Through Sun 10/1
Well! What a dazzling season opener for the Cleveland Play House’s 2017-2018 season! Director Laura Kepley’s Shakespeare in Love is a delicious messy mélange: part love story, part musical comedy, part wordplay (with a little sword play thrown in for good measure), part shaggy dog story (including the dog), and overall, ambitious fun.
The storyline, like that of the 1998 film of the same name created by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (as adapted by Lee Hall), combines actors, managers, writers, lovers and a ruthless upper class in a busy tussle for success.
The time: 1593. Enter: William Shakespeare, a hapless fellow infected by the dreaded writer’s block. He’s got a deadline with the Rose Theatre to complete the script for Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. Alas, he’s unfocused, scribbling lines and then tossing the papers aside.
An earnest Charlie Thurston energetically showed us this young Will Shakespeare, a struggling writer new to London. The audience gets to feel smug when Will keeps asking fellow actors what words to put after “Shall I compare thee to.” Since it’s Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet (Sonnet 18) many in the audience may have considered shouting out “a summer’s day.” But after Will meets his muse, Viola de Lesseps (lovely Marina Shay), he easily finishes it himself. Love sweeps him away.
Thurston and Shay showed Will and Viola as likeable characters, although Shay’s Viola, despite being charming and lovely, seemed muted. Maybe I expected more Kate the Shrew than Bianca the Sweet when Viola declaims her desire for passionate love: “No! Not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love as there has never been in a play. I will have love.” Come on Viola, stomp your feet! Show that you mean it!
Trying to keep the Rose Theatre alive and thus needing a hit play, theater owner Philip Henslowe (an authoritative Donald Carrier) properly (and convincingly) threatens poor Will: “Let us have pirates, clowns and a happy ending, or we shall send you back to Stratford to your wife.” And so, our story begins.
It’s a large cast, just right to create an impression of busy, bustling London. Standouts include Brian Owen as the self-important rival theatre owner Richard Burbage, Grant Goodman as popular actor Ned Allen who makes effective use of long locks and tight black pants, Tina Stafford, versatile and believable as both the fluttering nurse and Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and yes, Nigel as Spot the dog (well-trained comic relief).
The design team crafted a fitting fantasy setting: Lex Liang’s gorgeous costumes and sets suggested a sparkling Shakespearean world without any chamber pots or stench (the show is a Disney production after all). Music director Nathan Motta’s lively band with music composed by Jane Shaw added dramatic enhancement, especially with the rock arrangement of “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” that the whole cast danced to. Motta’s band (made up of ensemble members) also employed drumming to great effect. Music instantly conveyed the mood we are used to in films set in Elizabethan times. Contributing to the Merry Olde England theme, choreographer David Shimotakahara’s dancers and dances served the general escapist mood of happy abandon.
Kudos should also go to other team members such as assistant costume and scenic designer Frank Oliva, lighting designer Russell H. Champa, dialect coach Thom Jones, fight choreographer Drew Fracher, and stage manager John Godbout and his assistant Tom Humes.
BOTTOM LINE: A beautiful production and a great show, especially if you missed the Playhouse Square Broadway series appearance of Something Rotten (also about Shakespeare). Think of it this way: Enjoying this show properly, finding it funny, is the payoff for all those plays you had to read in school. (But really, it’s funny even if all you remember is that Shakespeare is a famous old-time writer.)
[Written by Laura Kennelly]
Cleveland, OH 44115