Cal Shakes Review: The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful

[hrj]

Once again I showed up with my season ticket in hand not having done so much as look up what the evening's performance would be. One of the delights of the Cal Shakes outdoor venue is the picnic area and the pre-performance talk there by the staff dramaturg, Philippa Kelly. (thread_walker and I have decided we need to form a fan club for her. I've suggested showing up in embarassingly fangirly t-shirts. She's absolutely delightful.) As the pre-show talk started to go into the background of playwright Charles Ludlam I started to get nervous, expecting one of those angsty middle-american man-pain stories. Ok, SOOO not like that.

For those who, like me, were completely unfamiliar with The Mystery of Irma Vep it's a campy, over-the-top, chock-full-o-tropes Gothick [sic] mystery-thriller, with the gimmick (part of the original staging) that the seven or eight (or are they?) different roles, both male and female, are played by only two male actors, with lightning-quick costume changes and off-stage vocal misdirection. The plot involves just about every standard gothic horror motif one could think of: vampires, werewolves, a sinister housekeeper, a peculiar handyman, an isolated manor house, the looming memory of a deceased first wife, the resurrection of an Egyptian mummy...I may have left something out, but the play probably doesn't. There is a mystery to figure out, and though many aspects of it are predictable to anyone familiar with the genre of origin, there are enough convoluted twists and turns to trip up every expectation. But the point isn't to play a gothic mystery, it's to lovingly mock gothic mysteries.

The show is infused with a type of over-the-top campy innuendo-laden humor that often leaves me a bit cold. In this case, it was redeemed for me by the performances of Liam Vincent and even more so Danny Scheie who is a Cal Shakes regular and often plays Shakespearean clown roles such as Bottom, Dogberry, and Puck. That made it a bit easier for me to enjoy it as "this is a Danny Scheie role" rather than "this is a campy drag show role". Personal taste, but I'm going to be honest about it.

The set design was gorgeous and lush (as well as being entertainingly designed to accommodate the rapid on-and-off stage activity for the role changes. There are also some clever in-jokes, such as the painted backdrop for the Egyptian scene including a silhouette of the Transamerica pyramid alongside the more traditional Giza style.

It's a scheduling quirk of me and my theater partner that for the last couple of years the best ticket series for us to choose has been one of the preview nights. There's sometimes a bit of a rawness in the performance, but also an exciting energy. I think this aspect was behind the one apparent costume-change failure last night, when Vincent came on stage in the costume for Lord Edgar Hillcrest but was clearly playing a scene as the housekeeper Jane Twisden. (Made all the more confusing because the actor never flinched or stumbled.)

This will be the last Cal Shakes performance with Jonathan Moscone[*] as Artistic Director. (The final show of the season and the first two of next season will have guest directors.) One of the things I've grown to love about Cal Shakes is the intimacy of the setting and the direct interactions with the creative personnel. Moscone has always been there before the shows, chatting with audience members and giving the introductory remarks. (Given that we typically get front row seats, I've also grown very fond of interactions with Cal Shakes board member Jay Yamada who frequently takes a sort of pre-show house supervisor role at the front and is always happy to chat both then and during intermissions.) I'm sure whoever the new Artistic Director is, they will continue the great legacy of this organization, but Moscone's presence has always added a very special something.

[*] Local trivia for my non-local readers or those who may not make the connection. Jonathan Moscone is the son of the late San Francisco mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated in 1978 along with prominent gay activist and politician Harvey Milk. The Cal Shakes family reacted with delighted glee when Jonathan Moscone and his husband announced their marriage in 2013.

Comments

[vittoriosa.livejournal.com]

i'm delighted to read this, especially since i have often heard of this play but knew basically nothing of plot etc. sounds like a lot of fun.

i hadn't heard that jonathan moscone was stepping down as a.d., though. will be very interested to see who replaces him! (i'd always wondered if it was the same moscone family...)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

It was a lot of fun! And full of all sorts of passing literary allusions. You should see if you can make it up for a performance, now that you have so much time on your hands. :)