WILL POWER

Life initiates Art in graceful, passionate Shakespearean rhapsody, Hamnet

 

The words of William Shakespeare speak so directly to the heart, and to one's lived experience, that no context is needed. You don't require supplemental notes or background material to get swept up in the reckless joy of young love in Romeo and Juliet, the naked ambition of Macbeth, or the fatal hubris of King Lear.

 

So, the idea of creating a semi-fictional backstory on the events of Shakespeare's life leading up to and including the writing of his masterpiece, Hamlet, may seem superfluous, at the very least, if not downright foolhardy. Nonetheless, such was the conceit of Maggie O'Farrell's recent bestselling novel, Hamnet, now brought to the screen with extraordinary passion, delicacy, and restraint by filmmaker Chloe Zhao.

 

The story begins with the meeting of Will (Paul Mescal), educated son of a country glovemaker, hired to tutor a neighbor's sons in Latin, and Agnes (pronounced An-yis) (Jessie Buckley), from another country family nearby, who is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch. Will is driven to write from the vastness of his soaring imagination. Agnes is a child of nature, an expert at herbal lore and remedies, who keeps a pet hawk. Their handfast marriage produces three children, and evolves to accommodate Will's frequent trips away to London, where his playwriting leads him.  

 

Their only son, Hamnet (an impish and tender Jacobi Jupe), is known to have died unexpectedly at age 11, the seminal incident through which Zhao and O'Farrell (who adapted the screenplay together) imagine the psychological forces that fueled the writing of the play. Most of us don't need any more reasons to admire Shakespeare's words, but the snippets from Hamlet that waft through the film, in rehearsals, or, ultimately, onstage at the Globe, filtered through the lens of the playwright's overwhelming grief and guilt at not being there during the crisis, are delivered with such heartbreaking fervor and immediacy, and feel so starkly expressive, it's like hearing them for the first time.

 

Mescal is particularly effective as Will directs the actor playing the part of Hamlet onstage, or takes the part of the ghost of Hamlet's father himself, bidding his son his final, heartfelt adieus. Also pretty great is Noah Jupe, as the young actor playing Hamlet onstage. Especially in the play (and the film)'s transcendent final moments, when Agnes is there to share in the redemptive power of what Will has created. (For an extra layer of resonance, Noah and Jacobi Jupe are brothers in real life.)

 

(The only scene that doesn't quite work in this regard is when Will, at a moment of profound despair, peers over the edge of a dock above the Thames and murmurs the first few lines of "To be or not to be . . . "  Is he just reciting these lines from the play because it's just such an atmospheric setting? Or is he supposed to be making up this brilliant speech on the spot, intact, without a single misplaced word?)

 

Will is the one with the gift for verbalizing his feelings, at least on paper, and onstage. But it's Agnes whose visceral experience of the story's deep emotions carries the movie, and Buckley's performance is absolutely fearless. The childbirth scenes are harrowing and compelling, the first when she goes alone into the forest to give birth within the giant, gnarled roots of an ancient tree, and the second, in a room with a midwife and a stool, when she delivers infant Hamnet and his stillborn twin, Judith, whom Agnes coaxes and bullies back to life through sheer force of will. Soft-spoken, a little saucy, and uncompromising, she is the movie's beating heart.

 

 

Zhao, also listed as co-producer and co-editor, must get most of the credit for the movie's look, tone, and sensibility. Some twilit interiors are so dim, you can barely see what's going on, as are exteriors in dank, perpetually hazy London. (Don't try watching this on a home screen, kids, it needs space!) But the scenes in Agnes' beloved forest are always vibrant and alive.

 

In particular, that gigantic tree on which Zhao's camera so lovingly feasts in the movie's opening moments, comes to represent the entirety of nature in all its scarred and towering nobility.

 

COMFORT and JOY

SC Shakespeare's A Christmas Carol delivers the holiday spirit

For a joyous dose of holiday cheer, treat yourself to Santa Cruz Shakespeare's A Christmas Carol, now playing at the Veterans Memorial Hall in downtown Santa Cruz. Now in its second year, this seasonal revival of Charles Dickens' beloved Christmas chestnut is recalibrated for the stage by SCS Artistic Director Charles Pasternak, who also co-directs, with Alicia Gibson.

 

The festivities begin as soon as you enter the hall, with sweet treats, warm drinks, and popcorn (merrily popping away in a vintage popper) for sale on the way into the theater, which is festooned with green garlands and red bows on all sides.

 

Even with a streamlined cast of only five adults and two children, and a single, functional set, this production manages to evoke the majority of Dickens' vast array of eccentric characters, its time-traveling adventures, and all of the story's large-hearted humanity.

