DUCHESS OF MALFI and WINTER'S TALE (January 31st and February 22nd)

Photos, Top to Bottom: Tobias Segal as Young Shepherd and Ethan Hawke as Autolycus in The Winter's Tale; Rebecca Hall as Hermione and Josh Hamilton as Polixenes in The Winter's Tale; Poster for the Bridge Project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Maurya Lowry, Jennie Israel and Jason Bowen in The Duchess of Malfi; Jason Bowen and Jennie Israel in The Duchess of Malfi at Actors' Shakespeare Project.

How has it been nearly a month since my last posting? Life, I guess, being busy and somewhat stressed-out in my work and including a trip home to Victoria and Vancouver that included four (count 'em!) theatre/opera performances that I am not going to review here. But I will mention seeing the mad genius Canadian puppeteer Ronnie Burkett's latest show at Vancouver's PUSH Festival, as well as a strong outing of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at Victoria's Belfry Theatre.

My last two shows here on the east coast half of my bicoastal life this year have been my first ever production of John Webster's revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi and the not-to-be-missed Sam Mendes production of The Winter's Tale (in rep with The Cherry Orchard) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Webster's play features a woebegotten widow who wishes to marry her loyal steward against her overbearing and jealous brothers' orders, and pays dearly for her actions. The Duchess comes to a sad and violent end, as does almost everyone else in this play of suspicion, secrecy and endless manipulation and retribution. What fun!

The Actors' Shakespeare Project production was directed by David Gammons, whose Lieutenant of Inishmore at New Rep was another buckets of bloodfest in the fall. Gammons is a fine director with a keen storytelling ability and focused eye for detail. Never was I unclear about who was who and what was going on in this play, as tense and paranoid conversations take place in supposed privacy that is always anything but that. The alley staging helped to foster this claustrophobic atmosphere tremendously, along with a simple and clever design of two huge doors at both ends, creating a palatial hallway. Door slams were timed for sound cues of echoing slams that reverberated and heightened the jail-like environs that became eventually a madhouse and charnel pit. What fun!

The acting was serviceable all-round with Jennie Israel playing an almost too likeable Duchess...I would like to have seen a bit more fire in her belly at times (perhaps a feminist revisionism on my part?) Jason Bowen played her steward/husband Antonio with charm and warmth and we felt his accidental slaying late in the play perhaps as the greatest loss, as he is probably the most innocent character here. The Duchess' two malevolent brothers are played with grim pleasure by Joel Colodner as a cross-dressing and lecherous Cardinal and Michael Forden Walker as the clearly would-be incestuous and psychopathic Ferdinand, who eventually kills his wayward sister. My favorite performance was by Bill Barclay as Bosola, conscripted by the brothers as a spy. He comes to see the injustice and insanity of what he is caught up in, and although he is guilty of much wrongdoing, he also tries to make amends before he too gives up the ghost. Webster writes Bosola in direct address to the audience and so we see the play through his eyes and Barclay gives the role a very contemporary interpretation; knowing, ironic and believable.

My one disappointment was in the quality of vocal work in the ensemble. In a repertory company dedicated to Shakespeare, I expected rich tones and perfect articulation and got mostly middling and pretty non-resonant voices with okay but far from crisp and precise diction. This is the area where this company needs to grow, and I'll see if there's any difference when their next show, Coriolanus, opens next month.

This past weekend I spent eight hours on a bus going back and forth between here and Brooklyn to see a three hour production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as performed by the joint British and American acting ensemble called, appropriately, The Bridge Project. It features some of the finest stage actors on both sides of the Atlantic working together. Film and theatre director Sam Mendes gives us a very fine interpretation of this challenging late play that features intense psychological drama in the first half that then fast-forwards 16 years into a pastoral romance/comedy and then ends up back where it starts, reuniting a royal couple torn apart by unfounded jealousy and abuse of power and celebrating the love of their long-lost daughter and her prince. (For a synopsis, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale)

The wonderful performance space of the Harvey Theatre at BAM seems custom-made for the plays of both Shakespeare and Chekhov. A restored ruin, the architects have left much of the ruination in place (brought up to code!), so we feel we have entered a theatre with much history, including some obvious hard times; cracked plaster, bare brick walls, peeling paint, rusty supports. It's so evocative and, come to think of it, would work well with playwrights like Beckett, Brecht, Williams... One of the most interesting theatre spaces I've been in for some time. Designer Anthony Ward honors this space, and creates a great touring set (these two shows are going on to Singapore, Auckland, London and Europe) with minimalism set off by real candles in sconces hung at varying levels upstage to create a starry backdrop of candlelight. Magical. Other than this we are given a carpet, a few pieces of furniture, beautiful lighting and excellent, excellent acting throughout.

