CYMBELINE
A fluid, dynamic, and unobtrusive energy courses through director Antoni Cimolino’s highly rewarding production of Cymbeline. An insightfully selected group of actors shapes the play’s narrative line into a compelling tale and sculpts the dramatic potential of each scene, often each line, into resonating richness. Pauses and gestures ring with implication while, otherwise, the weight and value of each word are given their due. Yet the play thus unfolds with seeming spontaneity from its myriad inner ingredients. Each scene is naturally interesting and involving, and even minor roles suggest complex histories that might merit a play of their own.
The production shows much to recommend it: textured characterizations, lively momentum, a grand sweep that includes the pulsation of individual lives, and a diligence concerning desired effect that allows no misstep into facile exaggeration. With only a black out, a spot on the eagle standard, and an intensely loud and beating sound track, legions of Romans come into being. A back and forth of groupings and then animated individual encounters all compactly suggest the fury of battle. The sudden appearance of a very pissed off Jupiter, his eagle red-eyed and glaring, is concisely potent and scary. Meanwhile, the duet of “Hark hark the lark” is charming. While many lines throughout and especially near the end achieve a relieved laughter from the audience, they simply enhance the tension in the events, even as we howl with delight.
In this tale, so well told, each character is realized as essential. Cara Ricketts’ Imogen is made of a frisky innocence and feistiness that bring charm to her resourceful will. Her Posthumus, played by Graham Abbey, is vulnerable, hot headed, worldly gullible, and a young man of conviction. Geraint Wyn Davies’ Cymbeline is a mercurial ruler whose seethes, speaks with clipped authority and, like his Queen of Yanna McIntosh, is constantly volatile. This scheming Queen is also driven by a complex manipulative mind.
Peter Hutt as Cornelius impresses with immaculately right pacing and a delivery ripe with innuendo that achieve numerous effects both comic and dramatic. Tom McCamus as the cynical Iachimo is a self-contained schemer with an icy and menacing undercurrent in all he does. With his self-satisfied slowness of mind, Mike Shara’s Cloten is disturbingly malignant, arrogant, malicious, and something of an idiot. To the dignified and humane Belarius, John Vickery brings ringing tones and finely shaded resonances that evoke the man’s worth. Brian Tree’s Pisanio seems a sea-weathered everyman of implicit nobility, while Nigel Bennett’s Caius Lucius is pragmatic and poised with dignity in his destiny. Even a much smaller roll like Chick Reid’s Dorothy, through simple presence, implies much character in the few lines given to her.
With solid acting, precisely imaginative direction, compelling use of few resources, an obvious intention that no word go to waste, and intelligent achievement of effects through meticulous attention to the meaning in Shakespeare’s text, this is an enriching and satisfying production. It is no wonder that Cimolino’s Cymbeline is recommended repeatedly by many in Stratford as a must see. In fact, I am eagerly going to see it a second time.
THE MATCHMAKER
The “miserly old merchant” HoraceVandergelder, played by Tom McCamus, is very wealthy and believes that “the only way to get happiness is to have enough money to buy it”. He is erratic, gruff at high volume, lordly in a boorish way, and, in a military uniform of a loud green coat and louder orange pants, is a roar of a man who looks as uncontrollably ridiculous as he sounds. His ultimate match is Seana McKenna’s Dolly Levi, also a big though not as broad performance, who is a woman of animated voice and body and who speaks in scheming jabs and crescendos. She’s a self-propelling fabricator of truths who once “retired into herself,” then “decided to rejoin the human race,” and now, being worldly-wise, can opine “every man has a right to his own mistakes”. She also concludes that “money is like manure, it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” Horace and Dolly each do a dance of manipulation and converse as if to have their oratory conquer the world, but in the end she conquers him.
Thornton Wilder’s play, the springboard of the musical Hello Dolly, is Americana writ large and folksy and farcical, especially in this comic perfection of a production of director Chris Abraham, one that, as we watch, is fun and laughter throughout. There is as much humour in verbal gymnastics as in physical chaos of bodies here, with constant eruptions of high-gear and non-stop comedy. All the scene changes, from the Vanderberger store in Yonkers to Irene’s hat shop in New York to the Harmonia Gardens restaurant to the widow’s residence, are grandly executed. Santo Loquasto’s multi-leveled set of stairs and furniture is commanding and seems made of rich wood or elegant lights and naturally accommodates and facilitates the chaos and upstairs-downstairs action with ease. The the physical absurdities of the hat store scene can seem frenzied but also balletic, for this is farce with the rightness of music. The sound of Thomas Ryder Payne and lighting of Michael Walton each make dynamic and characterful contribution to this grand production.