 

Much of this is achieved by the actors slipping in and out of character to trade narration duties, enhancing scenes with snippets of Dickens' observational prose from the original novella. All the actors take part in this round-robin of narration that keeps the story moving briskly along, except for Mike Ryan, as protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge. Onstage throughout as the "grasping, greedy, covetous old sinner," Ryan's job is to sneer and glower at everyone else in the first half, cower before the supernatural spirits, and ultimately embrace his redemption with wholehearted glee, and he delivers with his usual panache.

 

 Julie James, Artistic Director of the late, lamented Jewel Theatre Company, pops up in several key roles. She's Marley's Ghost — dragging his chains and shrieking his despair over his misspent life, in a scene so shrouded in stage fog and bleached of color, it looks like a black-and-white movie — (kudos to Lighting Designer Stephen Migdal) — and also the ebullient Ghost of Christmas Present, in her holly wreath crown and lavish fur robes. Most fun is her cackling Mrs. Dilber, the housekeeper looking to sell Scrooge's meagre effects to the rag-and-bone man after his lonely demise.

As Old Joe, the rag-and-bone man, Eddie Lopez is just as funny, in a boisterous departure from his main role as poor, but warm-hearted Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's much put-upon clerk. Among other roles, he also plays Scrooge as a young man in flashback, in love with stalwart and loyal Belle (Charlotte Boyce Munson), whose love he squanders in his single-minded pursuit of wealth and power. Munson also does a nifty about-face as Scrooge's nephew, Fred, infused with a lusty holiday spirit he's determined to impose on his sour old uncle, whether he likes it or not. Andrea Sweeney Blanco essays a pair of devoted wives, plucky Mrs. Cratchit, and nephew Fred's cheery bride. She also brings a tender and graceful gravitas to the role of the Ghost of Christmas Past, shepherding the reluctant Scrooge through the youthful dreams and wretched mistakes of his past.

 

On opening night, Joseph Pratt Lukefahr was effective as both the lonely boy Scrooge, and cheerful Tiny Tim, as well as the sassy street urchin Scrooge sends to buy a turkey for the Cratchits. Sigrid Breidenthal did a lovely job as child Scrooge's sister, Fan, and the Cratchit's number two daughter, Belinda.

 

Christmas Past's angelic white satin gown and glittering snowy halo, along with Christmas Present's elaborate robes, are the standouts among B Modern's gorgeous costume design. But every article of clothing is rich in period and thematic detail, from the ladies' Victorian gowns and the suits, waistcoats and toppers of the gentlemen, down to the decaying rags of Marley's Ghost.

Scenic Designer Bennett Seymour's rotating, two-story spiral staircase morphs into everything from Scrooge's counting house to the floating plateau from which Scrooge and the Ghosts view the mortal world, to the cozy Cratchit family hearth.

 

As a self-confessed Christmas Carol nerd (as I've expressed many times in these digital pages), I've devoured dozens and dozens of versions, on stage and screen — big and small —  ­and I'm always interested in new takes on the material. I admire the economy of Pasternak's pared down production, which feels consistently rich in spirit. Although I do miss the joyful sight of the Old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig dancing at their Christmas party (even though Dickens' prose in the narration brings the scene vividly to life). And it seems like the Cratchit family is short a couple of kids.

 

A particularly festive touch in this production is the liberal use of traditional Christmas carols strategically inserted throughout to reflect upon, and enhance the story. (Orchestrated to an incredible offstage mix tape by Music Director Luke Shepherd that sounds as if there's a live combo secreted somewhere within the folds of the curtain.) All of the cast members sing beautifully, and their harmonies are  especially lovely. The show begins with the robustly caroling cast members carrying lit candles through the darkness as they parade down the aisle to the stage, and it ends with the entire company onstage (and the audience on its feet) joining in on a rousing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" to sing us all out into the night, infused with a renewed holiday spirit.

 

(Santa Cruz Shakespeare's A Christmas Carol plays through Wednesday, December 24, at the Veterans Memorial Hall in downtown Santa Cruz.)

 (Photos by Kevin Lohman (Top, 3, 4) and Shmuel Thaler (2))

GODS AND MONSTERS

 Del Toro's Frankenstein electrifies

 

It's easy to see why filmmaker Guillermo del Toro calls Frankenstein his dream project. Of course, the auteur behind Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water would have a special affinity for Mary Shelley’s seminal horror story, which Del Toro brings to the screen with all the lavish, soulful grotesquerie for which he is so renowned. No matter how many of the previous 2.8 billion adaptations you’ve seen, Del Toro retells the tale with electrifying urgency, and haunting pathos.

 

Of all the other version out there, Del Toro's sticks closer than most to the tone and narrative of Shelley's novel. It begins and ends in the frozen waste of the North Pole, to which Creator and Creature have hunted each other. There is no Igor in Frankenstein's lab. And the Creature cobbled together from spare body parts is not reduced to monosyllabic grunts; he learns to articulate his rage and despair.

