"Cymbeline, Part One"
Apr. 1st, 2007 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanYesterday evening I went with Lydy and her friend Christopher, who is not on LJ, to see the sophomore class of the BFA Actor's Program at the University of Minnesota perform Shakespeare's Cymbeline. None of us had ever seen it before.
It was pouring with rain, to the point that Lydy declared that she was not driving home on the freeway if it was still coming down like this. We went to Cedar Riverside first and had dinner at the Red Sea. It was empty when we came in, but right behind us was a huge contingent of people, some with umbrellas, making me feel like somebody in a Verizon commercial. It took a while for the food to arrive and we were all pretty hungry. Lydy and Christopher shared a large platter of six anonymous-looking meat dishes, one with a hard-boiled egg in it, and a mound of soft white cheese in the center to relieve the monotony. I had planned to get the vegetarian sampler so that I could take some of it home to Raphael, but I became nervous about how long it might take to put all that stuff together. I had a concoction of green beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes that was amazingly tasty. I also got, placed at the opposite side of the circle of injera, a dark-red spicy sauce that seemed to have some kind of split pea or lentil as its main component. It was much spicier than the vegetables, so one could vary the eating experience a lot by how much of it one ate. Christopher asked for a taste and then wondered if the sauce had coffee in it. Given how wired I was later on, I think it must have.
We ran through the rain to the car and drove what turned out to be about two blocks to the parking ramp nearest Rarig Center, which was where the play was. We would have been a lot wetter had we just left the car in its original space, though, because Lydy found us a way from the parking ramp through the skyway and into a truly surreal building with an open corridor on one side and a brick wall studded with windows on the other, and vast spaces between. Except for the fact that it wasn't raining, one still felt outside, but not really in a good way -- no sky or plants, just walls that looked exterior and a lot of emptiness. It might be better in the daylight.
We skidded into the theater with about a minute to spare, and ended up sitting on the far left of center. This meant that the actors had their backs to us some of the time, which would have been all right if the audience had not contained half a dozen or so people who giggled hysterically at nothing much, some of the funny scenes, and all of the creepy ones. Not having any burlap bags handy, I simply wanted to murder them outright.
Pisano was played by a small round young woman. She appeared at the beginning, struck a bell a few times, and announced, "Cymbeline, Part One." She also announced the intermission, the second part, and "The End." She was a pretty good Pisano, too, though I think they cut her part a fair amount.
They had a bare stage with a couple of red-painted wooden boxes and stools as the only furniture.
The two gentlemen who give us the back story (Cymbeline is in a terrible mood because he wants his daugher Imogen to marry Cloten, the son of his second wife, but instead Imogen has secretly married Posthumus, whose father was such a great warrior for Cymbeline that he was nicknamed Leonatus; he died in battle and his wife died bearing Posthumus, hence the name, and Cymbeline raised Posthumus in his court; also, by the way, twenty years ago Cymbeline's two young sons were kidnapped from their nursery and nobody ever found out what happened to them) were played by two young women, in women's clothing, who were folding laundry as they spoke and did some rather nice pantomine with a sheet when describing the birth of Posthumus.
Cloten was a gangly blond kid who was good at physical comedy. He was dressed in a rather nice mix of dandyish clothing and outright jester's garb, with a funny embroidered hat and a striped doublet with very odd winglike pieces of red velvet hanging from the shoulders, like the outline of a cloak. When he wanted to threaten Pisano later on, he ran at him, flapping the sleeves like wings. This got a laugh, but it was a little alarming too. The Queen, his mother, wore a red velvet dress and went rather over the top with her part; she reminded me of a rounder Cruella deVille, minus the cigarette. The doctor, in a long blue velvet damask robe and a funny hat, was doubled by one of the young women who played a Gentleman; she also later played the younger son of Cymbeline. The woman playing the Queen doubled as the older son. The doctor had an accent, which Lydy didn't much care for but which I found curiously effective.
The woman playing Imogen was very good. Imogen gets good lines and Shakespeare obviously loves her to pieces, as do most male critics, but I should think it would be easy to make the part cloying or insipid. This one was just very fresh and open and straightforward, with a nice sense of humor. Posthumus was pretty good too -- a bit dorky, but given his conduct the moment he's exiled, that went over just fine and may well have been deliberate.
