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.
1 comment:
I typed out my entire post and it was deleted, so I'm now leaving it as a comment on Shawn's post.
I wasn't a fan at all of this production of Cymbeline. I wouldn't go see it again and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. I think this play strayed too far from Shakespeare's original, specifically in its anachronisms and framing by storytelling. When the play opened with a woman reading a bedtime story to a small child, I was very confused. Cymbeline is not likely to be read as a bedtime story, with its headless corpses and wagers on chastity and things like that. I was very distracted by the little girl sitting on stage at random moments throughout the play, and I would've greatly preferred the play without the addition of that style of framing. Another part of the play I disliked was the anachronism of the Vespa. When I saw it rolling across the stage, I was annoyed and distracted. The audience laughed, but I was just kind of bewildered. The redeeming quality of this play came towards the end -- I really enjoyed the special effect of the rain falling on the actors. It's one thing to play a background track of a thunderstorm, it's another thing to have mist actually fall from the "sky." The rain worked well visually and it was my favorite part of the play, hands down.
Mary Bryce
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