 

 Oscar Isaacs plays Victor Frankenstein with imperious intellect and frenzied zeal. Del Toro likes to shoot his close-ups at weird angles — chin jutting out, eyes wild, mop of black curls streaming behind — to illustrate the idea of scientific questing run amok. Jacob Elordi is absolutely terrific as the Creature, jolted to unnatural life in a lightning storm, through no fault of his own, then abandoned to work out the complexities of existence by himself.

 

In these early scenes, he beautifully expresses the absorbing curiosity, the awed sense of wonder, and capacity for sudden delight, of an infant. (Despite the fact that Elordi must be about eight feet tall, which makes his performance even more affecting.)

 

But like so many thoughtless new parents, Frankenstein has no idea what to do with his newborn. The act of creation itself was the exciting part, not dealing with the consequences. His initial delight soon turns to irritation with the Creature he keeps chained up, unclothed, below stairs. He neglects to teach him language (the only word the Creature knows is "Victor"), then berates him for his inability to communicate. Soon enough, the runaway Creature learns language and decency from a kindly old blind man who befriends him. But it ends badly, of course, when the old man's family returns.

 

Indeed, while a fugitive in the world, a stolen cloak concealing his stitched-together face, the Creature establishes cooperation and fraternity with the wildlife he encounters, like a foraging deer, and the rat colonies with whom he shares his hiding places. It's only through his encounters with humans that he learns cruelty and violence.

 

(Trigger warning: a couple of scenes of animal death are integral to the plot, but not for the tender-hearted.)

 

Shelley's novel is subtitled The Modern Prometheus, and this is how Victor sees himself, stealing the gift of life from the gods, mostly to prove himself their equal. When he brings an early working prototype — head, torso, arms — to display at a medical college, the doctors and students watch in horrified fascination as he temporarily reanimates the thing with an electrical charge. Tellingly, when Victor abruptly switches off the life force, he takes no notice of the creature's pitiful death rattle.

 

These questions of Creator and Creature, father and son, and humanity and its opposite, are explored as their paths continue to cross, leading eventually to their last, fateful encounter in the frozen north. Early on, while still imprisoned under the lab, the Creature meets, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), fiancée to Victor's brother. Far from horrified, she sees them as kindred spirits, their undervalued wit and worth buried beneath their facades — in her case, her porcelain beauty, which guarantees she will never be taken seriously in the world of men. 

 

Later, the Creature confronts Victor with the demand that he build him a mate, like himself, with the eloquent declaration, "I cannot die. And I cannot live alone." The Creature's immortality is not found in Shelley's book, it's completely Del Toro's invention. And while I confess, I must have missed the movie's scientific explanation for why this is so, it enhances the tragedy of the Creature's solitary and eternal otherness.

 

 Meanwhile, these tantalizing themes play out within the extraordinary, immersive production design by Tamara Deverell. A circle of life motif recurs in a giant stone bas-relief rondel that looks like a Greek tragedy mask with Medusa curls, overlooking the lab, an enormous round, mullioned window, and a huge, circular bronze drain in the middle of the floor. Amid the steampunk assortment of pots, beakers, winches, pulleys, and cogs in the lab, the patchwork figure is hoisted up on a cross like the Vitruvian Man, awaiting the spark of life.

 

Frankenstein runs for a whopping two hours and forty minutes, and there's never a dull moment, in terms of things to look at, thoughts to ponder, and sheer, cinematic bravura. And it never runs out of steam, right up to the last, enormously moving confrontation between Victor and his creation, and the gorgeous and devastating final frame.

 

(This movie deserves to be seen on the big screen, of course, but if you do watch it on Netflix, you have the option of hitting pause to drink in all the details!)

PRINCE OF TIDES

Picaresque Pericles a seaworthy adventure

Santa Cruz Shakespeare takes a big chance with its third offering of the season, Pericles. A lesser known Shakespeare play without the marquee value of, say, A Midsummer Night's Dream, its hyperactive storyline also makes it a challenge to stage. Fortunately, director Charles Pasternak has a savvy enough grasp of stagecraft to keep the unruly plot on track, while showcasing its best moments of comedy and poignant revelation.

Casting the always interesting Paige Lindsey White as protagonist Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is another intriguing choice. The character is not re-imagined as female (like Helen Mirren as "Prospera," in the 2010 movie of The Tempest). Rather, White's Pericles is a universal Everyperson, responding to the extremes of the plot with the kind of humanity and spirit we can all relate to.

 

And extreme they are. Prince Pericles sails to the neighboring kingdom of Antiochus (Corey Jones) to woo his daughter (Allie Pratt). But when he discovers they are having an incestuous relationship, Pericles flees, pursued by an assassin. His odyssey next takes him to the famine-ravage kingdom of Cleon (also Jones) a Dionyza (Desiree Rogers), where he delivers life-saving food, before he is shipwrecked in a storm at sea.

