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.

 

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?

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.

WORD PLAY

 SCS stages smart, witty story of the actors who saved Shakespeare

You couldn't imagine a better production to capture the spirit of this pivotal Santa Cruz Shakespeare season than The Book of Will. Lauren Gunderson's contemporary play about the creation of the First Folio of Shakespeare's texts is all about the power of words — to inspire and excite, to celebrate and educate, to comfort and heal. And it provides the perfect vehicle for outgoing Artistic Director Mike Ryan to hand over the company reins to incoming AD Charles Pasternak, playing the two real-life actors whose persistence, against all odds, preserved Shakespeare's splendid words for all time.

Ryan and Pasternak play John Heminge and Henry Condell, two Elizabethan actors, friends and colleagues of the recently deceased Will, who hatch a scheme to collect and transcribe all the scribbled-down versions of Shakespeare's play texts they can find to produce a single, official volume of his work in print. This is no easy task. Complete playscripts were rare in this era; normally, actors only copied out their own parts to learn, partly to save on time and the expense of materials like parchment and ink, and partly to prevent other companies from stealing a complete script and producing their own versions. Not that it worked very well, as companies who only had a few scenes of a play to work with cheerfully made up the rest.
 

This point is made painfully clear in the very first scene as a young actor from a rival company (Mariana Garzon Toro) energetically murders Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech with some random improvised filler. Heminge and Condell, of the King's Men theatrical troupe, and celebrated actor Richard Burbage (played with bombastic verve by Rex Young) gather in a tavern run by Heminge's daughter, Alice (winsome and spirited Allie Pratt) to bemoan the evident deterioration of Shakespeare's plays in performance some seven years after the author's death. Some ardent players like Burbage have memorized entire plays as written, but their generation is aging out, to be replaced by their less-well-schooled heirs.

It's Condell who first proposes the crack-brained idea of collecting Will's plays into a single volume, in his own authentic words — while people still remember what they are. Heminge, who has also become the troupe's business manager, is more tentative, cost-wise. But the enthusiasm of not only Condell and Alice, but Condell's amiable wife, Elizabeth (Paige Lindsey White) and Heminge's own wry, stout-hearted wife, Rebecca (Amy Kim Waschke) convince him of the urgency of preserving Will's thrilling words.

It all comes home to Heminge in a deeply moving late-inning monologue about the power of words to express the inexpressible and give vent to the otherwise unbearable burden of heartbreak.

The supporting cast is terrific, as usual. Young doubles in the role of the publisher, Jaggard, who's been blithely profiting off  the sale of bastardized version of Shakespeare's plays. Ben Jonson (a suitably flamboyant David Kelly), Shakespeare's friend and rival, makes a guest appearance.

Director Laura Gordon is also an actor (she was Prospero in last season's The Tempest),  and her staging makes the most of all the comedy and dry wit, as well as the more subtle, poignant moments in the plot. And for us grumpy traditionalists who pine to see Shakespeare performed in Elizabethan-style dress once in awhile, B. Modern's costumes evoke the period while retaining an unfussy, lived-in aesthetic.

Believe it or not, this is the 10th anniversary of Santa Cruz Shakespeare (emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of the well-beloved Shakespeare Santa Cruz), and the company's 8th season in the lovely Audrey Stanley Grove up in Delaveaga Park. We have Mike Ryan to thank for shepherding the company through these most tumultuous times to bounce back stronger than ever, even now, when the pandemic and its ongoing aftermath continues to wreak havoc in the arts. With Charles Pasternak at the helm (who acted as co-Artistic Director with Ryan this season, before stepping into the job full time next year), we can expect the festival to continue to build on its impressive past while eagerly embracing the future.

Top photo: Kevin Lohman

Above: R. R. Jones

LOVE CRAFT

Complicity, not compliance, highlights spirited SCS offering

There's a telling moment near the end of Santa Cruz Shakespeare's current production of The Taming Of the Shrew. It occurs in the climactic speech by Kate, the designated "shrew," delivering her manifesto on the state of her consciousness after having been "tamed" by her new husband, Petruchio, and it involves the tiny alteration of one single word.

