Cymbeline

There's something very malleable about "Cymbeline," moreso than most Shakespeare plays. The hodgepodge of tropes, characters, themes, and even genres melds to create what I've always considered to be a sort of "Best-Of Shakespeare." It's an entertaining read, and I wondered how lively it would play on stage. Needless to say, I was very interested to see what direction Rebecca Bayla Taichman would take the Shakespeare Theater Company's production of "Cymbeline" in.

Generally, I was a fan of this production and would easily recommend it - regardless of their affinity for Shakespeare. The play, for the most part, stays true to the text. I was intrigued by the silent framing of the play as a bedtime story for a little girl (Zoe Wynn Briscoe), with her reactions mirroring the unfolding story. It was a sly reference to the play's fantastical, self-referential nature, though I think at times this method took itself too seriously and was a bit heavy-handed. For example, Act I closes with the girl lying bleeding - a reference to the violence and bloodshed just seen, but it wasn't really necessary, and I wish there wasn't such an emphasis on symbolism the more I think about it.

All around, the performances were superb. Gretchen Hall was very graceful as Imogen, though I couldn't tell if she was trying to emulate Juliet or break free from that constraint. Ted Van Griethuysen was fine as Cymbeline, though I do not think the changes seen in his character were emoted explicitly enough (though the guise of the bedtime story does excuse this, I guess). I wish Leo Marks (Cloten) and William Youmans (Pisanio) did more with their characters. Interestingly enough, they were not as self-parodying as i expected.

One move I 1000% support was the truncation of Act V. As much as I appreciated the play, I felt that the battle scenes of Act V (I'm not even going to discuss the dream sequence Posthumus has) were too much of a tangent and took away a lot from whatever emotional ground was covered in the previous acts (themes of separation, betrayal, familial relations, etc.). Its omission from this production is not something I miss at all. In my mind, it gives the play a more cohesive feel and gives greater emphasis to the final scene, in which all the pieces come together (like a Shakespearean "Scooby Doo," though I did like it).

One thing I disliked more than I liked was the anachronistic nature of the production. To be fair, this is also true of the original play (which transitions between Middle Ages Britain and Renaissance Italy), but it's accentuated more here by radically different styles in clothing, and the random quizzical inclusion of a Vespa for absolutely no reason. I really really really did not like that.

Inclusion of the Vespa notwithstanding, I really enjoyed this production of "Cymbeline." It had a very nice framing device that excused nearly all the randomness of the play and allowed me to enjoy the smorgasbord of plots without wondering how any of this is supposed to be realistic. The editing of the second half of the play is much appreciated and the ending was perfectly executed. All in all, it was a really great production.

Cymbeline

I thought the Shakespeare Theater Company's production of Cymbeline was amazing, definitely the best of the productions we have seen so far this year. My favorite aspect of it was how the entire play was turned into a bedtime story for the little girl.
I liked the set, but I felt it looked too out of place in some scenes and didn't really make sense. Especially the thing with the water. While it looked really cool, it wasn't exactly necessary.
I thought all the actors were excellent, they fit their roles really well. Especially the actors for the Queen and Cloten. The only actor I might have issues with was the actor for Leonatus. His acting was fine, but I don't think he really looked right for the part.
Personally, when we read Cymbeline last semester it wasn't one of my favorite plays. This performance however has changed my mind and made me enjoy Cymbeline more than I did before.

Overall, the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of Cymbeline succeeded in drawing the audience into a world of suspended belief. While taking many liberties with the scenery and characterization of the narrator, the production remained grounded by the consistency of those choices. While some seemed outrageous, the use of music, white fabric, and the little girl tied the production together.

One of the most significant changes was the inclusion of a little girl. She was featured on the stage as the audience was finding their seats. The whole play became a fairytale for the little girl. They allowed for directorial and acting choices to have more liberties. One of the most shocking of these choices came in the form of a Vespa that Cloten rode on in his search for Imogen. While audience reactions varied, the choice added to the idea of a fairy tale.

Another choice that tied the production together was the use of music. From the moment the play began, the music was used to set the mood of the scene. Music would grow louder at more intense times, i.e. the fighting scene, and calm down at other points. Music was used successfully to set the mood and draw in the audience.

The use of white fabric was consistent throughout the production. Both the narrator, the little girl, and Imogen were initially featured in all white clothing. This implies a sense of purity otherwise not seen in the confusing and blood-drenched story. One of the most successful directorial choices was when the book of Cymbeline opened up in front of the little girl to pour blood down the front of her dress. The sharp contrast between the pure white and the deep red drew out an emotional response from the audience otherwise not expressed.