 

Pericles washes ashore in the kingdom of genial King Simonides (Jones yet again), who is holding a jousting tournament to win the hand of his daughter, Thaisa (charmingly eager innocent Lily Kops). Pericles is victorious over five other knights and weds Thaisa. Later, the pregnant Thaisa gives birth to a daughter during another storm at sea, but seemingly dies in childbirth. 

 

White and Kops: romantic intrigue

 Pericles takes the infant daughter he names Marina back to Cleon and Dionyza to raise, then returns to the sea to grieve. The second half of the story concerns Marina, now a young woman (also Pratt), captured by pirates and sold into a brothel, where she confounds the madame (a now brash, belligerent Kops) by talking all of her potential clients out of ravishing her.

 

Because so much of this storyline happens offstage, presented as hearsay, including juicy stuff like jousting and piracy, it's sometimes difficult for the audience to become fully engaged in the complicated story. But when scenes are pared down to a few characters whose motives we clearly understand, it all works beautifully, thanks to its extremely versatile and energetic cast.

 

Jones' regal bearing as all three very different kings is impressive throughout, but he has the most fun as the expansive Simonides, covertly matchmaking for Pericles and Thaisa. Jones, White and Kops shine in a skillfully directed, very funny pas de trois as the wily king tries reverse psychology, pretending to forbid a match between Pericles and Thaisa that he's secretly determined to arrange.

 

M L Roberts excels as a furtive assassin, a philosophical fisherman, and a  good-hearted servant at the bawdy house who helps spirit Marina away. Rogers' noble, compassionate queen, Dionyza, convincingly descends into murderous jealousy. Jono Eiland is engaging as both a studious alchemist who revives Thaisa, and a would-be assassin with a moral compass. Mike Ryan lends humor and gravity as both Hellicanus, Pericles' trusted advisor, and the rowdy Pander, who runs the brothel. 

 

 Highlight of the show is a terrific centerpiece number when the knights vying for Thasia's hand perform a percussive dance of male machismo in the style of a Maori tribal ritual. (Big kudos to Choreographer Izzy Pedego.) And after all their exhausting adventures, Pericles' final reunion with his lost wife and daughter concludes the tale on a grace note of reconciliation and redemption, in which White, in particular, is profoundly touching.

 

The George Wilkins listed as a collaborator on the play was a London pamphleteer who wrote a prose version of the medieval poem by John Gower that inspired Shakespeare. It's thought that Wilkins contributed to the first two acts of the play, which may explain why the first couple of exposition scenes are a little hard to get into. At the court of Antiochus, from the actors' body language, and the word "incest" repeatedly flung about, we get what's going on, but the untrained ear (okay, mine), can't discern whatever verbal clue it is that alerts Pericles to the situation and sends him fleeing for his life.

 

 Shakespeare wrote Gower into the play as an onstage narrator, explaining the action. But Pasternak dispenses with Gower, handing the narration duties over to the ensemble, filling in the busy plot so the audience can keep up. 

 

They make excellent use of the smart set by Michael Schweikardt and Bennet Seymour, prowling around the catwalks and revolving staircases, which variously become palaces, seashores, tournament fields, and storm-wracked ships at sea. Erin Reed Carter's vivid costumes are most impressive in the gemstone-colored royal finery, and the quilted, samurai-like robes of the jousters.

 

Pericles may not be Shakespeare's best-remembered play, but Pasternak and company make it a memorable theatrical event.

 

Pericles plays in repertory at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park through August 30.

Photos by Kevin Lohman and Shmuel Thaler

SMILES of a SUMMER NIGHT

White, Ryan and assorted fairies: bright spirits

 Magical Santa Cruz Shakespeare double header all an audience could wish for

 

Looking for something to brighten your spirits? (And who isn't, these days?)

 

Fortunately, you need look no further than DeLaveaga Park, where Santa Cruz Shakespeare launched its 2025 Summer Season over the weekend with a pair of boisterous new productions: A Midsummer Night's Dream, perhaps the most popular, accessible, and funniest of Shakespeare comedies, and the vibrant musical fairytale mashup, Into The Woods, featuring the elegantly witty songs of Stephen Sondheim.

 

Beautifully staged under the towering trees of the Audrey Stanley Grove, this year's plays are presented under the theme No One Is Alone (the title of one of Sondheim's pivotal songs). Which, in the case of these first two productions, emphasizes the power of community, and the elliptical, mostly (but not always) comic consequences within that community and ourselves when we make foolish choices, mostly (but not always) in pursuit of love.

 

Bright spirits abound — literally — in director Paul Mullins' exuberant Midsummer, where the impending nuptials of lord, Theseus (Corey Jones), and Hippolyta (Charlotte Boyce Munson), whose Amazon tribe he has just conquered, play off against a rift in the spirit world between Oberon (ML Rogers) and Titania (Paige Lindsey White), King and Queen of the Fairies. The tentative rapprochement between the mortal bride and groom-to-be contrasts with the scheming erotic gamesmanship of the lustily feuding fairy spouses.