One couldn’t ask for a better cast. Vandergelder via McCamus is loud but gullible and easily duped, a high-amped Art Carney as Norton or a man with Zeus envy perhaps. Dolly via McKenna loves complication, prolonging solution, and “arranging things”. She’s a woman with eyes like jewel spotlights and confident physical presence, whose body is made of various hyper-active parts, each with a mind of its own, it seems. Mike Shara is chief clerk Cornelius, gently oafish and with worried visage, innocent of girls at thirty-three, mentally not too quick and clumsily hyper-active, but also heart-winning when he declares, “I’ll be a ditch-digger who once had a wonderful day”. His endearing apprentice, the Barnaby of Josh Epstein, is an adorably intense young fellow, one at times reminiscent of Gene Wilder of Bonnie and Clyde vintage. He is cute, but genuinely so.
She whom Cornelius loves is Irene Molloy, played by Laura Condlin as a self-delighting, erratic, feisty, take-charge, and exuberant fun gal who, even with a smiling sunshine of a face, is tired of being a milliner and declares, “I hate hats”. Andrea Runge presents her assistant Minnie Fay as hollow-eyed with innocence, low key in her tightly contained shyness, and adorable when she gets to play. Ermengrade aka Cara Ricketts is wide-eyed, slightly whiney, and girlishly enthusiastic, while her fellow, Skye Brandon’s Ambrose, is youthfully principled and eager. Geraint Wyn Davies’ Malachi is red-cheeked and impish, something of a leprechaun who can commandingly orate on “one vice at a time,” while multitasking Brian Tree as a barber, a squinty-eyed cabman, and a waiter provides a commanding low-key presence as each one with his raspy undercurrent of a voice. Nora McLellan, as the Callas-infused wealthy spinster Miss Flora, is diva-ish and self-dramatizing, “friend” of all young lovers, one who dwells in a “crazy house”. Chick Reid as maid Gertrude is obliviously deaf and as the widow’s cook is precise and compact in movements and, like everything else in this splendid production, fun and funny.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
The inspired and anticipated pairing of Ben Carlson as Benedick and Deborah Hay as Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing gives memorable results under Christopher Newton’s focused and subtle direction. In Carlson we have a Benedick who is seasoned in life but perplexed by women, quick of mind but slightly weary of body, and likable. In Hay we have a Beatrice who is juicy and wide-eyed in concise amazement, bemused with a raised eyebrow as she fetchingly tosses her lines into the stratosphere, quick in retort, and likable. Together in their dueling distain, each for the other, they reveal a touchingly human insecurity and a need for approval, for validation. We take to this pairing because they entertain us with their wit as they expose their caution and their fear of being known for their hearts.
Newton sets this Much Ado in the Brazil of the late nineteenth century. It is a pleasant setting with a marble and swirling staircase, centrally placed but denying some sight lines, by Santo Loqasto, a piano, parasols, flowery pastel dresses and also pastel suits. We have dancing and clapping to Brazilian syncopations, with even a threesome of servants in a ménage a trios. Movement is crisply defined and fluid throughout and groupings appear spontaneously. The atmosphere is pleasing, elegant, and softly domestic. The characters, thanks to Newton, are not personification of types, but individuals of apparently deeply felt lives that make them what they are. Subtlety reigns.
Juan Chioran’s Don Pedro is a man of noble bearing, straight backed dignity, paternal kindness, and stately humour. Bethany Jillard’s Hero is girlish, innocent, gutsy, and perky, albeit with a bird-like fragility. Her Claudio, played by Tyrone Savage, is insecure, ready to doubt, and vulnerable to suggestion. James Blendick as Leonato sounds studied and deliberate as an older father might be. Claire Lautier as Margaret is bright, mysteriously female, and strongly present with enticingly playful eyes.
As Don John, Gareth Potter gives a performance of insinuating expression, rigid spine, and underplayed iciness in manner. He is obviously frustrated, a self- proclaimed villain who wants to “ build mischief “ where he can. He is also an immediate downer because he is eager and willing to set up lovable Hero as “a contaminated whore”. He is especially unsettling because he is indifferent about his evil while at the same time he is calm as the guy next door. Richard Binsley plays Dogberry from the inside as a man in need of respect and authority, but whose mind makes no sense to the rest of the world.
The most passionate, touching and beautiful moment in the production is Beatrice’s outburst about the containment of women. It’s a scene some will probably never forget. We have just been witnessing the workings of a society that can unfairly and brutally destroy the lives of women and, in Hay’s impassioned, deeply frustrated, and painfully indignant speech to Benedick, we of our present society are also implicated. We hear raw human pain in these lines and the passion in Hay’s delivery demands that we not only hear but also, for once, understand.