The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised][Again] at Tulane’s Lupin Theater
In the course of 90 minutes or so, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised][Again] serves up, in one form or another, all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays (38, if you count Two Noble Kinsmen), plus some sonnets. The comedies and histories are well-represented, the latter as a sporting event, but the biggest tragedy of all? That this tremendously fun New Orleans Shakespeare Festival production ran for just two weekends.
Written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield, Complete Works was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1987 and went on to play from 1996 till 2005 in the West End where I first encountered it in 2001. I last saw it in 2013 when Director Carl Walker, also for the N.O. Shakespeare Festival, “squeezed every bit of manic merriment out of it”, as I wrote at the time.
Since then, its authors have updated portions of it (thus its mouthful of a title), and, as always, the script gives its director and cast wide latitude to ad lib, toss in local references, and turn current headlines into jokes. Hence this iteration name-checked Godzilla, T-Mobile and Ozempic.
Graham Burk directed with a sure hand, keeping the insanity going non-stop as he substituted Silly String for blood, put Juliet on another actor’s shoulders (much easier than bringing in a balcony), and used Benny Hill’s theme music, Yackety Sax, and golf clubs for the Macbeth section (since golf originated in Scotland, of course).
Keith Claverie, Ian Hoch, and Lauren Malara made a fine trio of Shakespearean send-uppers, providing madness aplenty, individually and collectively.
Keith Claverie, Ian Hoch, and Lauren Malara in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised][Again]
Claverie, who has triumphed as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a faerie/rude mechanical and, most recently, Caliban, here hysterically romped as Lavinia, Titus Andronicus’ hand-less daughter (as oxymoronic as that sounds), delivered a Juliet seemingly inspired by Charles Ludlam, and had crazy fun as Ophelia, achieving all this zaniness by, wisely, playing for real the characters’ underlying emotions.
Hoch, just off of enacting Shakespeare’s rival Christopher Marlowe in Le Petit’s Born With Teeth, here donned a blonde wig and tights for a Danish prince that put the ham in Hamlet and deliciously so. Gleefully arch, Hoch perfectly calibrated his faux peevishness to grandly comic effect.
Malara, who, unlike Claverie and Hoch, I was seeing for the first time, comes more from the world of stand-up and employs extra dry humor for extra fine effect. If her more low-key style offered a different approach from her more theatrical colleagues, with Burk’s guidance, they all blended together seamlessly.
The only parts of Complete Works that I didn’t appreciate (and don’t recall being as prominent in its earlier versions) were passages that unnecessarily put down Shakespeare for one reason or another, as though the authors didn’t trust their source material.
They should.
For in the second act, which is devoted entirely to Hamlet, when the script calls for momentary seriousness and Claverie performed the Prince’s “What a piece of work is a man!” speech with utmost sincerity, he held the audience in rapt attention as one would expect from such glorious language.
And then it was back to the wackiness, forsooth.
[Next at the N.O. Shakespeare Festival is Julius Caesar directed by Salvatore Mannino, July 12-21. Tickets and more info at https://neworleansshakespeare.org/collections/2024-season-1/products/julius-caesar]
The Cake at Loyola’s Marquette Theatre
Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake, which Crescent City Stage recently presented at Loyola’s Marquette Theatre, reminded me of a 7-layer cake where 4 or 5 of the layers were scrumptious and the others tasted of mustard and vinegar. Okay, maybe not the most exact cake metaphor but you get my drift.
Ostensibly, an “issue” play, The Cake focuses on Della whose bakery in Winston-Salem, NC, is renowned; in fact, she’ll soon be appearing as a contestant on her favorite TV baking competition. When her late-best-friend’s daughter comes home from New York City, asks her to make a cake for her upcoming wedding, and Della learns that Jen’s about to marry a woman, drama ensues as Della must re-examine her deeply held religious beliefs, certainly a worthy set-up.
Yet The Cake is inconsistent. Some scenes are meaty and complex; in others, the issues get presented in merely a binary, didactic manner. At times, the characters come across as three-dimensionally real; at others, they seem to be authorial mouthpieces. Sometimes the dialog, both individual lines and whole passages, crackles; sometimes it thuds, rife with cliches. Strangest of all, at times, Brunstetter portrays her characters with empathetic humanism; at others, her writing seemingly insults them by making the Southerners (Della, Jen and Della’s husband Tim) come off as stupid (or at least not the brightest of folks) and Macy, Jen’s fiancée, borders on the stereotype of the “strident Black woman”.
Fortunately, the good sections outweigh the bad by about a 2-to-1 ratio. I especially appreciated that Della was no Bible-thumping, MAGA-hat-wearing, unyielding-in-her-views type of person, but, rather, an overall decent soul, someone whose inculcated faith system prevents her from accepting certain ideas. (I actually know a few people who are similar to, if not exactly like, Della.)
Elizabeth Newcomer directed assuredly, bringing out the script’s pluses with some sweet touches, if unable to wholly smooth over its shortcomings. I may be mistaken but her song choices would seem to situate the plot in the 1980s, while the real-life event that inspired the play occurred in 2012 and was ultimately adjudicated by the Supreme Court in 2018 (the play itself had its NYC premiere in Feb. 2019.); not a biggie, but it seemed a little odd.
Any production that gives Lara Grice an opportunity to return to the stage is cause for celebration, but, especially at the start, she succumbed to a lot of overacting, perhaps to compensate for the script. As the production continued, however, she settled into a much more believable and appealing approach; in some scenes she achieved a heartbreakingly touching manner, laced with just enough knowing humor to prevent any sentimentality from creeping in.
