and ungrounded. Angelo and Isabella are two of the most complex characters Shakespeare ever created, pas-sionate and confl icted beneath their calm, unworldly exteriors. Isabella’s virtue is in some ways as coldly destructive as Angelo’s open descent into evil; the difference is that, broken by grief and suffering, she is fi nally able to feel empathy.Early in the play, pleading with Angelo, she utters some of the most beautiful words ever written about mercy; by the play’s end, it’s a quality she’s able to embody. None of this is evident in these portrayals. The liveliest and most interesting per-formances come from Stephen Weitz as Pompey and Timothy Orr as Lucio. And when I heard Nick Henderson’s imprisoned Claudio plead brokenly for his life, I finally felt — for just a few brief minutes — that I was seeing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. — WITTMAN JULY29-AUGUST4, 2010 WESTWORD | BACKBEAT | CAFE | ART | THEATER | MOVIES | NIGHT+DAY | CITY LIMITS | OFF LIMITS | ¡ASK A MEXICAN! | LETTERS | CONTENTS | WORST-CASE SCENARIO | westword.com PETER COOMBS
Theater
Juliet Wittman
Bounty
The songs from South Pacific are part of our daily diet. We hum them; we pray they don’t turn up in TV commercials; we endure bad renditions in a thousand amateur productions; and we occasionally stop to marvel that these melodies — “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” “This Nearly Was Mine” — emanated from the inspired brain of one man, Richard Rodgers.
But aside from its music, I’d been thinking that the play, written in 1949, was a dated old warhorse, with a plot that made light of war and touched rather timidly — though high-mindedly — on issues of race. It seemed that sitting through a performance would be like chewing your way through a sawdusty muffin, enlivened only occasionally by a juicy blueberry of song.
Director Bartlett Sher thought otherwise, though, and his revival, which first appeared on Broadway in 2008, supplies not only a feast for the senses, but serious food for thought. Under his hand, the script’s daring and intelligence, the connections between words and music, celebration and grief, become gloriously clear. There’s a real awareness here of the mores of the time.
Bloody Mary isn’t cute; she’s as ferocious as the shrunken human heads she sells suggest, a Mother Courage profiteering on war. The sailors are cut-ups, but they also display all the irresponsibility, blindness and hostility representative of troops in foreign lands, and the handful of black sailors are never seen speaking with the whites, let alone singing or dancing with them.
The racism that underlies so much of the action moves to the fore when Nellie Forbush realizes that Emile De Becque, the French plantation owner with whom she’s fallen in love, has children by a Polynesian wife, who’s since died. Nellie may be a highspirited charmer, but she’s also prejudiced to the core, trapped in the assumptions of her time, place and class. Lieutenant Joseph Cable, who falls for Bloody Mary’s beautiful, silent daughter Liat, is usually portrayed as a doomed and moony dreamer; now I realize he’s a Philadelphia upper-cruster, as trapped by privilege as Nellie is by provincialism.
“They say it never works,” Nellie says when Cable tries to imagine bringing Liat home with him. Later, there’s a fraught, powerful encounter between Cable and De Becque.
Shaking with fever, filled with grief, Cable comes to the realization that “We’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,” while De Becque, mourning his beloved — lost to the same forces Cable has just decried — sings “This Nearly Was Mine.” The voice of David Pittsinger, who plays De Becque, is operatic in scope, the orchestration full and rich, and the song purely beautiful. The tears that came to my eyes at that moment weren’t the usual easy tears you shed at musicals, however; rather, they were the kind that send you inward, opening doors to some of your deepest memories.
Every element of this production is stunning: the elegant, flexible sets by Michael Yeargan (who also designed Sher’s The Light in the Piazza) and the way Donald Holder’s lighting plays around and against them; Catherine Zuber’s accurate, expressive costumes; the way the actors are grouped and move in space. None of these elements draws attention to itself; each supports the overall theme and tone. Pittsinger is a dignified, sexy, ironic De Becque, and you believe as fully in his unswerving love for Nellie as you believe in hers for him. Carmen Cusack gives Nellie depth, quirkiness and intelligence as well as comic energy, and the sheer exhilaration with which she sings of her “Wonderful Guy” sends you to the moon. Matthew Saldivar’s Luther is both an operator and an inspired goof; Anderson Davis makes Cable far more introspective than the usual musical-comedy young lover. And I’ll never hear “Bali Ha’i” again without thinking of the amazing, squatly scowling Keala Settle.
