BAMA Theatre Company have been regular and welcome participants at the NY Fringe festival the past few years, presenting a memorable production of Hamlet last year. In 2012 they return with Twelfth Night, and a clutch from that same illustrious cast. Emerging from residencies at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the outfit are consummately versed in the articulation of Shakespeare, and characteristically favor a minimum of props and scenic effects – just one large on stage travel trunk and its contents. In addition, a compact cast list requires actors to play more than one role and the theatrical effect is typically honed, imaginative, and impressive. There’s a confident familiarity in their presentations, one that permits license for interpretation, the exploration of a fresh perspective. Expectations in this regard are not disappointed in the opening sequence of their Twelfth Night. The cast of eight actors take the stage and commence by serenading the audience with the play’s concluding song – “- hey, ho, the wind and the rain.” It’s a rousing, folky rendition – all the more stirring for its simplicity, and it chimes elegantly with the play’s following opening lines – “If music be the food of love, play on”.

Love, as ever, is at the heart of Shakespeare’s best comedies, and there’s no shortage here of the wooing of it. But it’s the human machinations of the winning of it that promote folly, misunderstanding, and mirth. In short order we are presented here with a web of schemes and cross-plots as this party deploys that party to win the other party for the first party. Indirection and deception, the quickest way (or so they believe) for Shakespearean characters to get what they desire, are epidemic. It’s the graceful interweaving of any several plots, and their delicate untangling that old Will is such an expert at. That and the astounding language he deploys in getting there. One of his most accessible comedies, Twelfth Night does not disappoint. But there are some questions I would ask about BAMA’s version in this production.

I have no argument with broad playing on the part of some of the actors – indeed there’s something perhaps more genuinely period in the approach. It’s no surprise to find a cut-up comic turn in the role of Sir Andrew Aguecheek (an hilarious Matt Renskers), but its peculiar to find the same sort of over-bite being employed – and clearly enjoyed – in the roles of Olivia (Alison Frederick), and the shrewd-tongued clown, Feste (Nick Lawson). Both are delightful, but tilt the performance unduly in their direction. Conversely, there’s a positive calm sobriety about Greg Foro’s Malvolio, a character traditionally, next to Sir Andrew, played as the butt of all humor. Director Casey McClellan may be trying for something new here, but the effect works to shuffle the focus of attention about, somewhat to the detriment of the play’s balance. Lauren Anne Martin’s more low key Viola, despite all her stage time, gets bumped from prominence, a situation not aided by a down-playing of any sexual spark between her and Duke Orsino while she’s disguised as the youth Cesario. Nathan T. Lange as Orsino registers hardly any “special” interest in her as his messenger boy. Apart from the obvious Olivia/Cesario infatuation, the misguided same-sex attractions – such a rich seam of Shakespearean comedic tension – get only subliminal play here, and in a few peculiar places. There’s some juicy innuendo around the foppish Sir Andrew – “I’m a great eater of beef” – and leers he throws in the direction of Feste, even some roving curiosity in Sir Toby Belch’s drunken horseplay  (a splendid William Brock) with Sir Andrew, but there’s an alarming burst of passion from the pirate, Antonio (Lange again) when he declares his devotion to Viola’s twin brother, the rescued Sebastian (Foro). Think Peter Jackson’s Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins. It’s perplexing, as if the roles all got shunted about at the last minute but the actors are still firing up around the cast member they had previously been assigned to fixate upon. There’s too much heat in places it’s not needed, and not enough in situations that require it. McClellan could tweak his cast; Frederick’s and Lawson’s scene-stealing could be reined in, and Martin’s and Foro’s tighter turns loosened up.