Cymbeline is one of the harder of Shakespeare's plays to produce. The play seems as if Shakespeare had ten different ideas in his head, mushed them all into one story, and had everyone live to be one big happy family in the end (without the Queen at the curtain call). The STC tackled a difficult production successfully. Whether the audience liked the play or not, they had opinions and that is how success can truly be measured in theater.

Cymbeline

I was very impressed by the Cymbeline production we saw. The fact that they warped the play into a faery tale worked to its benefit. Without the "tale" element, I do not believe our disbelief would have been suspended so effectively. It also added a slightly creepy element to the play- especially right before the intermission where the woman and little girl open the book and "blood" spills from the book and drips down the little girl's white dress. It was absolutely amazing. And while I am on the subject of amazing the woman narrating who also played the doctor did a fantastic job- she spoke with such eloquence and the language flowed naturally. She tied the entire tale together and it was a very effective way of packaging the play. On a side note, the choreography, especially for the battle scene, was very well done. It held the audience's attention and solidified the feel of a faery tale.

However, on a less than positive note, the Posthumous was a little unfortunate which created a bump in the play. The older brother would have been a VERY nice Posthumous- he was someone that you look at and go "okay I get it". But the posthumous cast....not as much =(

Importance of FAiry TAles--G.K. Chesterton's Ideas

Travis explores G.K. Chesterton’s high praise of fairy tales, looking at the story of the frog prince to show what they can still offer us today.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was an accomplished author of detective fiction, poetry, Christian apologetics, philosophy, and fantasy. He is well-known for his “Father Brown” stories, The Man Who Was Thursday, and Orthodoxy, a little volume of Christian apologetics that remains popular among theologians to this day. In chapter four of Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Chesterton provides a defense of the fairy tale that is rivaled by few.
The term “fairy tale” is not easy to define, but we recognize one when we see it. “The Frog Prince,” a story that most would consider a fairy tale, was traditionally the leading story in the Grimm collection. A handsome prince is imprisoned by a curse, turned into a frog. One day, a princess loses her favorite ball in a well where the frog dwells. The princess accepts an offer by the frog to retrieve the ball, and she promises to keep him and love him and be his companion for life — a promise she has no intention of honoring. Her father, the king, makes her keep her word. In her anger, she throws the frog against the wall. But a frog does not get up from the ground; a handsome prince does. The curse has been broken. (Many readers will be more familiar with the modern version of the tale, in which the princess kisses the frog to break the curse.)
There are, in Chesterton’s view, necessary ethical lessons to be learned by children and adults from fairy tales. Jack and the Beanstalk teaches the reader to launch an assault against pride; Cinderella, to embrace humility; Beauty and the Beast, to overcome prejudice with love. In “The Frog Prince,” the king makes the princess reject her selfish behavior and keep her word. These moral lessons are fundamental to learning to live honorably and compassionately towards others.
But Chesterton believed the fairy tale had a more important value than just the ethical lessons. (After all, adults do not need magical frogs to learn how not to lie.) At a higher level, the fairy tale placed in Chesterton’s heart the conviction “that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful” (67). Chesterton believed that what modern people called incontrovertible and unalterable scientific facts were in reality mysterious. He explains the difference between this “scientific fatalism” (67) and the views of the “fairy-tale philosopher” (68):
[Learned men in the modern world] talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. […] You cannot imagine two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees […] growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. (59)
Fairy tales challenge the reader to imagine magical worlds different from our own. We are reminded by the fairy tale of the thing we never should have forgotten — that our world might have been different and is magical the way it is: unexplainable, unpredictable, wild, and surprising. With our imaginations awakened, we can see with new eyes our own world filled with wonder once again.
Unlike the fairy-tale philosopher, the scientific fatalist does not believe in this unpredictable magic: everything either already has or eventually will have a law-abiding explanation. Everything in nature is predictable and can be counted upon to happen. Things could not have been any other way than they are, and nothing is surprising or wild. Chesterton believed that the fairy-tale philosophy prompted a better response to reality than the one constructed by anti-supernaturalistic versions of scientific inquiry.
When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a “law.” […] It is not a necessity. […] We have no right to say that it must always happen. (60)
There are thousands of years of the fairy tale tradition, but the folks who have the most to say about it are those who defended it through the period we now call modernity (very roughly, from the Enlightenment until the 1960s) — the rise of scientific fatalism. The fairy tale is a protest against the Enlightenment, for the writers and defenders of fairy tales like Chesterton (and C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle after him) were writing worlds of magical refuge in the midst of modernity. Without the magic of the fairy tale, the magic of life disappears in a morass of strictly rational, naturalistic facts, theories, propositions, experiments, and arguments. The fairy tale frees us from the law-based, unchangeable world of the scientific fatalist, where explanations are everywhere but wonder is lost.
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