Sher may have shifted a few scenes and songs, but he hasn’t come up with a radical reinterpretation of the original. Instead, he has coaxed forth what was already in the work, the way you’d take a treasure from the attic, wipe off the dust and gently polish until the shining contours become visible.The last line comes as De Becque, having watched Nellie serve his children dinner, reaches under the table to take her hand.“Mange, Nellie,” he says. Eat. Partake. And so we have. Richly.
Tricked Up
There are times when I want to scream at a director doing Shakespeare: For God’s sake, if you don’t like the damn play, don’t stage it. For this Colorado Shakespeare Festival production, Scott Williams has tarted up Measure for Measure with all kinds of extraneous trickery: red umbrellas and vinyl boots; swags of cloth hanging from the ceiling; an in-the-round presentation that has audience members seated on stage behind the action so that those in front can watch them wince as the actors come too close, or snooze a little, or move their legs restlessly; storm sound effects (left over from King Lear?); something that looks like confetti raining down now and then and turning red at the end; a taser in the courtroom scene because Williams apparently thinks tasers are funny (he might want to ask inmates who recently said they saw Marvin Booker held down and tased by Denver deputies until he stopped breathing about that). A few characters are traditionally dressed; the costume pieces of others look like discards from TV shows of the ’80s and ’90s. And the low-life characters, with their Brooklyn accents, seem to have wandered in from an audition for The Sopranos. Or perhaps Guys and Dolls.
None of this would matter if the leads were strong or had genuinely come to grips with the material, but they weren’t and they hadn’t.
Measure for Measure is called a problem play for a reason. The action begins when the Duke of Vienna, fearing his city has become too licentious under his kindly rule, cedes power to a rigid, puritanical deputy, Angelo, and leaves to pursue a life of contemplation. Angelo immediately decides to enforce the state’s ban on fornication and sentences to death a young man named Claudio, who has impregnated his fi ancée. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, is about to enter a convent. She comes before Angelo to plead for Claudio’s life and, seeing in her the saintliness he longs to possess himself, Angelo falls — in every sense of the word. He will spare Claudio’s life, Angelo tells Isabella, in return for the use of her body.
A prolonged meditation on justice and mercy, shadowed at every turn by tragedy, Measure for Measure is a comedy only in that it ends in marriage rather than murder.
This means a director must be entirely clear about the tone he wants to set: when to go for laughs, when to let the language and action speak for themselves. He faces interpretative difficulties, too. The Duke does not leave Vienna as he says he will, but lingers to watch from the sidelines and, when he sees the injustices Angelo has put in motion, begins plotting to set things right.
He could do this with a snap of his fingers, but instead, he torments both Claudio and Isabella almost to madness. Is he testing them? Is he less virtuous than we’re initially led to believe? In the Denver Center’s fine production a few years back, John Hutton (currently CSF’s Lear) made the Duke an amiable doofus who simply didn’t understand the effects of his machinations on others.
But neither Williams nor Robert Sicular, who plays the role here, seems to have figured out the Duke’s character or motivation. Sicular simply walks through the play saying his lines as if they had no meaning.
As Angelo, Chip Persons affects a masklike inpassivity throughout, even while flogging himself. (That’s another distracting directorial decision. I’ve seen a couple of Angelos flog themselves in the past, but how do you justify this medieval trope in a world of red umbrellas and business suits?) The protestations of Lenne Klingaman’s Isabella feel actor-y and ungrounded. Angelo and Isabella are two of the most complex characters Shakespeare ever created, passionate and conflicted beneath their calm, unworldly exteriors. Isabella’s virtue is in some ways as coldly destructive as Angelo’s open descent into evil; the difference is that, broken by grief and suffering, she is finally able to feel empathy. Early in the play, pleading with Angelo, she utters some of the most beautiful words ever written about mercy; by the play’s end, it’s a quality she’s able to embody. None of this is evident in these portrayals.
The liveliest and most interesting performances come from Stephen Weitz as Pompey and Timothy Orr as Lucio. And when I heard Nick Henderson’s imprisoned Claudio plead brokenly for his life, I finally felt — for just a few brief minutes — that I was seeing Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
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