In the line that has given feminists fits at least since the "Women's Lib" '70s, Kate declares,  "I am ashamed that women are so simple." Except, here, director Robynn Rodriguez swaps out the word "women" and replaces it with "people," which, coupled with the rest of Shakespeare's verse, "To offer war when they should kneel for peace," seems less like a call for female subservience to men than an observation on the regrettable human instinct to lash out in the face of any perceived opposition. Kate advocates for the gentle art of compromise — in love, in marriage, in society in general — as a means of achieving one's goals. Which are, in the case of Kate and Petruchio, individually, and, finally, together, the subversion of social conformity in pursuit of a more authentic life.

This SCS production gives us an exhilarating pair of non-conformists on this collision course. Boisterous Petruchio (M. L.  Roberts) has come to town to snag himself a rich bride and expand his own substantial properties. Katarina (Kelly Rogers) is a caustic young woman whose wealthy father, Baptista (Derrick Lee Weeden) has decreed that his pretty and obedient youngest daughter, Bianca (Yael Jeshion-Nelson), can't be wooed or wed until her older sister, Kate, is married off. To this end, Bianca's many would-be suitors conspire with Petruchio to woo Kate and clear their path to Bianca.

 But what begins as a business proposition levels up as soon as Petruchio gets his first look at his quarry — and feels her first verbal sting.  In Kate, he recognizes a fellow iconoclast, despite their different approaches; he cheerfully flaunts the rules of polite society to declare his plan to "wive it wealthily in Padua," while she resorts to waspish sarcasm. Profoundly unhappy in her domestic role from which there is seemingly no escape, she's so used to being mocked for her sharp tongue and unvarnished opinions, she assumes Petruchio's attentions are another cruel joke and launches a preemptive verbal strike in self-defense.

Roberts gives us a roistering, irreverent Petruchio, antic enough to wear a suit of Harlequin motley to his own wedding, yet seriously delighted to find in Kate a temperament so well matched to his own. (Kudos to Pamela Rodriguez-Montero's costumes that aren't rooted in any particular time or place, but are consistently true to the comic and narrative undercurrents in any given scene.) Rogers' Kate is an uncut gem of wit and passion whose only outlet is anger. In sparring with Petruchio, she is not so much "tamed" as liberated from the habit of mistrust. Even his most ridiculous commands — his insistent that the sun is, in fact, the moon, for example — become a test not of Kate's compliance to his whims, but her complicity in his vision of a less conventional and more rewarding alliance. It takes her awhile to learn to trust the one person who understands and values her, but there's great fun and blossoming joy in her discovery that they are kindred spirits, and that their best escape from restrictive social conventions is each other.

Scene-stealing Patty Gallagher shows off her flair for physical slapstick as Petruchio's loyal servant, Grumio (in one scene, she stands, er, gallops in as his horse),  and Sofia K. Metcalf's Tranio is our stalwart guide, helping to keep track of the busy plot; he disguises himself as his scholarly young master, Lucentio, while the real Lucentio (Junior Nyong'o) disguises himself as a humble tutor to Bianca in order to court her in secret.

On the night I went, there was also a special guest appearance by Jewel Theatre Artistic Director and founder Julie James in a featured role as both a hapless tailor, and a scornful widow who foolishly attempts to match wits with Kate. The lively ensemble keeps the action fast and funny right through to the spirited finale that will have you cheering for the art and craft of love.

Photos by RR Jones

THE IMPOSSIBLE MEME

Okay, we've all seen that meme: William Shakespeare wrote King Lear while under quarantine in London during the Bubonic plague.

The intention of circulating this (probably relatively true-ish) factoid, of course, is to make us all feel like a bunch of whining slackers. Want to feel even worse? Remember that Anne Frank wrote her famous Diary while hiding from the Nazis in a cramped attic in Amsterdam with her family of four and three other people. For two years. 

The fruits of these labors, composed under impossibly stressful conditions, are inarguably masterpieces, Frank's Diary for its honesty, optimism and compassion, and Lear for its brilliant and enduring insights into the human condition.

So what are the rest of us waiting for? Now that we're all under house arrest, we have nothing but time.