As Tim, Mike Harkins delivered a keenly textured, understated performance, so different from his Falstaff of 2022 except in the breadth of talent he brings to all his roles. I just wish Brunstetter had given us more of Della and Tim’s relationship so Grice and Harkins would’ve had more scenes together.
Lorene Chesley smoothed over Macy’s sharper edges while amplifying the character’s warmth for a highly satisfying portrayal. If in last year’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike I felt that Chesley inhabited a universe separate from the rest of the cast, in The Cake she dovetailed beautifully with the others, often grounding the production when the writing didn’t.
Lorene Chesley and Lara Grice in The Cake (photo by Brittney Werner)
Similar to Grice, Joy Donze, as Jen, followed the contours of the script which sometimes forced her into over-the-top emotions, but, otherwise, gave a winning performance. If the script didn’t always convince me that Jen and Macy were meant for each other, Donze and Chesley’s apt chemistry as a couple did.
Ironically, for a play about cakes and upscale baking, the two words that The Cake has instilled with new and unexpected connotations for me are “mashed potatoes”. Suffice to say, they are spoken by Tim in a bedroom scene with Della.
[Next up for Crescent City Stage will be Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in a new version by Amy Herzog, directed by Jana Mestecky. More info and tickets at https://www.crescentcitystage.com/adollshouse]
The Importance of Being Earnest at Le Petit Theatre
Le Petit Theatre’s recent production of The Importance of Being Earnest was a surreal experience for me. I felt like I was watching a performance of Oscar Wilde’s play as done by the second-rate acting troupe of Noises Off with Brooke and Poppy as Cecily and Gwendolen, Gary and Freddie as Algernon and Jack, and, of course, Dotty as Lady Bracknell. Maybe it wasn’t an exact match-up, but with all its eye-popping, screeching deliveries, overly broad characterizations, and actors upstaging each other, it came very close.
I didn’t get it.
I have long-admired Director A.J. Allegra and the members of his company. Yet, in this case, they seemed not to have trusted Wilde and his magnificent words, and so approached Earnest as farce rather than the elegant comedy of manners which it is. The result seemed to work–there was lots of laughter in the house–but by taking this approach, we got an overlong Carol Burnett sketch rather than Wilde’s rich satire of his milieu and upper crust brethren.
To give just one example, Noah Hazzard’s (as Jack Worthing who’s masquerading as Ernest) continual turning of his head back and forth from his fellow actors to the audience reminded me of a spectator at a tennis match. (The only cast members who gave more measured performances were, in smaller roles, Kyle Daigrepont and David W. Hoover.)
Rohan Padmakumar, Yvette Bourgeois, Tracey E. Collins, Noah Hazzard, and Bethany Lee in The Importance of Being Earnest
It’s a shame as The Importance of Being Earnest remains as witty as ever. One line that stood out for me was “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his,” which certainly is one of the gayest lines ever written.
Le Petit’s program uses the line from the play “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing” as an epigraph. True dat. It has to be, however, the proper style.
[Information about Le Petit’s 2024-25 season can be found at https://www.lepetittheatre.com/events/2024-2025-season-subscriptions]
Clue at the Saenger Theatre
The mystery of Clue (subtitled both “Live On Stage!” and “A New Comedy”, take your pick), which recently played at the Saenger Theatre, was not whodunnit, in what room, and with what weapon, but rather how two productions of the same inane script could have significantly different results.
Three years ago, reviewing a production at Mandeville’s 30 by Ninety Theatre, I described it as “a very funny piece of theater” and “entertaining summertime fare”, and noted that the director “wisely didn’t camp things up any more than they already are.”
For this nationally touring production, however, Director Casey Hushion played up the yuks and slapstick and silly jokes, as opposed to leaning into what little reality the script allows the characters, so things felt stupider, more cockamamie than at 30 by Ninety; the final curtain left me more exhausted than amused.
Still, Clue isn’t Oscar Wilde. Officially, it’s “Based on the Paramount Pictures Motion Picture. Based on the Hasbro board game CLUE”, so standards ought to be lowered. And, taken on its own terms, it made for a very professionally done, diverting 80 minutes.
Sandy Rustin’s script hews fairly closely to Jonathan Lynn’s goofy screenplay which begins on a rainy night in the 1950s at the grand Foggy Manor where the host is blackmailing his six colorfully iconic guests. As various prior entanglements between the guests and the manor’s staff are revealed, the bodies pile up (and up and up), and by the end all sorts of crazy twists and turns have occurred.
Lee Savage’s scenic design provided a very impressive manor house (except for one door that didn’t seem to be working). Costumes (Jen Caprio), lighting (Ryan O’Gara), and sound (Jeff Human) all added to the period atmosphere and enlivened the shenanigans.
One little puzzle: Three years ago I wrote that “The only clue that a cast member doesn’t quite recall the show’s Eisenhower-era setting? When the House Un-American Activities Committee was referred to as the ‘House Un-American Committee’.” Well, I noted that misnomer again. Where is a dramaturg when you need one?
The bigger mystery, however, is this: Given that the entire cast, led by an outstanding Mark Price as the mansion’s head butler, are all very talented, many with extensive Broadway credits, why aren’t there more better plays for them to do???
[Information about next season’s Broadway in New Orleans can be found at https://www.saengernola.com/events/broadway-in-new-orleans/]
