La Bête

Photo: Manuel Harlan

If ever a show was not everyone's cup of tea, it's La Bête. The show is an odd mixture: dialogue in rhymed couplets, broad humor, and philosophical discussion. Set in 17th-century France, La Bête pits two playwrights in a fight between commerce and art: one is a slovenly, gross upstart (Mark Rylance), while the other is refined, elegant, and ossified (David Hyde Pierce). Their competition is instigated and refereed by a moody princess who must always get her way (Joanna Lumley). The show doesn't add up to much, but it's a fun ride, particularly when Mark Rylance is at the controls. His performance is indeed the tour de force that the advance press promised, and much of the joy of La Bête comes from watching him strut his stuff. David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley are also excellent in far less interesting roles, and Lumley's entrance may be the best I've ever seen. The lighting, scenery, and costumes all do their part, and the supporting cast is quite good (although I couldn't understand a single word said by the guy with the guitar).

Brief Encounter

Photo: Steve Tanner

When I saw Brief Encounter last year at St. Ann's, I wrote the following:

Just as a jazz musician interprets a song, Emma Rice has interpreted Noel Coward's classic play/movie Brief Encounter. Her riff is entertaining, funny, sexy, and quite creative. However, as sometimes also happens with jazz, she occasionally strays too far from the source material, with her additions not quite justifying her subtractions. I'm glad I saw Brief Encounter, and I'd give it a solid B, but I'm not quite sure what so many critics have been raving about.

On a second viewing, this time at Studio 54, I found Brief Encounter to be a sweet, wistful show when focused on the leads, and a funny, sometimes raucous show when focused on the supporting cast. I again enjoyed its creative touches, and I again thought that it occasionally strayed off-track. Interestingly, of the seven people I know who saw it the night I did, two adored it, two liked it, and three hated it.

Brief Encounter

Photo © 2010 Joan Marcus

There is something so wonderfully tragic about the current production of "Brief Encounter" that at the end of the show, I wanted to run down to the stage and give each actor a hug, and thank them for letting me be a part of their story.

The story tropes - love, loss, and how we cope - are nothing new. There are no groundbreaking life lessons in this show. Rather, the story told is one of quiet sadness, the agony of adults who know that they have to, and eventually will, do what is right instead of what makes them happy. "Brief Encounter" is full of angst in the true sense of the word. Alec (Tristan Sturrock) and Laura (Hannah Yelland) know that what they have is real and special, and that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

The supporting cast is just as magnificent. It is a perfect rendition of how our own small tragedies are simply that: our own. The epic love story unfolding center stage has no effect on the budding romance between Beryl (Dorothy Atkinson) and Stanley (Gabriel Ebert), nor is it of any importance to the tempestuous relationship between Myrtle (Annette McLaughlin) and Albert (Joseph Alessi). Each couple is encased in their own unfolding plot, and blissfully unaware of the foibles of their neighbors.

Many shows live or die by their realism; reality is boring. Playwrights and directors know this, and therefore give us drama instead. It is a true pleasure to see the skill and grace with which Emma Rice creates the utterly real and yet terribly poignant world of Alec and Laura; the resulting show is nothing short of a delight.

Orlando

Sarah Ruhl's smooth, respectful adaptation of Virginia Woolf's most playful work, Orlando (directed by Rebecca Taichman), is in some ways a play, in other ways a dramatic reading, and in still other ways a tone poem. Its split personality is apt for the story of a duke who wakes up one day to find that he--she--has become a duchess. Woolf wrote Orlando in honor of one of her great loves, Vita Sackville-West, and used the book to examine relationships, feminism, gender roles, and politics. She also made concrete (and romantic and sexy) Sackville-West's straddling of gender roles as a soft-butch lesbian (or "confirmed sapphist," as Woolf once described her).

Ruhl relies heavily on Woolf's own writing, which is a wise decision since Woolf's work is beautiful, evocative, and often funny. Much of the "dialogue" is actually narration, and Annie-B Parson has choreographed various series of moves that gracefully support the language. With the exception of one performer, the entire cast depicts both men and women, taking Woolf's gender play one step further. The expert performers are led by the subtle, sexy, extraordinary Francesca Faridany, who plays 16-year-old boy and middle-aged woman with equal elegance.

Bunked!

The new musical Bunked! (presented as part of the Fringe Encores) tells the story of five camp counselors who hope to have the "Best Summer Ever." There's the self-aware, snappy gay guy; his chirpy nonidentical twin (picture Kristin Chenoweth at 18); the handsome bisexual guy on whom they both have crushes; the straight guy with a secret; and the snotty girl with a bigger secret. Anyone with knowledge of musicals could write a plot based on that character list and do as good a job as Bunked! The book (by Alaina Kunin and Bradford Proctor) is an awkward combination of trivial and serious, and there is little opportunity to care about the characters. The score (lyrics by Kunin and Proctor; music by Proctor) is better, with a handful of strong moments. However, the songs tend to sound (and feel) alike, and there are too many 11:00-number wanna-be's.

Three other points: (1) the hyper-enthusiasm of part of the audience, who guffawed at the smallest joke, sometimes before the joke was told, did not help the performance I saw; (2) although Bunked! has many flaws, it gives reason to hope that Kunin and Proctor keep writing; and (3) this review should be taken with a grain of salt, as I have socks older than Bunked!'s target audience.

Getting Even With Shakespeare

What is the difference between a play and a skit? This question came to mind while watching Matt Saldarelli's amusing but slight piece, Getting Even With Shakespeare (presented as part of the Fringe Encores). A play, it seems to me, has a beginning, a middle, and an end; at least one character who changes and grows (or whose lack of growth is the point); and a coherent depiction of its world, realistic or not. A skit, on the other hand, consists of an idea or two developed for laughs, with unidimensional characters and a willingness to throw consistency to the winds for the sake of a laugh.

Getting Even With Shakespeare falls into the skit category, and as such it has much to offer. To start with, it has an amusing concept: a lawyer who is bored with his life wanders into the bar where Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet hang out when they are not being called upon to inhabit actors playing them anywhere in the world. It also boasts some funny supplementary ideas (an errant word or moment can send any of the characters off into one of their monologues) and a strong cast. However, it has a tendency toward "in" jokes and being too pleased with itself, and it definitely overstays its welcome. For Getting Even With Shakespeare to be a fully successful skit, it would need to be streamlined. For it to be a successful play, it would need to be more fully developed. In either case, it would need to be more focused on the audience's needs and less on the playwright's, director's, and actors'.