Iachimo was the other standout performance, with Imogen. He had a huge amount of charisma even while behaving like a creep, and he handled the language better than anybody other than Imogen. He and Posthumus had a really creepy kind of chemistry when they were making their repulsive bet. That scene was particularly well done, and quite funny underneath its fundamentally revolting nature.
Iachimo and Imogen also had a lot of chemistry; superfically, they looked better together than Imogen and Posthumus. He did very well with his first declaration to her of how she might revenge herself on Posthumus's alleged infidelity; he was slightly over the top in the same manner as the Queen, and when repulsed at once, went even more over the top as he declared that he had only been testing Imogen and Posthumus was guiltless. Imogen's falling for this was completely believable; her affect whenever he spoke well of Posthumus was brilliant. The manner in which Iachimo told his lie about how he and Posthumus and some others had bought a present for the Emperor and how he was concerned for its safety, was much more matter-of-fact, and watching her fall for that too was both touching and exasperating.
It was during the bedroom scene, when Iachimo creeps out of the trunk to take notes on Imogen's bedroom and person so that he can win his bet with Posthumus, that I most vehemently wanted to murder the people in the front row center. There are funny moments, or were in this version, because Iachimo is so full of himself. But when he took Posthumus's bracelet from her arm as she slept, and thrust his arm up into it with that Italian fuck-you gesture, things in this production were no longer funny. The morons in the front row were convulsed with laughter when he lifted the sheet. But both the actors and Shakespeare were better than the morons, and the scene still worked.
Belarius, the man who stole the two princes, was changed in this production into Belaria. I felt really that it was a pity, since they were going so far, that they didn't change Imogen's brothers into sisters as well. What they did do was to insert a line during the bout of forgiveness at the end, wherein Cymbeline kneels to Belaria and asks her to marry him. I did not retain sufficient memory of the second half the play to realize that this was added on, though we all suspected it might have been.
The scenes with Belaria and the boys were not altogether successful. They had quarter-staffs that they did a lot of horseplay with, and they were always running off stage yodelling and yelling, rather like a bunch of Maenads. Really, changing them all to women would have been better. The other flaw in this part of the play was that although the princes are 22 and 23, they act more like they're about fourteen, far less mature than Imogen. A certain amount of this would be persuasive, but there was too much of it.
Everybody had a lot of fun with the battle scenes, though their swordplay could have been better. I remain confused about a couple of things: the young woman who played the younger prince also played a Roman ambassador, who is present in the latter half of the play as written, and I wasn't sure when she was supposed to be whom.
They cut Posthumus's vision, leaving only the extremely sudden appearance of Jupiter. I couldn't really fault the front row center for laughing at that, though the speech was delivered quite well.
Naturally, I wanted to murder the front row center again when Imogen awakes from her drugged sleep and finds the headless body of Cloten, in Posthumus's clothing, next to her. Imogen did a very good job with a scene that might well make actors want to murder the playwright as well. The comic potential is unfortunately high; this is more like a scene from a Jacobean revenge tragedy than from much of Shakespeare. The portrayal of Imogen in this production had been fairly low-key and quiet; the actor conveyed a lot of emotion without raising her voice much. When she stood up and raised her hands to the sky and cried, "Murder in heaven? How?" the front row center wasn't even worth the bother of murdering any more.
The revelations and the orgy of forgiveness at the end were genuinely affecting. Imogen, again, did very well. My objections to parts of that scene are to what Shakespeare did, not to what this production did. I think a little more of Portia in her would have been nice.