But consider too that Lear is one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, in every respect. It's full of howling storms and furious rages, delusion, betrayal, calamity, madness, folly, treachery and despair. Hard not to see at least a psychological parallel between the work itself and the temper of the times in which it was written.

Colette: Holed up like a Parisienne

So, if I wanted to write something gloomy and despondent, this would be the perfect time to do it! Indeed, there would be no excuse not to spend these grey, wet, solitary days hammering away at the keyboard, grappling angst and uncertainty into something (hopefully) brilliant.

But, no. Me, I'm trying to cobble together a lighthearted romantic comedy, full of magic and music, for Young Adult readers.

It's the second book (although not a sequel) stipulated in my contract for Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, which was already too dark and perverse for the general YA readership, according to my Goodreads reviews. This new one is supposed to be fun and upbeat.

Hah.

Blissfully untarnished by reality

Not that it couldn't be done. When the Nazis marched in to occupy France, the celebrated novelist Colette was 67 (the same age I am now), and nearly bedridden. Yet, holed up in her Paris apartment for the duration, she produced Gigi. Harking back to France's golden age of the Belle Epoque, it told the sunny tale of a spirited teenage girl raised to be a courtesan who defies expectations by charming her designated client into marriage.

And I have no doubt that if my Art Boy was still here to shelter in place with me, he would have turned out three or four of his magical paintings by now, and sketches for many more.

His work was always blissfully untarnished by everyday reality; his ideas bubbled up directly out of the teeming wellspring of his own imagination — flying fish, joyous dancing figures, pink bunnies and all. How he would have relished the excuse to stay home and paint all day!

I'm trying to view this temporary (we hope) dystopian sojourn as an opportunity to be relished. That's what James would do! And who knows? If the present coronavirus lockdown stretches on for another eternity, a deep plunge into the imagination might be just the escape I need.



(Above: Act of Creation, James Aschbacher)

POP FICTION

Aging Shakespeare vs self-delusion in tender, wistful All Is True

With summer (finally, almost) here, regional Shakespeare festivals, including our own Santa Cruz Shakespeare, are ramping up for their summer seasons. What better time to launch a movie about Shakespeare himself, reflecting on art, love, family, and reputation, at the end of his life?

That movie would be All Is True. The sardonic title refers to the act of adapting historical fact into fiction (we're told it was the original title of the playwright's Henry VIII), as well as to the little equivocations and outright falsehoods we cling to in the act of getting through our daily lives.

Written by Ben Elton (longtime scriptwriter on the Black Adder TV series), All Is True is produced and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Will Shakespeare. These guys know their Bard, and they've come up with a wonderful homage — witty, atmospheric, at times heartbreaking — to both the towering genius of myth and the oh-so-fallible man within, trying to separate fact from fiction in the story of his own life.

Branagh, Dench: well-met by candlelight

When his Globe Theatre burns down in London, Will Shakespeare (Branagh) returns to Stratford-on-Avon, and the family he's scarcely seen in twenty years. His homecoming is not exactly triumphant. Obedient, but long-neglected wife, Anne (the ever-formidable Judi Dench), puts him in the guest bedroom. Lively daughter, Susannah (Lydia Wilson), is happy to see him, but unhappily wed to a theatre-hating Puritan.

Touchier still is Will's relationship to his spinster daughter, Judith (Kathryn Wilder), twin sister to the couple's only son, Hamnet, who died years earlier at the age of 11.

The themes are a bit darker than you might expect from the lighthearted trailer, although the story is handled with plenty of dry humor.

McKellan in close-up: All-terrain

Then into the midst of it all rides dear old Ian McKellan as the visiting Earl of Southampton, patron of Will's theatre company (and reputed to have once been the object of the poet's romantic sonnets).

In a private fireside chat with Will, where they discuss past glories and future legacies, both Branagh and McKellan have a go at the "Fortune and men's' eyes" sonnet. Each man’s delivery of the lines is completely different from the other, and yet equally captivating and powerful.

