Poster for Huntington Theatre's production of How Shakespeare Won the West [www.huntingtontheatre.org] on from September 5 - October 5, 2008This was my second visit to Huntington Theatre's space at Boston University, a lovely old theatre with a carved Shakespearean quotation "To hold as t'were the mirror up to nature" over the proscenium arch. This quote has a cameo in the season premiere production of prolific and successful American playwright Richard Nelson's latest comedy, How Shakespeare Won the West.
The play and its production are delightful, carried off with great energy and exuberance by its large cast of 11 actors who storytell their way though the journey of a ragtag theatre troupe from New York to California in 1848. They are trying to make it to the frontier goldmining towns where, so they believe, miners are starved for culture and will throw sacks of gold dust onto the stage for a good production of the Bard. On the simple but effective wooden set (designed by Anje Ellerman), the company uses a combination of action and narration---in the style of story theatre---to introduce us to the tavern-owning and theatre-loving Calhoun family and their dream of creating a theatre company. In New York of the 1840s the plays of Shakespeare are popular, Edwin Booth is a big star (as also, apparently, are two sisters aged 9 and 11 who played scenes from Shakespeare's plays to much acclaim and we are treated to a snippet of their show!), and the Calhoun's spy an opportunity to reclaim the stage out in California. They gather together a mixed-bag of actors who are willing to make the journey and off they go.
From this point on the play becomes a theatrical variation on the classic American Dream, striking out for unknown territories with the hope of striking it rich. However, the Calhoun Theatre Company is both ill-suited and ill-prepared for the arduous journey ahead and much of the play is taken up with the many challenges they face along the way. These challenges include disease and death, winter cold, hostile natives, kidnapping and near-starvation. Not the expected ingredients of a comedy! But the sheer energy and unstoppable optimism of this misfit group keeps us with them throughout this long trip, even meeting a young and theatre-loving Abe Lincoln along the way, until they reach their destination. There, they find that the miners are an uncouth lot and are facing destitution (luckily, one of the troupe is a former prostitute who is not above returning to her trade to help out) until a benefactor appears to save the day. The play ends with a bowdlerized version of Hamlet (historically accurate and very popular in its day!) that features a happy ending where the poisons are innocuous and Ophelia was just pretending to kill herself.
Playwright Nelson clearly knows how to write a play, and director Jonothan Moscone has gathered together a highly-skilled company to perform it. Most characters take on multiple roles and Moscone keeps the action moving at a good clip throughout this 110 minute one-act play. Standout performances for me were Will LeBow and Mary Beth Fisher as Tom and Alice Calhoun, Chris Henry Coffey as the dissolute star of the troupe Hank Daley (charming but hopeless, as with many a leading man!) and Susannah Schulman as his wife Kate Denim, the too-good-to-be-true ingenue who suffers a sad fate. But honestly, there's not a weak link in this company, and they also look pretty fabulous in the array of period costumes designed by Laura Churba Kohn.
If I have any quibbles at all, they are with the play itself. I know it's a comedy, but there are plenty of contemporary and historic comedies to be found that also take on a level of pointed satire, or political provocation, that is entirely absent in Nelson's play. It seems to me, as a Canadian abroad in the US at a time where the country is literally deciding upon its future identity in the world, that Nelson opted out of using this engaging story of the pioneering and entrepreneurial American spirit to remind us of the cultural cost of keeping our eyes firmly set on the money prize of the winner-takes-all American capitalist dream. The cultural cost in the US has resulted in a wholly dominant Hollywood and TV dramatic landscape that is very profitable, yes, but also almost entirely vapid. When the troupe performs their "Americanized" version of Hamlet it is funny, yes, but also struck me as very sad, especially in comparison to the rendering of King Lear they give to an Indian chief (as his captives) that moves him to tears, beyond language, beyond cultural boundaries and differences. That's the inexhaustible power of Shakespeare, and I couldn't help leaving the theatre wondering what it would be like to see this gifted company performing Hamlet or Lear themselves.