 

Rossi, Pratt, Sagay and Kops: issues

Meanwhile, two sets of young mortal lovers are having their own issues. Hermia (Allie Pratt), pledged to marry Demetrius (Elliot Sagay), her father's choice, has instead fallen in love with Lysander (Nick Rossi). But Demetrius still pursues her, even though Helena (Lily Kops), a young woman he has dallied with, is now in love with him. Threatened with death or a nunnery if she doesn't wed Demetrius, Hermia flees into the woods with Lysander the night before the royal wedding, pursued by Demetrius, who is pursued by Helena.

 

There, they unwittingly become the playthings of Oberon and Titania, and their  fairy conspirators. The fairy king directs his antic henchman, Puck (Justin Joung), to apply a love potion to sort out the young lovers into correct pairs while they sleep, but Puck messes up, so that both youths are now fierce rivals for Helena, while Hermia is abandoned.

 

Further complicating things is a troupe of local craftsmen in the woods to rehearse a play to perform at the wedding the next day. Driven by more enthusiasm than skill, they provide more fodder for Oberon's spat with his queen; the sleeping Titania is charmed into falling passionately in love with the first creature she sees, upon waking — which turns out to be genial, bombastic amateur player Nick Bottom (played with relish by Mike Ryan), now sporting the head of a donkey, via Puck's mischievous magic.

 

Roberts, Joung and White: panache

Pratt's feisty, determined Hermia plays in counterpoint to Kops' forlorn Helena, whose bewilderment at suddenly finding herself pursued by both swains ramps up to a cleansing dose of outrage that she's being being mocked. Joung is wonderful as the acrobatic trickster, Puck, in his headdress of red flames, manipulating a glowing, moon-like orb to illuminate the fairy revels. Jono Eiland steals every scene he's in as amateur player Francis Flute, disappointed at first to be cast in the female role of Thisbe, who nevertheless throws himself into it with hilarious comic abandon. B. Modern's savvy costumes range from the mortal's sensible neutrals to the vibrant gemstone colors of the forest fairies, and special kudos to Lighting Designer Marcella Barbeau for bathing the scene in lush royal purple every time Puck administers his love potion.

 

You couldn't ask for more brio and panache from a fairy king and queen than the Oberon of ML Roberts (so boisterous a couple of years back as Petruchio in The Taming Of the Shrew), and the Titania of Paige Lindsey White, (astonishing as Polonius in last year's Hamlet, combining a sitcom busybody with tragically fatal hubris in a role generally written off as an inconsequential bumbler). 

 

But it's unusual for the actors playing the fairy monarchs to not be double-cast as the mortal monarchs, as well. Jones and Munson are perfectly fine as Theseus and Hippolyta, but it's almost as if their characters are operating outside of the action, almost superfluous, whereas, when the parts are double-cast, the King and Queen of Faery, and their mortal counterparts are like alter-egos of each other, completing the circle of love, passion, power and foolishness that drives the action.

 

Still, it's a minor point in a lively, entertaining show.

 

Into the Woods ensemble: wish lists

The company transitions from the Fairy Court to fairy tales with Into The Woods, the celebrated Broadway musical set in a magical realm where all the tales we remember from childhood play out simultaneously. With a book by James Lapine, and a score of smart, intricate Sondheim songs, the show explores what happens before, during, and after the traditional "Happily Ever After."

 

Directed by Jerry Lee, the show revolves around a humble Baker and his wife who long to have a child. Played by Tyler Nye and Melissa WolfKlain, they provide a foundation of warm humanity for all the fantastical elements to come. In the opening ensemble number, "I Wish," their neighbors also chime in on what they wish for. Gullible innocent Jack (Justin Joung), and his widowed mother (Jordan Best), wish they weren't so poor, and that their elderly cow (Jack calls her his best friend) would give milk.

Tending to the ashes in her rags, Cinderella (Ciarra Stroud) wishes she could go to the prince's festival at the royal castle, while her scheming Stepmother (Lori Schulman), wishes to marry off one of her own harridan daughters to the prince. Little Red (comically plucky Mai Abe) wishes to go visit her granny in the woods, and arrives with an empty basket to fill with the baker's sweets. But their wishes pale next to the desires of "the witch next door" (Charlotte Boyce Munson); turns out she has cursed the baker and his wife to childlessness, but will reverse the curse if they will undertake a perilous journey into the woods.

 

Munson, WolfKlain and Nye: the witch next door

 The stage is set for cross-pollinated tales (Rapunzel, imprisoned in the Witch's tower, the Three Little Pigs, and a giant on the other end of Jack's beanstalk also make guest appearances). Surprise plot twists and much sprightly wordplay ensue on the way to everyone's happy ending — at least, in the first act. As the stories continue in the second half, beyond the traditional "The End," the characters and the audience face the consequences of reckless wishing.