In an act of extreme generosity, director Branagh shoots in close-up on McKellan's expressive face, the all-terrain roadmap of McKellan's eyes; the tart and wistful working of his mouth. If they gave Judi Dench and Oscar for ten minutes of screen time in Shakespeare In Love, McKellan deserves at least knighthood — wait, he's already a knight; sainthood, maybe? — for this one delicious scene.
(Read more)

SHAKESPEREAN RHAPSODY

From The Shakespeare Oracle Tarot deck

In Runaways, my unpublished sequel to The Witch From the Sea, my hero, Jack, a Georgian-era actor-turned-pirate, rhapsodizes about William Shakespeare:

"Everything you could ever think or feel or want, Shakespeare has already written about it. And everything that happens in your own life affects how you to respond to him, so his words always seem new and fresh, however often you play them."

Or hear them.

I put these words in Jack's mouth because I believe the reason Shakespeare's work continues to be performed and to stir audiences over 400 hundred years later is not only due to his timeless themes and elegant poetry.

It's mostly because of his keen sensitivity to the quicksilver fluctuations of human nature and his incisive ways of expressing it.

So it doesn't matter how many versions of a particular Shakespeare play you've seen, its effect on you is different every time, depending on what's going on in your own life.

The Zefferelli version: lush

Case in point: the opening Santa Cruz Shakespeare's handsome new production of Romeo and Juliet last week. Who knows how many times I've seen this play?

There was the lush Franco Zefferelli movie (seen when I was an impressionable 16-year-old — which is two years older than Juliet is in the play), the gorgeous full-length production staged by the San Francisco Ballet back in the '80s, and, I believe, two (possibly three) previous productions at Santa Cruz Shakespeare (the entity previously known as Shakespeare Santa Cruz).

(But what's in a name?)

The point is, no matter how familiar I thought I was with the play, I was not prepared for my own reaction at the finale, this time around. (Spoiler Alert: don't expect a happy ending.) Typically, one mourns the tragedy of the young lovers' wasted lives as they  choose suicide, one after the other, when each believes the other is dead.

Romeo and Mercutio: fervor and fury

But recent upheavals in my own life have altered my perspective. This time, when Juliet awakens from her sleeping potion, finds Romeo's lifeless corpse stretched across her bier, and seizes his dagger, I found myself sort of cheering her on.

Not because I wanted to see the poor girl dead, but because it seemed like the only logical solution, faced with the enormity of her loss. This way, at least, it flashed through my mind, they are together.

Shakespeare is always interactive — what you get out of it depends on what you bring to it!

Particular virtues of the current SCS production include an exuberantly acrobatic Romeo (Taha Mandviwala), the giddy poise of Isabel Pask's Juliet, and a fierce, female Tybalt (Maggie Adams McDowell), Juliet's hot-headed cousin. In the showpiece role of Mercutio, Lorenzo Roberts may have been overly encouraged to ham up the physical clowning, but he also conveys every potent syllable of Mercutio's dark, dry wit with fervor and fury.

Random festival-goers, 2017!

Mike Ryan brings both playfulness and moral authority to the role of Friar Lawrence. And director Laura Gordon concludes the first half on a lovely, visual grace note, and opens the second half with a sharply choreographed and dynamic street brawl. The action is swift and engrossing.

I was especially interested in seeing this play again after recently reading the novel The Master of Verona, by David Blixt, sort of a prequel to events leading up to Shakespeare's tale. Another novel I loved, Queen Mab, envisions a romance between Mercutio and the fairy queen he describes with such lively intensity in his first speech in the play.

That's the thing with Shakespeare — he's always ripe for reinterpretation!

PS: There's a new innovation at Santa Cruz Shakespeare this season: shelves are now installed along the back of each row of bleachers so the people sitting the next row back have a place to put their stuff. It's a revelation! James would've loved this device when we went to SCS last summer — we would have had a place to set down those champagne glasses between sips!

MIGHTY APHRODITE

Isn't there enough hate in the world today?

Santa Cruz Shakespeare strikes back this season with a 2018 program entirely devoted to love and all its complications — romantic, comic, and carnal.


Taking centerstage in this season-long homage to Aphrodite is the enduring combination of youthful roistering and tragic romance that is Romeo and Juliet.