Pamela
It was pouring with rain, to the point that Lydy declared that she was not driving home on the freeway if it was still coming down like this. We went to Cedar Riverside first and had dinner at the Red Sea. It was empty when we came in, but right behind us was a huge contingent of people, some with umbrellas, making me feel like somebody in a Verizon commercial. It took a while for the food to arrive and we were all pretty hungry. Lydy and Christopher shared a large platter of six anonymous-looking meat dishes, one with a hard-boiled egg in it, and a mound of soft white cheese in the center to relieve the monotony. I had planned to get the vegetarian sampler so that I could take some of it home to Raphael, but I became nervous about how long it might take to put all that stuff together. I had a concoction of green beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes that was amazingly tasty. I also got, placed at the opposite side of the circle of injera, a dark-red spicy sauce that seemed to have some kind of split pea or lentil as its main component. It was much spicier than the vegetables, so one could vary the eating experience a lot by how much of it one ate. Christopher asked for a taste and then wondered if the sauce had coffee in it. Given how wired I was later on, I think it must have.
We ran through the rain to the car and drove what turned out to be about two blocks to the parking ramp nearest Rarig Center, which was where the play was. We would have been a lot wetter had we just left the car in its original space, though, because Lydy found us a way from the parking ramp through the skyway and into a truly surreal building with an open corridor on one side and a brick wall studded with windows on the other, and vast spaces between. Except for the fact that it wasn't raining, one still felt outside, but not really in a good way -- no sky or plants, just walls that looked exterior and a lot of emptiness. It might be better in the daylight.
We skidded into the theater with about a minute to spare, and ended up sitting on the far left of center. This meant that the actors had their backs to us some of the time, which would have been all right if the audience had not contained half a dozen or so people who giggled hysterically at nothing much, some of the funny scenes, and all of the creepy ones. Not having any burlap bags handy, I simply wanted to murder them outright.
Pisano was played by a small round young woman. She appeared at the beginning, struck a bell a few times, and announced, "Cymbeline, Part One." She also announced the intermission, the second part, and "The End." She was a pretty good Pisano, too, though I think they cut her part a fair amount.
They had a bare stage with a couple of red-painted wooden boxes and stools as the only furniture.
The two gentlemen who give us the back story (Cymbeline is in a terrible mood because he wants his daugher Imogen to marry Cloten, the son of his second wife, but instead Imogen has secretly married Posthumus, whose father was such a great warrior for Cymbeline that he was nicknamed Leonatus; he died in battle and his wife died bearing Posthumus, hence the name, and Cymbeline raised Posthumus in his court; also, by the way, twenty years ago Cymbeline's two young sons were kidnapped from their nursery and nobody ever found out what happened to them) were played by two young women, in women's clothing, who were folding laundry as they spoke and did some rather nice pantomine with a sheet when describing the birth of Posthumus.
Cloten was a gangly blond kid who was good at physical comedy. He was dressed in a rather nice mix of dandyish clothing and outright jester's garb, with a funny embroidered hat and a striped doublet with very odd winglike pieces of red velvet hanging from the shoulders, like the outline of a cloak. When he wanted to threaten Pisano later on, he ran at him, flapping the sleeves like wings. This got a laugh, but it was a little alarming too. The Queen, his mother, wore a red velvet dress and went rather over the top with her part; she reminded me of a rounder Cruella deVille, minus the cigarette. The doctor, in a long blue velvet damask robe and a funny hat, was doubled by one of the young women who played a Gentleman; she also later played the younger son of Cymbeline. The woman playing the Queen doubled as the older son. The doctor had an accent, which Lydy didn't much care for but which I found curiously effective.
The woman playing Imogen was very good. Imogen gets good lines and Shakespeare obviously loves her to pieces, as do most male critics, but I should think it would be easy to make the part cloying or insipid. This one was just very fresh and open and straightforward, with a nice sense of humor. Posthumus was pretty good too -- a bit dorky, but given his conduct the moment he's exiled, that went over just fine and may well have been deliberate.
Iachimo was the other standout performance, with Imogen. He had a huge amount of charisma even while behaving like a creep, and he handled the language better than anybody other than Imogen. He and Posthumus had a really creepy kind of chemistry when they were making their repulsive bet. That scene was particularly well done, and quite funny underneath its fundamentally revolting nature.
