Entertainment :: Theatre
How Shakespeare Won The Westby Kilian MelloySaturday Sep 13, 2008 How Shakespeare Won the West, playing through Oct. 5 at the Huntington, launches the Huntington Theatre Company’s new season.
The comedy, receiving its world premiere, may be based on actual accounts, but it feels like a pastiche of Deadwood, the Bard, and jovial comic farce, as it follows the progress of a group of actors who decide to head out West to California, where they dream of making the big time playing to gold dust-enriched miners starved for culture.
Tavern owners Thomas Jefferson Calhoun (Will LeBow, veteran of many an ART production) and his wife Alice (Mary Beth Fisher), former thespians, are captivated when a young man named Buck (Eric Lotchefeld) regales them with tales of miners not only reciting King Lear along with a troupe of Shakespearean actors, but loading the performers down with wealth and giving them a royal, if rough-hewn, procession through town.
Once fired up, the Calhouns’ passion to return to the road is impossible to quench; after a few moments’ debate on the wisdom of giving up the stability of life in New York state, the couple enlist the services of "a leading man, a leading lady, an ingenue, utility actors, a comic, and a star," putting together a troupe consisting of themselves (the leading man and lady); Buck; tavern employee Susan (Sarah Nealis); Anglophile con artists Edward and Ruth Oldfield (Jeremiah Kissel and Kelly Hutchinson), who are not really a married couple--he’s gay--and not really from England, despite their hilarious pretensions; John (Joe Tapper)--whose specialty is impersonating ministers ("Religion pays well," he explains); the kid-hating George (John De Vries); down-and-out star Hank (Chris Henry Coffey); and genuine New York stage luminary Kate (Susannah Schulman).
Once on their way, the troupe join a wagon train... briefly; tragedy strikes, the actors lose their way, and their adventures take many tragic (and surreal) turns.
It’s easy to believe that the play draws on real-life experiences of those who headed West to partake in the gold rush, because some of the adventures in the play are strange enough to be true. Along the way, the band of actors communicate with a hostile Indian chief through the universal language of the stage, encounter religious extremists so devoted to their idea of piety that they do not allow sex even for procreation (and thus resort to kidnapping and forced "adoptions"), and suffer violence due to prejudices (gay Edward is pummeled to within an inch of his life, not because of any crime he’s committed, but because of "what he is").
The troupe are broken up, reunited, and reduced to traveling on foot through ice storms and periods of starvation so desperate that, though they don’t eat any of the dead migrants they stumble across (and there were plenty: an average of one grave every 80 yards all the way to California’s promised land), "we thought about it," they admit.
But despite any strange-but-true claim to authenticity, the play doesn’t come across as realistic. The story is a ramshackle affair, wildly inconsistent in tone and veering from the grim realities of the time into unlikely, if not fantastical, episodes, as often as not entailing lethal consequences.
The method of telling the story, however, is unusual,and intriguing: a mix of acted-out scenes with various actors dropping into a third-person mode of narration to explain and compress events from their character’s point of view.
This approach enables the show, at a running time of just over an hour and a half, to cover a great deal of ground--narratively as well as geographically. However, the play never seems to chart a straight course or actually arrive anywhere (unless you count a mythical, deliberately sunny end-of-the-rainbow ending as a destination). Adult themes (and, on occasion, language) jumble together with what often feels like kid-friendly escapades and sometimes-sugary, but superficial, characterizations. The gruesome and the glib jostle against one another with riotous energy, until laughter is the only option for the audience.
That may be the intent; the last time a Shakespeare-oriented entertainment so completely and gleefully shucked sense and coherence for a palette of pure emotional tones was Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film version of Much Ado About Nothing, which was a colorful explosion of sensations without a lot of sensibility on hand to help shape the story.
Are the play’s excursions into romantic betrayal and wild-west cliche supposed to gel into a unified whole? Who cares? One certainly doesn’t get the sense that the playwright, Richard Nelson, does; he’s out to try on different myths and sources, braiding together an array of historical accounts and trying on assorted moods in hurried succession, like an eager novice donning and then casting aside the contents of an actor’s wardrobe.
The cast and crew of the Huntington Theatre, with the happy collusion of director Jonathan Moscone, embrace the play for what it is, rather than sweating or trying to patch over what it is not. The costumes by Laurie Churba Kohn are fabulous, and well fitted to each character. (You can tell which of the thesps has extensive whoring experience on her resume by her bright red, and yet exquisite, dress).
The lighting (Japhy Weideman) and staging, likewise, are cleverly done, knitting cleverly in design and function with a multi-purpose set (by Antje Ellermann) that serves for a multitude of locations: tavern, wintry camp, teepee, oubliette-esque theatrical space (and, as it happens, public toilet).
It’s debatable as to whether How Shakespeare Won the West is a good play, but the Huntington Theatre Company makes it a good time, and that’s what counts on an evening out.
How Shakespeare Won the West runs through Oct. 5 at the Huntington’s mainstage, at the Boston University Theatre, located at 264 Huntington Avenue, in Boston.
Performance schedule: Tues.-Thurs. at 7:30 p.m.; Fri. and Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Sun. at 7:00 p.m.; matinees are 2:00 p.m. on Wed., Sat., and Sun.
Tickets cost $20-$82.50 and are available online at www.huntingtontheatre.org, via phone at 617-266-0800, or from the box office at either the B.U. Theatre (264 Huntington Ave.) or the Calderwood Pavilion BCA (527 Tremont Street).
Some performances feature post-show events, free with ticket purchase; see www.huntingtontheatre.org/season/0809/how-shakespeare-won-the-west/calendar-events.aspx for a schedule of events.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
|
|
|
Email
Print
Share