 

Of course, you can't have a scary wood without a big bad wolf, and this production gives us two — one to menace Little Red on her way to Granny's, and a second to harass those pigs. It's traditional that Cinderella's Prince and Red's Wolf are played by the same actor, but one of its biggest delights in this production is the triple-casting of Elliot Sagay and Alex Cook as both wolves, both princes (Cinderella's and Rapunzel's), and Cinderella's ghastly stepsisters! The cleverest of Austin Blake Conlee's excellent costumes are the tight doublets and leather pants the princes wear, that become the stepsisters' finery with the addition of high pompadour wigs, red velvet bustles, and high heels, pared down to lean, black predator silhouettes under cage-like wolf heads, complete with snapping jaws and lolling red tongues.

 

As the princes, the actors also get to deliver one of the funniest songs, "Agony," a dual lament that the women they covet are so unattainable — shortly followed by the "Agony" reprise, in which they lament that, having attained the unattainable, their affections are already straying elsewhere. In another musical highlight, "Any Moment," Sagay, as the sly, insinuating alpha wolf, tries to persuade WolfKlain, the Baker's Wife, to give herself up to the alluring, if transitory, pleasures of the woods.

 

Ensemble: After "Ever After"

 

Milky White, the cow (not exactly a speaking, er, mooing part, but onstage in many scenes) is an emaciated, but stoic creature of cobwebby white ropes, and Cinderella's twittering birds are hand-held by various whistling actors who swoop and flutter them about. But the most impressive special effect comes from Sound Designer Barry G. Funderburg. The giant is never seen, but every bone-rattling step of the giant coming closer through the woods has us looking over our shoulders; we could swear the ground was quaking underfoot.

 

Munson makes a marvelous Witch, in both her crone and glamorous personae. Schulman is both a gleefully imperious Stepmother, and a sharp, no-nonsense Granny. Stroud shines as both gutsy Cinderella and the gentler Rapunzel, and Best's exasperated fretting as Jack's mother contrasts with her serenity, and gorgeous ethereal singing as the ghostly spirit of Cinderella's mother. All of them have lovely singing voices, and the entire company delivers Sondheim's intricate lyrics with clarity and verve.

 

Music, magic, and midsummer madness. Who could wish for more?

PUZZLE ME THIS

 

In the third week of April, 2018, James and I were getting ready for a trip back to the Chicago suburb of his boyhood for his mother's memorial. Far-flung family members were coming in from Sweden, the Virgin Islands, Wisconsin and California, for what was going to be an epic family reunion. We'd been saving the New York Times crossword puzzles out of the Sentinel for about a week, in preparation for the flight; James was eager to see everyone, but he hated being confined in the plane for 4 hours and needed something to do.

 

On the morning before the day we were supposed to leave, James wound up in the ICU at Stanford. Two days later, I had to let him go, and my world turned upside down. Although I have little memory of the details now, I somehow managed to send email dispatches back to the assembled Aschbachers every night. Three days later, the event that brought them all together became a memorial not only for my mother-in-law, but for James as well.

 

Among the many household chores that began to accrue for me in the days and weeks and months and years after I lost him were those crossword puzzles we used to do together over breakfast and lunch every day. My heart wasn't in it for a long time, but because I was trying to keep my life (ie: my routines) as normal as possible, I kept methodically separating out those puzzles to save for later. (Not every day, but Thursdays, because there's always something tricky in the theme or the structure; Fridays, because they have the answers to Thursday; and Sundays, because it's always a big, intricate feast of a puzzle!)

 

It wasn't nearly as much fun to do the puzzles alone; there was no one to impress when I suddenly had an aha! moment, charged eagerly downstairs, and filled in the last couple of squares that solved some obscure clue. Still, I managed to finish one occasionally, over a period of days, not hours. But I could never work enough of them to make much of a dent in the ones I kept obsessively saving, which began to stack up and up, expanding exponentially like the Blob. When one stack got too tall and tottery, I skimmed a few off the top and started another stack somewhere else.

 

Well, you know where this is going. Six years later, I have four stacks of puzzles — mostly pristine, but some partially filled in — taking up real estate in my house, three squirreled away between James' art table and his former office, plus the most recent ones I keep on the dining table. (Where I still complete one, once in awhile.) But with family visiting from overseas next week, I had to face the awful truth — it was time for a purge. 

 

28th Anniversary present from James!

It's not like I'm a hoarder. You don't need GPS, a guide dog, or a machete to navigate around my house. All the stuff acquired in our 40 years together is well organized and tidy, the Virgo in me believing that if everything can be stashed away in some appropriate place (preferably out of sight), then I won't have to deal with it for awhile — if ever. Everything but those stacks of puzzles, which have been migrating from one inappropriate surface to another, defying my attempts to corral them.

 

Well-meaning friends have offered to dump them in the recycle bin for me — problem solved! — yet I find myself strangely unwilling to agree. Over these past few years, I've sent my Art Boy's clothes to Good Will, donated his art books to the Tannery library, and his art supplies to the schools; I rehomed his collection of monster and sci-fi toys to a toy dealer, cleaned out his video closet, and had 4 of his 5 VCRs hauled off to Grey Bears.