Simon Russell Beale plays King Leontes with such clarity and force, and great empathy for this misguided man who loses almost everything as a result. There is much of the tragic heroes of Shakespeare's past plays in him; the jealousy of Othello, the petty yet overblown wrath of Lear, the soul-shattering realization of what he has done that reminds me of these two characters, and others all the way back to Oedipus. Beale is a big and powerful actor and one feels he is constraining Leontes, determined to retain his dignity even as he falls apart emotionally and politically...and when he allows himself to rage he pushes us back in our seats. The much younger Rebecca Hall plays his saintly wife Hermione with verve and a strong core that keeps her queen-like even in her baseless captivity for adultery and in the hearing of the banishment of her newborn daughter Perdita and death (from grief) of her young son Mamillius. The great Sinead Cusack plays Paulina, a wonderful role of a servant who, like Lear's Fool, has the unexpected freedom in this dramatic world to take the King to task for his wrong actions. She is another powerhouse actor and the scenes between her and Beale are a real treat. Her fierce protection of Hermione brooks no opposition and it is she who has the satisfaction of bringing Leontes and Hermione back together in the play's final scene.

The American actors (who all speak with their own accents, a wise directorial choice) might seem to be up against quite a challenge in the face of this crew, yet they do well. Of course, their trump card is the movie star Ethan Hawke, who appears late in the play in the comic role of the pedlar and petty thief Autolycus. Hawke hams it up to everyone's delight, playing the guitar and warbling like Dylan, entering one scene looking like Slash from Guns 'n Roses, and addressing the audience 99% of the time. But he is ably supported by his countrymen Richard Easton who does wonderful work with the Old Shepherd, who adopts the abandoned baby princess Perdita and rises to fortune as a result, and by Josh Hamilton as Leontes' best friend Polixenes, the source of the former's jealousy and later the father of Florizel (who falls for Perdita...of course!)

The only ones who suffer slightly here are the young lovers, who barely register in the midst of this star-power, and are not very interesting roles to begin with.

The shift from dark and dramatic Sicilia to light and American frontier-like Bohemia is a jarring one, as is the 16 year time-slip (aided by a delightful monologue, delivered by Time, but here delivered by Easton as the Old Shepherd, to great effect). And there is a bit of a sense that moves in oneself and the audience of "Get on with it, we want to get back to the good stuff back in Sicilia" as we sit through a long harvest festival and hoe-down, complete with songs and bawdy dances and red, white and blue balloons. This is Shakespeare bowing to new conventions late in his career, the growing popularity of inserting musical and dance interludes into plays, but his own genius shines through in the core story of jealousy, punishment and redemption. When Perdita is introduced to Leontes by her love Florizel (who has fled to Sicilia to escape his father's disapproval of their match, as she and everyone else believes her to be a poor shepherdess), the moment is so potent, so moving. Yet Shakespeare writes the actual revelations and reconciliations offstage and reported to us by court officials. He wisely saves the major onstage revelation/reconciliation for the famous final scene where Paulina takes the King and his newly-found daughter to see the 'statue' of his dead wife Hermione. Of course the statue is the real deal and Paulina brings her 'magically' to life and into the shocked but joyful arms of her repentant husband and lookalike daughter. Cue tears.

The Winter's Tale may not rank with Shakespeare's greatest plays, but in this intelligent and well-directed and designed production, with a troupe of actors beyond compare, it is truly a theatrical delight.

Hermione: What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come Sir, now I am for you again: 'Pray you sit by us, And tell's a Tale
Mamillius (her young son): Merry, or sad, shal't be?

Hermione: As merry as you will
Mamillius: A sad Tale's best for Winter: I have one of Sprights, and Goblins
Hermione: Let's have that (good Sir.) Come-on, sit down, come-on, and do your best, To fright me with your Sprights: you're powerful at it
Mamillius: There was a man
Hermione: Nay, come sit down: then on
Mamillius: Dwelt by a Church-yard: I will tell it softly, Yond Crickets shall not hear it
Hermione: Come on then, and giv't me in mine ear (Act II, Sc. i)