Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Author Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility was one of the best pieces of theater I saw last year – wildly imaginative, yet true to Jane Austen, its complications made clear. That (Bedlam) production was also Directed by Eric Tucker. I can’t imagine what happened between then and now.
Joey Parsons, Kate Hamill
Though there are both original approaches and positive similarities besides furniture on wheels, portions of this staging feature everyone speaking at once while they all tear around the stage like beheaded chickens. Result? Clamorous incomprehension. A farting segment is lowbrow to the extreme. Some of the actors play it straight, others are so over the top one winces at every appearance. How is it a group of inmates took over the asylum while others…? Direction is as uneven as acting. It’s as if the production can’t make up its mind.
Debargo Sanyal’s George is wonderfully narcissistic, but virtually everyone else he embodies is painful to watch (and hear). Brad Heberlee occupies multiple roles like an over-smoked ham. Ryan Quinn plays William Dobbin mercifully straight, but without eliciting much sympathy and otherwise joins Heberlee. Farce only works if you don’t keep telegraphing/winking at the audience.
Kate Hamill, Debargo Sanyal, Zachary Fine, Tom O’ Keefe, Ryan Quinn, Brad Heberlee
On the plus side, Joey Parsons is an appealing and credible Amelia (one wants to shake her naïve shoulders), Tom O’Keefe delivers both serious and outrageous characters with finesse (love the ventriloquist’s dummy!) and Manager (Narrator) Zachary Fine not only leads us through the fourth wall with just the right wry tenor, but becomes Matilda Crawley (in wig and skirt) without resorting to mugging or screeching. Note: I have no issue with (even bearded) men playing women, just men playing women badly.
Early on, author/actor Kate Hamill plays a two-handed scene looking at the audience instead of Amelia, annoyingly taking us out of the action. Hamill then creates a Becky Sharp with less grace, charm or seductive attributes – virtually everything that enabled the character to rise – than insistence. In contrast, down-and-out Becky, is remarkably real. I remember how consistently splendid Hamill was as Marianne in the production of her Austen adaption and can only wonder.
There’s no percentage in retelling a story with which all of you are familiar. The play is periodically entertaining, but chaotic (not freewheeling) in a style I find too often self-defeating.
Tom O’ Keefe, Brad Heberlee, Zachary Fine, Kate Hamill, Joey Parsons, Ryan Quinn, Debargo Sanyal
Alternately placing us in the period’s dark green interiors (Sandra Goldmark – Set) and a circus sideshow/Tivoli Gardens with evocative, striped rows of round lights (Seth Reiser – Design) offers creative context that works especially well with bankruptcy auctions and dark social comment. “This is Vanity Fair and it’s not a moral place,” the Manager reminds us.
Carmel Dean’s original and classic big top music adds apt atmosphere.
Costumes by Valerie Therese Bart are correct and evocative.
Photos by Russ Rowland Opening: Kate Hamill, Tom O’Keefe
Vanity Fair Adapted by Kate Hamill from the novel by William Thackery Directed by Eric Tucker The Pearl Theatre Company 555 West 42nd Street Through May 14, 2017
How to stage Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to make it more palatable for present-day audiences? Start with inspiration from Director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar who connected with one of the main themes of being an outsider. Add in songs from musician/composer Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening). Then line up an all male cast including 30 Rock’s Maulik Pancholy to play the feisty shrew Katherina. The result is a highly enjoyable take on one of the Bard’s most controversial plays.
The fun begins even before entering the theater. Actors in costume are on the sidewalk and in the lobby greeting patrons, posing for photos, and answering questions about the play. (This mingling of the audience and cast continues during the half-hour intermission called an “intermezzo,” with refreshments served on stage, and at the end of the performance.) Piazza D’Amore, an artisan market, has been set up on the first and second floors of the theater, designed to look like the open-air markets of Padua, with handmade fashion goods and food items that might appeal to the contemporary consumer.
Peter Gadiot, center, as Petruchio, with the cast
The stage setting for the play is a glittering multi-level structure bathed in golden lights with colorful eye-catching curtains at the top. (Kudos to Scenic Designer Jason Sherwood and Lighting Designer Seth Reiser.) Ostensibly, this is the palace of the wealthy Padua merchant, Baptista (Bernard White), who has two daughters, Katherina (Pancholy), and Bianca (Oliver Thornton). Bianca, the more beautiful and feminine of the two, has numerous suitors, most notably Lucentio (Telly Leung). Yet Bianca can’t be married off until her older sister, the obstreperous Kate, lands a husband. So when the rogue, Petruchio (Peter Gadiot), appears, drawn in less by Kate than by the value of her dowry, the die is cast.
Maulik Pancholy as Katherina and Peter Gadiot as Petruchio
Baptista, who cares little for Kate’s happiness and safety (no helicopter parenting here), agrees to the match, even when Petruchio humiliates his future wife by showing up late for the ceremony dressed like an animal with antlers. In modern times, Kate would have taken a page from Julia Robert’s The Runaway Bride and fled. But this is the1500s, and Kate submits to the union and is whisked away, not in a luxurious carriage but in a rickety wooden wheelbarrow. It’s a harbinger of what is to follow. Petruchio, intent on “taming” Kate, resorts to sleep deprivation and starvation to break her will.
Peter Gadiot as Petruchio and Maulik Pancholy as Katherina
Even though Iskander has removed from this production some of the harsher language (haggard, for one), there’s no blunting the misogynistic themes throughout the play. George Bernard Shaw once said about The Taming of the Shrew: “No man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed.” (Shaw vigorously protected the independence of Pygmalion’s heroine, Eliza, by not having the play end with her marrying Professor Higgins.) Referring to Kate’s final speech of submission, Iskander writes in the production’s program, “It seems monstrous to ask a woman to perform it in today’s world…” Does an all male cast make that speech and other slights within the play less offensive? Perhaps on some level. What does help is placing the play in historical context, understanding the considerable obstacles women once faced.
Oliver Thornton as Bianca and Maulik Pancholy as Katherina
As Baptista’s two daughters, Kate and Bianca are polar opposites, the contrast played up visually by the characters’ wigs and costumes. Thornton’s Bianca sports long blonde tresses and wears pink gowns embellished with feathers and sparkles. Pancholy’s Kate has her dark hair in a blunt cut and wears muted, manish clothing. But it’s the way these two actors carry themselves and express their emotions with hand gestures and body language that conveys how they regard their gender and sexuality. Bianca is flirtatious, enjoying all the attention she receives from her male suitors, while Kate refuses to entertain their presence, often hurling insults. Pancholy’s performance is brilliant because it is so disturbing. It’s disconcerting to watch Kate transform from the strong-willed fighter she once was into a docile woman who helps Petruchio win a bet when she’s the only wife who comes when he calls.
Comic relief is provided by André De Shields as Gremio, an older suitor seeking Bianca’s hand. (Although why he appears as a Cardinal is a mystery.) He dances then suddenly passes away in a death scene that he plays for laughs. (De Shields was also much sought after for photos in the lobby.) As another Bianca suitor, Lucentio (Leung), along with his tutor, Tranio (Matthew Russell), also create lighter moments.
The Taming of the Shrew will always have its detractors. Yet Shakespeare Theatre’s timing in producing the play is perfect. While women continue to push for equality in the workplace, we will see a woman run for the highest office in our country. And the transgender movement is challenging how we think about what separates men and women. It’s hard not to think about those facts while being entertained by this very lively production.
Photos by Scott Schuman
The Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare Theatre 610 F Street NW
