The Rude Mechanicals - ARCHIVE
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September 29 - October 14, 2006
Antony and
Cleopatra
Reviewed by
William Bryan |
Running
time 1:55 – One 10 min intermission
A difficult play with complex motivations
v
Adult themes
Click here to buy the script |
There are many things working against this production but luckily there are
enough factors working for it to create an interesting evening for those who
like to experience a unique staging of a Shakespeare play.
Shakespeare wrote this
historical drama around 1607, drawing most of the history of the story from
the works of Plutarch but adding his own ideas of the passions of the
central characters. Sixty years later the English poet/playwright John
Dryden wrote his best known play, All For Love, which was either an
adaptation or an imitation, depending on your view. Director Jaki Demarest combines
Shakespeare and Dryden and sets the whole production in the middle of a
complex acting ensemble, bringing her own unique vision to this rarely
performed show. Performances were
at the DC Arts Center theater in Adams Morgan on
September 29 and 30 and will be at Area 405 in Baltimore on October 7 and the
Greenbelt
Arts Center October 12 -14.
Storyline: Set after the
death of Julius Caesar, the play picks up as Mark Antony lingers in Egypt
with Cleopatra while the struggle for leadership proceeds in Rome. Summoned
home after his wife’s death, Antony marries again in a match designed to
shore up the leadership of Rome. But Antony returns to Cleopatra only to
have the leadership battle erupt into open warfare leading ultimately to his
and Cleopatra’s suicide.
“The play’s the thing
wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” says Hamlet, but
unfortunately Shakespeare didn’t quite achieve that goal as well as with his
other more popular and frequently staged works, and thus Antony and
Cleopatra often fails to catch the conscience of their audience. It is a
difficult production, featuring characters with which it is difficult to
sympathize for or identify with. The Rude Mechanicals, under the direction
of Jaki Demarest, attempt with some success to reengage the audience’s
conscience by incorporating part of Dryden’s 1678 play and by letting us see
some of the actor’s motivations and faults.
Due to the nature of the
show, rotating through three sites across the region, each performance has a
slightly different cast. The night reviewed featured the director in the
role of Cleopatra, often referred to as the most beautiful woman in Egypt,
and perhaps no better credit could be given to her performance than came at
the end of the evening when one of the 12 year old boys present called out
as she left the stage, “Cleopatra, you rocked!” Another notable
performance was that of Arthur Rowan as a powerful and self assured Octavius,
determined to rule Rome with Antony’s support or destruction.
The playbill for the
show provides useful, indeed almost mandatory, reading into the insights of
both Shakespeare’s work and Ms. Demarest’s interpretation and staging of the
show. The brief glimpses into the lives of the actors performing the work
do not seem to come across strongly enough without the mention in the
playbill to warrant a part in the production, and the use of a gun at one
point seems out of place. The director states, “This is advanced
Shakespeare,” and that is true of the original work, much less this
interesting adaptation that reduces the original 32 roles down to 15 and
puts on stage a compilation of two plays and the actors motivations.
Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Jaki Demarest.
Design: Arthur Rowan and Jaki Demarest (fight direction), Jeff Poretsky
(Technical), Arthur Rowan (Music) Erin MacDonald (stage manager). Cast: Kris Andersen, Katie Brotzman, Kevin Brotzman, Morrigan
Condo, Paul Davis, Jaki Demarest, Alan Duda, Rachel Duda, Joshua Engel, Sean Eustis, Melanie Jester, Bill
Jones, Lauren Julien, Joseph Kubinski, Heather Martin, Amy Rauch, Arthur Rowan, Calvin Smith. |
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November 16 - 19, 2005
Closer |
Reviewed November 16
Running time 2:55 - one intermission
A plodding production of a contemporary British play
Performed at DC Arts Center - Price $15
* Nudity and sexual dialogue
Click here to buy the script |
Is this the same Rude Mechanicals that put on the edgy, intense and
involving Macbeth in a school
auditorium in Laurel last spring? Hard to believe that this uninvolving,
nearly mechanical rendition of Patrick Marber's play could be by the same
group. The program does say that it is a presentation of The Rude
Mechanicals' "2nd Stage" but doesn't say what the relationship is between
2nd Stage and the parent organization. While the Mechanicals concentrate on
the works of Shakespeare, this is a play that is less than ten years old. It
deals with a quartet of young people who take the romantic triangle plot one
point further by mixing four characters into two interconnected triangles.
It requires a cast who can handle flippant dialogue to mine both humor and
multiple layers of plot from often cryptic lines. With this cast, at least
on opening night, the dialogue falls flat for nearly three hours.
Storyline: Four young adults - a doctor, a photographer, a stripper and a
writer of obituaries - meet, fall into something between love and lust,
marry, cheat and separate.
The failure of this cast to find the
humor of the dialogue is clear from the very
first scene, when the stripper and the obituary writer are just introducing
themselves to each other. "He: I'm a sort of journalist. She: What
sort? He: I write obituaries. She: Do you like it in the dying business? He:
Its a living." These brief, sharp, declarative and interrogative sentences
are delivered as if they are joined into a single sentence with no build up to
the punch line. How much better they are in print than as voiced by Elise
Berg and John Hefner.