 

So why is it so hard to give up the puzzles?

 

On one hand, it ought to be a too-painful reminder of losing him in media res, the last little project he was working on before he was struck down, all those empty little squares unfilled. But maybe that's part of the reason I still cling to them. That first little pile of saved puzzles was like his stake in the future — making the plane ride enjoyable, then the fun family reunion, and whatever adventures would come after. Any time I saw them sitting there where he left them, I felt momentarily transported back to that fateful day. As if the life we might have had, but for one split second of fate, had we packed up those puzzles, caught our flight, and gone off into our future, was still right there, within reach, as if that little pile of puzzles was a portal between the optimistic past, that still felt so immediate, and the unexpected and unpredictable future now unwinding before me.

 

Realistically, I know I'll never be able to access that portal — unless my life turns out to be a Twilight Zone episode, or a Neil Gaiman story. But it's also come to symbolize a turning point in my own identity, a dividing line between my past and present self. Past me, marching fearlessly out into the world with my Sweetie, vs. Present me, physically compromised, if still relatively functional, but emotionally rudderless on my own. Emotionally, I seem to need to keep those puzzles as the last little tangible link to our partnership, in crossword puzzles and everything else, eagerly filling in all of life's little squares together.

DANE OF THRONES

All systems are 'go' in Hamlet, the centerpiece production of this year's Santa Cruz Shakespeare season. The acting is impressive at every level, and the action trots along with clarity, focus and feeling. Director Susan Dalian updates the famous tale of political murder, moral corruption, and generational angst into the post-assassination JFK/Mad Men era, which makes enough sense to complement, not distract from the drama.

To recap: The King of Denmark has died suddenly, and his brother, Claudius, has assumed the king's throne and married the king's wife, Queen Gertrude. The royal son, Prince Hamlet, home from school abroad for his father's funeral, is already shocked by his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle when the ghost of his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by Claudius and demands vengeance. 

Much of the play revolves around Hamlet's soul-searching, as he grapples with grief and rage: must he avenge his father's murder? What happens if he does? Can he live with himself if he does not? Is life worth living at all? Meanwhile, he pretends to be mad, spouting wordplay and foolery, hoping to throw the plotters off-guard and learn the truth about his father's death — and decide what to do about it. 

As Hamlet, incoming SCS Artistic Director Charles Pasternak makes a grand, rampaging feast of the part. Roaring in outrage, heartfelt in despair, he can shift in an instant into nimble verbal dancing and witty asides, baiting the pompous and the less intellectually adroit. It's a Herculean, often riveting  performance that never quite loses its grounding in life-sized human emotion. 

Mike Ryan plays the treacherous Claudius with glib, glad-handing duplicity. As Gertrude, Marion Adler seems hopefully pragmatic at first, trying to restore peace to her recently disrupted court, but gradually descends into aching remorse the "crazier" and more reproachful her son becomes. There's more collateral damage in Ophelia, Hamlet's paramour, daughter of the king's counselor, Polonius. Allie Pratt plays her as a fragile, innocent flower child driven genuinely out of her mind by Hamlet's pretended lunacy. 

By far the most arresting supporting character in this production in Polonius, gender-switched from a befuddled, cliche-spouting, out-of-touch doddering father, as the role is usually played, into a socially scheming mother. The remarkable Paige Lindsey White gives us an interfering mother of dynamic, aggressive cluelessness, eager to enforce the romantic and social protocols of her own bygone era, and thus prove worthy to meddle in the schemes of her royal in-laws-to-be. White's Polonius is a vividly entertaining comic figure, right up to the moment she's undone by her own hubris, daring to believe (mistakenly, as it turns out) that she's sly enough to match wits with the pros in ruthless court politics. 

Jono Eiland and Elliot Sagay are pleasantly accommodating as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (not necessarily in that order, although no one is ever quite sure), Hamlet's school friends recruited by Claudius to spy on his antagonistic step-son. Charlotte Munson is effective as Horatio, Hamlet's confidant, and the play's moral and rational center, and the ever exuberant Patty Gallagher pops up as the Player King, head of a troupe of actors hired by Hamlet to stage an incendiary drama about regicide. Raphael Nash Thompson brings his sonorous voice and formidable presence to the vengeful Ghost. 

Austin Blake Conlee's costumes run toward relaxed mens' suits and chic linen dress ensembles in popsicle pastel colors, accompanied by wigmistress Jessica Carter's extravagant mid-60s bouffants. Luke Shepherd's smart, subtle, insinuating sound design enhances the action at every turn. 

This is the fourth production of Hamlet mounted by the company since its original inception as Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 1981. The first production of the play, way back in 1985, starred a young Brit recently imported from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Paul Whitworth, in the title role. 