The second Shakespearean production is Love's Labour's Lost, the comic misadventures of four young scholars foolishly trying to live without love — until four beauteous young women invade their studies.

Venus In Fur, by contemporary playwright David Ives (The Liar), is a sly debate on sex and sexism between a touchy director and a provocative young actress coming late to an audition.

This year's Fringe production is a play based on Dorothy Parker's droll prose piece, Men I Am Not Married To, adapted and directed by Kayla Minton Kaufman.

Celebrating its fifth season as an independent company, and its third year in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park, the SCS presents its 2018 season from July 10 through September 2.

SCS Member discount tickets go on pre-sale next week, starting May 1st, at noon, available online or by calling 831 460-6399. (Tues-Fri 12 noon - 5 pm.) Have your member code number handy to get a $5 discount. (Look for your member code number on your membership thank-you card receipt.) Tickets go on sale to the general public starting May 15.

Meanwhile, there's still time to join the SCS team and become a member, or renew your current membership, and get your discount!

July is just around the corner. I'll see you in the Grove!

(That's Romeo and Juliet, by Bulgarian illustrator Svetlin Vassilev. Watercolor, 2003. See more of his gorgeous work here!)

LOVE, ITALIAN STYLE

Visual wit shines in SCS' delightful 'Two Gentlemen of Verona'

A priest and his beaming altar boy, a winged mime on roller skates, a flock of nuns, and a bunch of guys in towels, walk onto a stage. No, it's not an old joke. It's the beginning of a sprightly, visually splendid new production of Shakespeare's early comedy, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the third installment of Santa Cruz Shakespeare's 2017 summer season.    

The play's not necessarily the thing in this show. One of Shakespeare's earliest works, it's a romantic comedy about a youth, Proteus (Brian Smolin, always fun to watch), all too willing to betray his best friend, Valentine (an earnest Rowan Vickers), and forsake the woman he himself loves so he can woo the woman his friend has fallen in love with.

Adam Schroeder, Rowan Vickers: love is clueless

Grace Rao makes a plucky ingenue of Julia, the girl Proteus leaves behind, who dresses a a boy and follows the men to the court of Milan. Silvia (a wily, beauteous Tristan Cunningham) is the duke's daughter both men fall for, although she and Valentine have already pledged their love in secret.

There's a lot of funny comedy between these four characters and their servants, but the trick is to make this play appealing despite its dubious plotline.

This is where director Art Manke's ingenious production excels. Its many delights come from the visual wit of his staging on Annie Smart's core set of stone archways and catwalks (co-designed for this show with Chrissy Curl), in cahoots with B. Modern's absolutely fabulous, mid-century, Euro-chic costumes.

What's fun is the way Manke puts it all together. He envisions life at court as one lavish cocktail party, where the glitterati swill drinks and flourish cigarettes, while an army paparazzi snap their every move.

Brian Smolin (foreground), Tristan Cunninghan (3rd from left) & co: symphony in black and white

 Modern's extraordinary black, white, grey and silver costume palette is a symphony of stripes, checks, solids, and plaids, with an occasional striking zebra-print thrown in. Think Mad Men and Breakfast At Tiffany's crossed with the witty surrealism of a Federico Fellini movie (cited by Manke as his inspiration).

Gallagher and friend: Felliniesque

Valentine's servant, the aptly-named Speed, sports those wings and skates, and Adam Schroeder is terrific in the role, especially trying to explain to his clueless master the code by which Silvia is declaring her love for him.

His counterpart, Launce, servant to Proteus, is a female here, and Patty Gallagher plays her with plenty of slapstick, sad-clown brio. In her bowler hat and cane, she recalls the poignant heroine of Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits.

Gallagher also has the poise and charm to share the stage with a mellow black dog called Crab, who steals every scene he's in.

The nuns and priest on the margins suggest the idea of faith, in contrast to the faithlessness Proteus shows to, well, just about everybody.

That everyone so easily forgives Proteus is the mark of a dramatist not yet in full control of his art, but Manke, Modern, and company are in full control of this delicious production.

(Read more in this week's Good Times)