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hrjThe first show of the 2016 Cal Shakes season made two bold choices (and a number of more ordinary ones ones), one of them somewhat daring and the other less so. In my opinion, the daring one worked better than the less daring, though possibly for reasons of personal esthetics.
Among the more ordinary artistic choices were using the contemporary Bay Area for set and costumes, and using gender- and race-blind casting (as well as their usual multi-role small-cast approach) such that a black female Hero is wooed by an Egyptian-American female Claudio. The lesser of the bold choices was not only to gender flip both Benedict and Beatrice, but to play them respectively as a butch woman and a rather sterotypically swishy gay man.
The larger of the bold choices was to give the play a framing story that begins with the caterers cleaning up after the double wedding. Several of the caterers begin explaining the lead-up to the event to the others, and they begin acting out the events. For the remainder of the play, there is a regular shift between the presentation of the main plot, and stage business that reflects the ongoing post-event clean-up. This shifting and merging also applies to the roles. The staff who portray Beatrice and Benedict are introduced as bickering co-workers (with History); the staff who portray Claudio and Hero are clearly engaged in a flirtation with touches of jealousy; and the wedding musician who believes he is being stiffed for half his fee rolls his grumpiness and anger directly into Don John.
The framing story involves a fair amount of original dialog, in enthusiastically rhymed couplets. This is why I consider it the bolder of the two choices: it takes a certain amount of chuzpah not merely to edit Shakespeare (which everyone does, of necessity) but to add your own lines to the existing work. And as a way of making the story fresh and interesting, I thought the frame worked very well. It brought in the sort of play-within-a-play found in several of Shakespeare's works, and the "rude mechanicals" motif seen in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I rather liked the way the personalities and interactions of the caterers merged softly into the Much Ado roles.
I found the particular implementation of the gender-swap for Beatrice and Benedict to be less successful. It wasn't the gender-swap itself, but the specific gender stereotypes used to implement it that just didn't work for me. James Carpenter's Beatrice lands so solidly on the stereotype of a swishy gay man that I had too hard a time imagining romantic chemistry with Stacy Ross's swaggering, dykey Benedict. This is no doubt in large part a failure of my own imagination. Fortunately, Denmo Ibrahim's Claudio and Safiya Fredericks's Hero had enough romantic chemistry to satisfy my greedy soul.
Among the more ordinary artistic choices were using the contemporary Bay Area for set and costumes, and using gender- and race-blind casting (as well as their usual multi-role small-cast approach) such that a black female Hero is wooed by an Egyptian-American female Claudio. The lesser of the bold choices was not only to gender flip both Benedict and Beatrice, but to play them respectively as a butch woman and a rather sterotypically swishy gay man.
The larger of the bold choices was to give the play a framing story that begins with the caterers cleaning up after the double wedding. Several of the caterers begin explaining the lead-up to the event to the others, and they begin acting out the events. For the remainder of the play, there is a regular shift between the presentation of the main plot, and stage business that reflects the ongoing post-event clean-up. This shifting and merging also applies to the roles. The staff who portray Beatrice and Benedict are introduced as bickering co-workers (with History); the staff who portray Claudio and Hero are clearly engaged in a flirtation with touches of jealousy; and the wedding musician who believes he is being stiffed for half his fee rolls his grumpiness and anger directly into Don John.
The framing story involves a fair amount of original dialog, in enthusiastically rhymed couplets. This is why I consider it the bolder of the two choices: it takes a certain amount of chuzpah not merely to edit Shakespeare (which everyone does, of necessity) but to add your own lines to the existing work. And as a way of making the story fresh and interesting, I thought the frame worked very well. It brought in the sort of play-within-a-play found in several of Shakespeare's works, and the "rude mechanicals" motif seen in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I rather liked the way the personalities and interactions of the caterers merged softly into the Much Ado roles.
I found the particular implementation of the gender-swap for Beatrice and Benedict to be less successful. It wasn't the gender-swap itself, but the specific gender stereotypes used to implement it that just didn't work for me. James Carpenter's Beatrice lands so solidly on the stereotype of a swishy gay man that I had too hard a time imagining romantic chemistry with Stacy Ross's swaggering, dykey Benedict. This is no doubt in large part a failure of my own imagination. Fortunately, Denmo Ibrahim's Claudio and Safiya Fredericks's Hero had enough romantic chemistry to satisfy my greedy soul.
