The Tenth Muse
This commissioned work started out, we were told, to be an adaptation of one of the few surviving plays by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun. It evolved into a story set in a fictionalized version of the convent at San Jeronimo twenty years after her death. Sor Juana was an intellectual and a feminist, and her writing attracted disapproval from the church hierarchy. The play has three young women discovering a cache of her works that were supposed to have been destroyed, and focuses on how they respond to the work and to the influence of one of the sisters who emulates Sor Juana.The play is as much about race and class as it is about feminism: the three central characters are Spaniard, mestizo, and native. These ethnicities dictate their options and those options conflict with their capabilities and desires.
My biggest complaint about this work is that it seemed like we had not gotten very far in plot or character development before intermission. The second half was entirely satisfying, so I can't complain too much, but it would be better, I think, if a little more development moved earlier.
The story takes a particular liberty with Sor Juana's death in a way that serves drama and, perhaps, Truth. And the tone of the ending is a bit ambiguous; presumably this was the intention.
The Liquid Plain
I liked everything about this production of a play that deals with the slave trade in the northern states. The sets, the costumes, the performances were all excellent. My problem is with the play itself.I feel like I missed some essential point. The play hinges around a climactic scene where a character does something surprising. Later we learn that the character has an important secret. But that revelation does not explain the character's behavior—especially when we're told that another character also knew the secret.
The characterizations and dialogue were otherwise fine, but I can't get past this problem.
The Heart of Robin Hood
This play spins a version of Robin Hood where the merry men are still on step 1 of “Steal from the rich, give to the poor” (their reputation is preceding them?) when Marion tries to join them. They also have a strict rule against women in the camp, so Marion has to go Shakespearean and dress up as a boy to teach them a thing or two.Michael Elich gets to have far too much fun playing evil Prince John pursuing Marion and threatening small children. I'm not sure the two children added enough to the story to justify them; the play feels just a bit over-stuffed. But it was plenty of fun, and felt at home amid the Shakespeare.
The Unfortunates
I don't know what to call this. I wouldn't call it a musical—maybe a musical theatrical experience? Let's just say that it was well-performed but the story and the visuals were kind of hallucinatory. Not much plot to speak of, and the bare framing didn't really make sense.A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I quite liked this production. Set in 1964 at a Catholic school (more or less), the framing of Theseus and Hippolyta as a priest and nun who are renouncing their vows to marry actually worked for me. (A nun, like an Amazon, lives in a society of women.) Having the “rustics” be the school's drama teacher, gym teacher, science teacher, lunch lady, and janitor was great, and Brent Hinckley was wonderful as Nick Bottom (but really, they were all good).The lecture we heard drew attention to a peculiar conundrum of the young lovers that is often ignored: at the end of the play, one of them is still under the influence of a magic spell to “correct” his affection toward the proper target. It’s an interesting point, although Demetrius is supposed to have loved Helena before he switched his affections to Hermia, so maybe the magic is really setting things to the way they were supposed to be.
While I love her in other productions, I don't think Gina Daniels’s voice was a good match for the role of Puck this time around.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Okay, I have never seen the classic film adaptation with Marlon Brando, nor any other production, so this was my first Streetcar. I understand that some people have remarked on Stella being a stronger character than they are used to. I have no basis for comparison, but there’s no question that, in this show, Stella knows exactly what she wants, what she has, and the price she is paying for it.Jeffrey King’s performance as Mitch was amazing. I really felt that he inhabited the character. Danforth Comins, who was outstanding as the tortured Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, brought a certain element of self-awareness to Stanley that I think was not right for the character. It didn't ruin things, but I think the play would have been better with a slightly more elemental Stanley.
Cymbeline
One of Shakespeare's later and lesser known plays, Cymbeline is classed as a “romance” along with The Tempest, A Winter's Tale, and Pericles. It’s full of familiar themes: a parent-child reunion after many years, forgiveness, a token of love that becomes false proof of infidelity, a woman dressed as a man, a daughter being forced to marry against her will, parental ghosts, a power-hungry scheming spouse … you get the idea. The preface speaker joked that it was like “Shakespeare's Greatest Hits.”I gather that this production cut a fair bit from the play to make it manageable. Cymbeline has, we are told, the longest final act of any of Shakespeare’s plays, as all the plot threads have to be pulled together and tied up. There are a lot of those threads.
I think they did a good job. I found the play quite satisfying. I don’t even mind too much the director’s decision to play up the “fairy tale” aspects explicitly (the evil queen is dressed like Disney’s, and her poison is delivered in a shiny apple-shaped box; there are elfin ears aplenty and even a slightly ogre-ish jailer). I have to suppose that this production was unusually good, or the play would be more popular.