Incidental characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were played by Danny Scheie and Jack Zerbe, who also got to star in a concurrent production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious existential comedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which played on alternate nights with Hamlet throughout the season. 

This was momentous casting for the company, since both Scheie and then Whitworth would go on to serve tenures as Artistic Director. 

Me, I loved both productions so much, I channeled my inner Al Hirschfield and drew this cartoon, commemorating the season! 

 

Hamlet plays in repertoire through August 31st in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.

INTO THE WOODS

Courtly Cousins: Munson and Takayo

SCS launches season with lively rustic comedy As You Like It

Art imitated life in Santa Cruz this weekend — or was it the other way around?

Santa Cruz Shakespeare launched it's 43rd(!) season under the theme Generations, in honor of former Artistic Director Mike Ryan handing over the festival reins to new Artistic Director Charles Pasternak. Within the same 48 hours, President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, "passing the torch" to Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming November election. As Pasternak writes in his program notes, this season "looks forward to the young inheriting the world."

As always, 400+ years later, Shakespeare's stories are as timely as ever!

The first production in this year's play cycle, Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It, is not about the transfer of political power, but rather the efforts of a younger generation to escape the dysfunctional family values of the past, reinvent themselves, and go boldly into the future.

The story turns on two sets of brothers in conflict. Conniving Duke Frederick has usurped the office of his benevolent brother, Duke Senior, who has fled with his loyal followers into the Forest of Arden, a wild, unspoiled refuge far from the rules and intrigues of the ducal court. Frederick's henchman, Oliver, a firstborn son, has inherited his nobleman father's title and lands, but refuses to provide for his younger brother, Orlando, leaving him to make his own way in the world without station, means, or recourse.

Although Senior is banished, his daughter, Rosalind, still lives at the palace with her beloved cousin, Celia, daughter of Frederick— until he banishes her, too. Disguising herself as a man, Rosalind flees into the forest with Celia, who dresses as a plain country lass. Pretty soon, Orlando also arrives in the forest to escape his murderous brother's wrath, and the stage is set for both a romantic comedy of dueling wits and the low comedy of courtly vs. country manners.

Sir Duke: Thompson as genial Duke Senior

Indeed, director Carey Perloff sets the action quite literally on a stage, or rather, the backstage area of a theater, amid stacks of prop boxes, rolling dress forms, and racks of costumes. It's ironic enough to construct a theatrical backstage to stand in for the Forest of Arden in the middle of an actual eucalyptus grove. But Perloff states she was inspired by the play's famous "All the world's a stage" speech to conceive of the forest as a kind of (literal) green room where the characters, like actors, try on various disguises and deceptions, and engage in philosophical and romantic banter while grooming themselves to return to the "real world" of court life.

But this thoughtful concept doesn't feel especially organic to the play, or justify why such a decidedly rustic story seems to be taking place indoors, particularly if one hasn't read Perloff's notes. She might have had more fun pushing the concept further with the actors obviously putting on a show for us as they work through the play's themes, slipping in and out of character and costumes in view of the audience, highlighting the idea that "all the men and women (are) merely players."

That said, the production skips along at a lively pace, buoyed up by its engaging cast. As Orlando, meeting Rosalind for the first time (they fall instantly in love, of course), Elliot Sagay is absolutely priceless in his inability to squeeze out one single word. Charlotte Munson delivers Rosalind's lines with bright, vivid clarity; when they encounter each other later in the forest, and Rosalind, in disguise, coaches Orlando how to woo, she seems amazed and delighted as each witty rejoinder pops into her head.

Forest Foolery: Tagatac, Rose, Gallagher, Sagay

Anna Takayo is fresh and charming as loyal Celia. The irrepressible Patty Gallagher exercises her gifts as both a physical clown and flinger of bawdy wit as the court fool, Touchstone, going native in the country to court lusty shepherdess Audrey (Jomar Tagatac). Paige Lindsey White is quietly compelling as "the melancholy Jacques," whose philosophical observations create a subtext of wistful reflection alongside the comedy.

The diminutive Chelsea Rose makes a big impression as feisty shepherdess Phoebe, who falls for the boy she believes Rosalind is while being pursued by Justin Juong's sweetly hapless shepherd, Silvius. As both rival dukes, the excellent Raphael Nash Thompson switches gears between the clipped, menacing severity of Frederick and the genial effusiveness of Senior. And Pasternak's Oliver, all bristling spite in the early scenes, makes a nifty transition into a reformed, good-hearted mensch by the last act.

Musical composer David Coulter sets Shakespeare's songs to glide in and out of the action, then wallops us with a showstopper of "What shall he have that kill'd the deer?" as an eerily aggressive rhythmic chant. Coulter also appears throughout in a little cubbyhole onstage, providing incidental music and sound effects.

Love, laughs, action and music — as the title suggests, As You Like It has something for everyone!


As You Like It plays in repertoire through September 1st in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.