BARD LITE Brooke Hardman and De’Lon Grant pare Shakespeare’s characterizations down to a bare, if affecting, bone. |
If you're thinking that Shakespeare never released a greatest-hits play, you've never seen Cymbeline. Then again, that wouldn't put you in a very elite group, since this late (1610 or 1611) romance is one of the Bard's least-produced works. Its title character is king of the British Celts in the first century AD, and he's facing invasion by the Roman forces of Emperor Caesar Augustus, but Rule Britannia takes a back seat to melodrama and magic in this tale of a banished lord, two royal sons stolen from their nursery, a wicked stepmother and her cloddish son, a royal daughter who marries against her father's wishes, a girl dressing up as a boy, and the testing of the faithful wife. At the new Storefront on Elm space (it used to be Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater) in Davis Square, as directed by Doug Lockwood, Actors' Shakespeare Project gives an extroverted, emotional reading (through February 20) that's accessible, poignant, and often funny but doesn't penetrate to the heart of the play's spiritual rebirth.Part of the problem here is the Bard's concept of time. Shakespeare's four last plays (if we exclude Henry VIII) - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest - spin out stories of death and resurrection, of lost and found, often over a span of decades. They were likely written for the proscenium stage of Blackfriars Theatre, for an indoor audience that had settled in to enjoy a full evening's entertainment.
Even by that standard, Cymbeline is overstuffed. The king has married a second time, and he was hoping that his daughter, Princess Innogen, would marry the queen's son, Cloten, even though Cloten is such a dolt that the dullest groundling would see straight through him. Innogen has instead married the noble but poor Posthumus, who, being banished for his crime, hies himself abroad and wagers that Italian stallion Iachimo can't seduce his wife. Iachimo resorts to the hoary ploy of hiding in a trunk, then popping out in Innogen's bedchamber and stealing a bracelet (and a peek at her breast) while she sleeps, thus convincing Posthumus (who's not much smarter than Cloten, it turns out) that he's succeeded. The rest practically writes itself: Posthumus disowns Innogen; Innogen runs away, dons manly attire, and joins the invading Roman legions; the banished lord and the king's two sons turn up; Cloten tries to kill Posthumus but is instead dispatched by one of the sons; Innogen takes a powder and is thought to be dead but isn't; Posthumus and the sons save Cymbeline from the Romans; the queen dies, Iachimo confesses, all identities are revealed, and everyone is reconciled and forgiven.
Related:
Review: Johnny English Reborn, Review: Anonymous, Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC, More 
- Review: Johnny English Reborn
Like 2007's underrated Mr. Bean's Holiday, Johnny English Reborn, directed by Oliver Parker, improves on its unwatchable predecessor.
- Review: Anonymous
For most folks, if Shakespeare didn't write those plays, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Nor does it seem a likely topic for Roland Emmerich, whose films usually are about the end of the world.
- Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC
I'm not sure whether Les Misérables is defiantly and respectably uncontrite as a melodrama or merely unabashedly so. Does this operatic musical rush with such defiant conviction across the mire of melodrama that it doesn't get stuck?
- The Gamm’s entrancing Hamlet
For many years, Tony Estrella is perhaps the strongest off-Trinity actor around here. One performance in particular — his 1997 Hamlet title role for Alias Stage — has had devoted theatergoers talking about it ever since.
- Interview: John Hodgman is pleased to serve
Brookline native, Apple pitchman, podcast host, and Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman has made a career out of hilarious pedantry.
- Los Campesinos! | Hello Sadness
"I've been digging my grave for quite some time," speak-sings Gareth Campesinos on his band's unrelenting fourth album.
- Review: Burke & Hare
Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are only faintly humorous as the titular team of assassins, Burke and Hare .
- Review: Tales from the Golden Age
The ironically titled film refers to the dreadful Alice-in-Wonderland years when Nicolae Ceausescu was the Communist strongman of Romania.
- Review: New Year's Eve
Lately Garry Marshall has shown a certain genius for turning miserable holidays into terrible movies.
- Raise the curtain
There's plenty of theater to keep us warm in Rhode Island through the winter. From the professional companies to the colleges, there are shows for every taste and mood.
- Meme forecast for 2012
When evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in 1976 — meaning "a piece of thought copied from person to person" — he probably didn't realize that, in time, the word would come to be synonymous with cat macros, various advice animals, and Rebecca Black.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Doug Lockwood, Marya Lowry, Celtic, More
, Doug Lockwood, Marya Lowry, Celtic, WICKED, funny, British, Shakespeare, Actor's Shakespeare Project, Brooke Hardman, king, Less