Hefner does have one very entertaining, quite funny
scene just a few minutes later when he engages Scott Alan Small in an
exchange on an internet chat room devoted to sex. Here the humor comes
through full force, but it is not through the actors' delivery. The text of
the exchange is projected on a computer screen at the back of the stage for
the audience to read along. Still, both Hefner and Small contribute a good
deal to the humor of the scene through their reactions to the messages.
Hefner plays that scene in the nude but with a laptop
computer strategically placed. It is the only nudity of the play even though
other scenes are of encounters in the privacy of various bedrooms. The use
of projections on the screen behind the playing space serves to expand the
locales available - the play progresses from hospital room to various
offices, studios, apartments and a cemetery filled with memorial plaques
paying tribute to people who gave their lives to save others.
Written by Patrick Marber. Directed by Scott
Alan Small. Design: Scott Alan Small (set) Rob Perkins (properties,
powerpoint presentation and stage management) Ty Hallmark and Rob Perkins
(music and sound). Cast: Elise Berg, John Hefner, Ty Hallmark, Scott Alan
Small. |
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June 3 - 25, 2005
Macbeth |
Reviewed June 3
Running time 3:15 - one intermission
An undisciplined production that nevertheless hits the emotional high
points
Click here to buy the script |
You know you are in
for an unorthodox night of Shakespeare when the opening line "When will we
three meet again?" is delivered by not three but four witches . . . one of
them male. Director
Jeffrey Hersh envisions "the Scottish play" as sort of a "Thane of
Mad Max" adventure with the addition of some modern dance, a smattering of
burned
computer equipment and a talking dog. The result is a very physical but
uneven production which hits some emotional highs. Performances are at
the Sellers Theatre June 3 - 11 and then at a facility called Area 405 in
Baltimore.
Storyline: With prophecies of a klatch of witches ringing in his ears, and
driven by his wife’s ambitions, a Scottish lord kills his King and assumes
the throne only to find that he must commit other murders to keep it. As
guilt eats at him and at his wife, he is cornered and killed by one of his
intended victims.
In nearly 400
years Shakespeare’s play of prophecy, murder, guilt and madness has been
produced in so many different settings that it is difficult to find a new
"take" on it in order to make it fresh and new. But directors keep thinking
they need to try to give it their own spin rather than
just mounting it as written. Remember that Joe Banno set the play in
Scotland, Louisiana in the late 1950s and early 1960s for Folger Theatre's
2001 production staring Michael Tolaydo and Lucy Newman-Williams. Even Orson
Welles famously mounted a Voodo Macbeth in the 1930s, so Hersh isn't far out
of the mainstream when he puts his cast in punk-inspired costumes and adds a
gun to the arsenal of weapons he and co-fight choreographer Craig Lawrence
have the cast wielding. (Their best work of fight direction, however, is of
the fist and struggle variety). The
quality of the performances varies widely but the strongest of them are in
the leading roles or in a couple of standout smaller ones. The title
character is given a solid, brooding interpretation by Theo Hadjimichael,
while Amy Rauch handles both the scheming and the wailing of Lady Macbeth.
Each is quite good in their individual scenes but the production seems to
rest on their relationship being highly sexual, and the pair, at least on
opening night, had not yet begun to spark. The Malcolm and MacDuff of the
production, Kevin Robinson and Craig Lawrence, deliver well-conceived
performances. Several smaller efforts are notable. Brian Moors combines a
number of even smaller parts (such as Act III's "servant") into a composite
played as an attentive dog, which seems quite appropriate for this Mad Max-ish
approach. The aforementioned male fourth witch is Eldridge E. Brown II,
whose looming tattooed presence accomplishes just what one suspects
Shakespeare was looking for, making the witches' scenes spooky and
otherworldly. The troupe makes the most of the
limited resources at their command. The setting is a few sheets of muslin
draped over a frame with the rear wall a mottled blood red pattern, the
entire space is set off with the detritus of the modern age including burned
and broken
computer parts. A marvelously rich soundscape uses some intriguing music
from soundtracks as well as contemporary commercial releases. The costumes
are inventive if uneven as would be expected when the program doesn't list a
costume designer. The effect of it all is of an earnest effort by a talented
group. Written by William Shakespeare. Directed
by Jeffrey Hersh. Dance choreography by Stephanie McLaughlin. Fight
choreography by Jeffrey Hersh and Craig Lawrence. Design: Eldridge Brown,
Alan Duda, Jeffrey Hersch and Jeff Poretsky (set) Jeff Poretsky (lights)
Scott D. Farquhar and Jeffrey Hersh (sound) Chenoa Jones (stage manager).
Cast: Daniel Aris, Elise Berg, Paul Boymel, Eldridge E. Brown II, Taisha
Cameron, Jon Clark, Yancy Davis, Anne Frates, Theo Hadjimichael, Ty
Hallmark, Ivan Hawkes, Jay Henry, Heather C. Jackson, Marigot Kirsten, Craig
Lawrence, Jessica McElvaney, Stephanie McLaughlin, Brian Moors, Amy Rauch,
Kevin Robinson, J. Calvin Smith, Lynn Tonnessen, Torberg Tonnessen, Holly
Trout, Michelle Trout, Jordon Ullah, Jaimee Wurzel. |
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