"Your play needs no excuse"

Thank god for "Blessed Unrest's" production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This diamond in the rough restored my faith in off-off Broadway, a faith that wavered rather seriously since we began our project. This company's energetic and crystal-clear presentation of a play packed with fairies, amazon queens, magic elixirs, and shape-changing donkeys made Shakespeare's magical forest thoroughly relevant and captivating from start to finish. Opening with a provocatively naked Hippolyta, the actors deftly navigated the themes of infidelities and inconstancy, while amping up polyamorous innuendos in campy costumes that came off bit by bit as the play went on. There was a surprising and wonderful dance sequence at the end of the first half, and even the silly play within the play was performed so well that the audience guffawed despite the hour. A production like this makes me glad that as we check the upcoming Shakespeare performances in New York, we continue to say, along with Theseus, "I will hear that play." Everyone should.

Against frippery

Near the end of "The Tempest" my favorite characters, Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano are sidetracked from their mission to kill Prospero by a chest of fine clothes. This scene could very well stand as a warning to those attending BAM's Bridge Project production of the play, since its flashy theatrics overshadow the play's most interesting themes of exile and shipwreck. In Mendes' interpretation the magic has the upperhand instead, so Ariel appears with gigantic metal wings spanning half the stage like a creature right out of "Metropolis," fire and smoke overwhelm the theater, and Caliban (ok, this was great) emerges from below stage through a circle of sand. The actors are so busy pacing around that circle in much of the play, kicking up sand and taking far too much delight in showing us how clever the stage set is that their words disappear upstage off into the smoke. I couldn't hear half of the play.

Fortunately, having seen their coproduction of "As You Like It" the play was saved for me by thinking about how the one overlaid the other. Casting the same actors in similar roles in both plays (storytellers Prospero-Jacques; loyal servants Adam-Gonzalo; the usurpers Duke Frederick-Antonio) highlights Shakespeare's systemic structure as a scaffolding for his plays' real brilliance: language. (On that note, check out "Double Falsehood".)

What $9 In New York Gets You

* A one-day Metrocard "Fun Pass"

* A ride on the Coney Island Cyclone

* And, at the Strand, a hardcover copy of a 1972 of Acting Shakespeare, by John Gielgud.

What $9 does not get you, apparently, is anything close to a decent performance of Taming of the Shrew. This became abundantly clear after we forked over the change sat through nearly 3 hours of the American Theatre of Actors performance of the play.

Where to begin on this thing? With Gregory O'Connor's Grumio, who for some reason thought it wise to pirouette and fly across stage every time his master Petruchio bid him hence? With Michael Matucci's absurd too-cool-for-school Petruchio, which made him sound like he belonged unironically at this high school reunion. No line of Shakespeare could go unadorned in this production, but had to be met with an arched eyebrow, upturned palms or something that stage whispered, "Boy, these guys sure are c-c-c-razy!!!"

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays. Only rarely did a chuckle ever escape the lips of the audience on Sunday, a damning indictment of a production of this play as possible.

Tragic motes & motley coats

As You Like It is billed as a comedy, and in its sugar-coated marriage finale BAM's Bridge Project adaptation lives up to this. But the play is constantly hinting at the ways that tragedy refuses to go away. The first act ends in the delicate death of Adam--Alvin Epstein who plays the starving elderly servant, slips away so gently in Orlando's arms, that the simplicity of the moment is made the more momentous for its being under-acted.

His death is a morbid counterpart to the boisterous finale. Adam (whose name suggests not only the first man but also the first mortal man) haunts the rest of the play in which characters are so often enjoined to be happy--"Prithee, be cheerful," and "search for cheer." When the singers gorgeously intone "This life is most jolly" the melancholic tune Sam Mendes has chosen for it, suggests the very opposite. When Jacques, who renounces the pleasures of companionship, remarks that he envies foolish Touchstone's "motley coat" of speech, we might recognize that each comedy is rendered happy only through its patches of sadness. The cloud is silver but its lining is dark.

Marriage for Marriage

What struck me about Measure for Measure--a play I had not seen or read or knew very much about--were the different ways that marriage was used. It seemed to involve both pain and punishment on the one hand, and pleasure and reward on the other.
Angelo is instructed to marry Mariana as a punishment for his deceit; Lucio must marry his whore as punishment for slandering the Duke. No wedded bliss for these four. There were condemned to look at each others' ugly mugs as payback for carnal knowledge.
But, lest we think marriage merely be a death sentence among the Elizabethan set, The Duke provides the only romantic spark by, improbably, asking Isabella to marry him. His offer is, by the parlance of today, a companionate union: " What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine."
Charming, I guess, but what can't help but wonder what the good Duke thinks of an institution that he can banish people to for crimes against the state

"Why art thou thus attired, Andronicus?" or Do Clothes Make the Man?

On the subway on our way to see "Measure for Measure" at the Duke Theater, David was rereading "Catcher in the Rye" in honor of Salinger's recent death. Emerging in Times Square's hubbub, he noted how little people seem to care about presenting themselves in public. It's certainly true that a lot has changed since the porkpie hat, the Saturday tie, the bolero suit and heels, the bonnets and canes. But Shakespeare still has a lot to say about dressing up.

While Titus rather foolishly dresses up to look a lot like the Swedish chef (this was in a performance the next day at the American Globe Theater--upstairs in a church that bizarrely reeked of incense(it was Episcopal)) by the time Shakespeare got round to writing "Measure for Measure," he was taking clothes a lot more seriously.

The play is filled with "seemers." Isabella berates Angelo "Seeming! Seeming," and echoes of seams and schemes resound. Lucio describes Friar Ludowick (the Duke) of being "Honest in nothing but his clothes..." What can we take of Shakespeare's sartorial universe when we're back on the streets and riding the subways?