Regardless, the piece entertains royally. Technically the production flows, and once again the performance convinces that less is more. The costuming, by Sarah Walker Thornton, is clever and subtle, and she rounds out the cast as a deft Maria. On this side of the Atlantic, BAMA company are in a league of their own doing Shakespeare. Standing ovations greeted the obviously talented cast at curtain. Perhaps I’m just quibbling, but even the best laid plans of the redoubtable bard can be rumpled with some fiddling. Oh cursed spite that ever I should be the one to think it not quite right.

~~~

Twelfth Night
BAMA Theatre Company
Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Casey McClellan
Getting into disguise is easy, getting out of it…that’s another story. BAMA Theatre Company is BACK at FringeNYC for the 4th straight year to bring you Shakespeare’s most acclaimed musical comedy! 8 actors. 14 roles. 1 trunk. If music be the food of love, rock on!
2h 15m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Comedy   FringeHIGH
Staycation: Literary Lane   Ride the Rollercoaster of Love
www.bamatheatrecompany.org
VENUE #12: Cherry Lane Theatre
Fri 10 @ 5*  Sun 12 @ 1  Fri 17 @ 8:30  Sat 18 @ 2:30  Thu 23 @ 4

Related Posts:

• Hamlet (Fringe Festival 2011)
• The Bardy Bunch – Keep On Singing And Dancing All Through The Night
• Pulp Shakespeare – The Bard Would Be Proud (Fringe Festival 2012)
• The Empress of Sex (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Macbeth, Aquila Theatre; Macbeth, Epic Theatre Ensemble

About fifteen minutes into Duncan Pflaster‘s play, The Empress of Sex, currently showing as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, a dramatic crisis point is reached. A character, Pistos, has confessed to being in love with one of his paramours, Neara. In accord with the rules of the community of which he is a voluntary member, his life is forfeit. Love and partnered exclusivity are forbidden in this realm, and the self-proclaimed ruler, Empress Salacia, condemns him duly to death. Only, well, that would be a trifle harsh, so the sentence is commuted to banishment. Phew! Crisis averted.

The play gallops forward setting up another potentially dramatic situation. The past lover of Salacia, the faithless man who has compelled her to forswear and outlaw love in her domain, is arriving on the scene in a bid to re-seduce her. Agis, now rueful and lovesick for Salacia, seeks to reunite and redress the wrong he did her. He comes disguised as a woman for this mission, and is accompanied by Adrianna, his sister – disguised as a man, and by Coriolanus, his servant – who frankly will brook no disguises. The scene is ripe for farce and you don’t have to have seen a Shakespearean comedy to sense that a mess of confusion and misunderstanding waits to unfold. Which it does at lightening speed. Unchecked desires in this libertine society quickly connect ill-matched characters and  - oddly amongst the licentious acolytes of Salacia – abruptly deepen into forbidden love attachments. But this spells calamity for Salacia and the domain!  Sounds unbelievable?  Pflaster, and director Glory Kadigan, have chosen to create a comical, almost cartoon world, where nothing really has to be believable.

The actors here are playing for laughs, broadcasting desires and emotions with eye-popping and lip-smacking expressions; while the play is billed as “An Erotic Romantic Comedy” this production is obviously shooting for comedy over eroticism. Which brings us to another salient feature of this production: there are many parts in this play (nineteen performers) and there are many parts on display. The nudity is real, but it’s all played for comic effect.

Pflaster, in tandem with Kadigan, may very well be on to some new sub-genre in entertainment – a pastiche camp, a formally hybridized spectacle that despairs of drama, winks at burlesque review, and esteems bingo parlor humor.  The author has acknowledged a debt to theatrical writer Charles Ludlam (of Irma Vep fame) so perhaps there is a case to be made in favor of a more subversive goal here. The author’s fine language is put in the service of effete play acting and arch silliness; the director encourages mugging on the part of actors, while she also assembles the ensemble into tightly co-ordinated group movements that recall almost a Victorian artificial theatricality. The individual performances are heavily enacted in inverted commas. Except, that is, for Catherine LeFrere who plays the Empress.  LeFrere delivers an earnest deadpan performance – even when she is enjoying public cunnilingual congress in her court.  This interposition seems to place her in another play all together; which makes her turn the comedy performance of the evening. This is artifice within artifice.

Other notable contributions are made by Matthew Menendez (Coriolanus), the over actor’s over actor; Kelly Zekas (Neara), who actually comes close to deploying subtlety; and Eric Percival, whose female impersonation is as (intentionally?) bad as his masculine turn as Agis is sweet and winsome. Marissa Bergman offers a camply atmospheric, pared-down set, and Izzy Fields some knowing and comedic costumes.

This is as profound a work as a set of pasties – and as compelling. The curtain is going up and there’s a new 21st Century Faux in town.

~~~

Related Posts:

• The Empress Of Sex – 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• The Taint Of Equality Or, I Want Your Sex (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• The 2012 National Newborn Festival Is Almost Here!
• The National Newborn Festival: Celebrating Emerging Playwrights In Style
• Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare, Bama Theatre Company (Fringe Festival 2012)