Iachimo and Imogen also had a lot of chemistry; superfically, they looked better together than Imogen and Posthumus. He did very well with his first declaration to her of how she might revenge herself on Posthumus's alleged infidelity; he was slightly over the top in the same manner as the Queen, and when repulsed at once, went even more over the top as he declared that he had only been testing Imogen and Posthumus was guiltless. Imogen's falling for this was completely believable; her affect whenever he spoke well of Posthumus was brilliant. The manner in which Iachimo told his lie about how he and Posthumus and some others had bought a present for the Emperor and how he was concerned for its safety, was much more matter-of-fact, and watching her fall for that too was both touching and exasperating.
It was during the bedroom scene, when Iachimo creeps out of the trunk to take notes on Imogen's bedroom and person so that he can win his bet with Posthumus, that I most vehemently wanted to murder the people in the front row center. There are funny moments, or were in this version, because Iachimo is so full of himself. But when he took Posthumus's bracelet from her arm as she slept, and thrust his arm up into it with that Italian fuck-you gesture, things in this production were no longer funny. The morons in the front row were convulsed with laughter when he lifted the sheet. But both the actors and Shakespeare were better than the morons, and the scene still worked.
Belarius, the man who stole the two princes, was changed in this production into Belaria. I felt really that it was a pity, since they were going so far, that they didn't change Imogen's brothers into sisters as well. What they did do was to insert a line during the bout of forgiveness at the end, wherein Cymbeline kneels to Belaria and asks her to marry him. I did not retain sufficient memory of the second half the play to realize that this was added on, though we all suspected it might have been.
The scenes with Belaria and the boys were not altogether successful. They had quarter-staffs that they did a lot of horseplay with, and they were always running off stage yodelling and yelling, rather like a bunch of Maenads. Really, changing them all to women would have been better. The other flaw in this part of the play was that although the princes are 22 and 23, they act more like they're about fourteen, far less mature than Imogen. A certain amount of this would be persuasive, but there was too much of it.
Everybody had a lot of fun with the battle scenes, though their swordplay could have been better. I remain confused about a couple of things: the young woman who played the younger prince also played a Roman ambassador, who is present in the latter half of the play as written, and I wasn't sure when she was supposed to be whom.
They cut Posthumus's vision, leaving only the extremely sudden appearance of Jupiter. I couldn't really fault the front row center for laughing at that, though the speech was delivered quite well.
Naturally, I wanted to murder the front row center again when Imogen awakes from her drugged sleep and finds the headless body of Cloten, in Posthumus's clothing, next to her. Imogen did a very good job with a scene that might well make actors want to murder the playwright as well. The comic potential is unfortunately high; this is more like a scene from a Jacobean revenge tragedy than from much of Shakespeare. The portrayal of Imogen in this production had been fairly low-key and quiet; the actor conveyed a lot of emotion without raising her voice much. When she stood up and raised her hands to the sky and cried, "Murder in heaven? How?" the front row center wasn't even worth the bother of murdering any more.
The revelations and the orgy of forgiveness at the end were genuinely affecting. Imogen, again, did very well. My objections to parts of that scene are to what Shakespeare did, not to what this production did. I think a little more of Portia in her would have been nice.
Pamela
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I was also there!
Date: 2007-04-02 12:04 am (UTC)Thanks for your review. It illuminated things a bit more; the last step will be for me to actually read the play.
Re: I was also there!
Date: 2007-04-02 01:54 am (UTC)There would have been plenty of appropriate laughter even if those annoying people had been magically teleported away. Lydy was sitting next to somebody who laughed so loudly that he too drowned out lines, but at least his laughter wasn't idiotically timed.
I found that the play read faster than a lot of Shakespeare; some of the language of the later plays is more complex but a lot of it is much simpler than in the earlier ones. Maybe having seen the production will help you give faces and voices to the lines. I've found that sometimes.
It's nice to know that somebody we knew was there!
Pamelaw
Cymbeline
Date: 2007-04-02 02:18 pm (UTC)Nate
Re: Cymbeline
Date: 2007-04-02 03:26 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 02:23 am (UTC)now i need to read the play in my copious free time.
it was so so so good to see you!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 03:39 pm (UTC)It was lovely to see you too. I meant to write about my two Indian lunches with alt.polyconites, but things got too hectic.
P.