Four Gentlemen of Verona (or, "Hey, Didn't We Just See This?")

We have two Equity theatre companies in the Boston area devoted primarily to Shakespeare. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company does a splashy outdoor free production on Boston Common every summer, while Actors Shakespeare Project does full seasons of edgy productions in a variety of metro-Boston venues.

I don't think the two consider themselves in competition with one another; their production dates don't overlap, they frequently employ the same actors, Comm Shakes has at least three times ASP's budget, and they arguably are going after different audiences.

ASP is about to open the second production of its season, Two Gentlemen of Verona, next week. Yesterday Comm Shakes announced its upcoming summer production, and its... yup. Two Gents. Two professional productions of the same play in the same region, eight months apart. As it turns out, this is the second time this has happened in three years; they both did Othello in 2010.

This is odd to me. Even if the two companies don't consider themselves in competition, I'd've assumed they consulted one another regarding play selection; some kind of "I call dibs on Hamlet next year" kind of gentleman's agreement. Or Rock-Paper-Scissors. Guess not.

Given that ASP announces its season well in advance, the onus is on Comm Shakes to take ASP's season into consideration; apparently they don't. I don't know nor will I speculate what ASP thinks about this. The differences between the two companies are such that ultimately the effect on each others' audiences is negligible, so I guess in the end it doesn't matter.

Among Boston's fringe theatre scene there has been a fair amount of similar instances. In the past year, for example, two companies did Romeo and Juliet within days of each other, another did a play a professional company on the Cape had done three months prior, another is doing a play performed six months earlier by Boston's local youth troupe, and two companies recently announced the same production to be performed within a year of one another. (UPDATE: a local company just announced they're throwing together a benefit production... of a play another local company is opening the following month.)

These companies are chasing the same audiences, so it does matter. A hundred tickets can separate financial solvency from ruin. There are other considerations as well - companies producing the same play so close together invite comparison and competition. The producers of the first production then is tempted to become protective of their artistic choices, and issues of intellectual property rights then come into play. This promotes competitiveness, divisiveness, secretiveness and disharmony, which is cancerous for a scene that requires unity, openness, and collegiality to survive.

It would be prudent, then, to establish some sort of Best Practice standards regarding play selection. I submit the following.

Dear Fringe Theatre Companies:

When a member of the theatre community approaches you with a script they want you to consider, assume they have a vested interest in it. If they're an actor, they want to act in it. If they're a director, they want to direct. If they're a playwright, they probably wrote it. If you decide to greenlight the production, it's only fair to include them in it. If you don't, from their perspective you're snatching their dream project from them and slamming the door in their face.

Keep the lines of communication open. If they bring you a script and don't hear from you, they have no way of knowing that you're laying the groundwork while they're off pitching it to another company who might just wind up greenlighting it first.

Or maybe they didn't pitch it to you; maybe they just mentioned a particular play near and dear to their heart. If you're suddenly struck with an all-encompassing desire to produce this play yourself, it's only fair to mention it to them beforehand, get their okay, ask if they want to be involved somehow, etc. Otherwise you're stealing their baby.

Maybe it's a play that you've discovered yourself, something you've been dying to produce since you first read it or saw it years ago, or whatever. Before you announce it to the world, avail yourself of the nearest available Internet Search Engine, be it Google, Bing or - god forbid - Yahoo, and check to see if it's been produced locally in the last few years, or if it's already slated for production by another local company.

Okay, so you've committed, come hell or high water, to doing a play that another group is doing a few months or weeks beforehand. As an actor, if I'm in a play that's been made into a movie I make a choice not to see it. I want my creation to be my own, and not influenced - even unconsciously - by someone else's specific choices. And in this case, that prior company's design choices, directorial choices, etc, are their own intellectual property.

On the other hand, if you're the company doing the prior production, you have the option to reach out to that other company and talk about a co-production. Neither you nor they have a monopoly on good ideas; by unifying your efforts, you might have a better show. And you're also splitting your production costs. Why work apart when you can work together?

I understand that it's unrealistic to expect every theatre company to get together once a year to  hammer out a season in which nobody doubles up. But it is possible to observe some guidelines.

• Open communication with people who bring potential ideas/projects/scripts to you.
• Due diligence to make sure your dream production isn't already on some other company's schedule.
• Consider a generally agreed-upon moratorium between productions - if another local company did it within, say, the last couple years, hold off before you do it. My number: five years.
• But if you *must*,  make sure it's your own creation, and not influenced by the earlier show.

At the root of all of this is simply this: although there needs to be some incentive to do the best work we can do, we shoot ourselves in the foot when we work against each other, or needlessly duplicate efforts, or engender bad faith amongst one another. Onstage and off.

Thoughts? Observations? Comments?

On the Economics of Small Theatre

My friend Karen replied to my earlier blog post about small theatre companies who don't/can't offer compensation to their cast/crew by offering an intriguing question. What if these companies gave audiences the option to pay an extra $5 per ticket, and all that extra money was then split amongst the artists?

The practicality of this solution is debatable. But it did get me thinking. Although much of our audience is each other - our fellow theatre colleagues, our families, friends and co-workers - the rest is the general public, who by and large are unaware of the economics of small theatre.

And I should take this moment to talk more about those economics, lest my previous post be considered to be a blanket indictment against these small companies.

It costs a lot to produce a play in Boston.

A three-week rental of the area's various blackbox and small spaces costs between $2,400 (Factory Theatre) to over $6,000 (BCA Plaza Theatre). Dramatists' Play Service's average royalty rate for a full-length play is $75 per performance. Then there's budget for set construction, costume budget, and props. There's publicity - postcards and/or posters and occasionally advertizing space. There are other miscellaneous expenses, particularly if they're utilizing the theatre's in-house tech staff or equipment.

How much is our audience aware of the expense in producing the play they're watching? Are they aware that in many cases, nobody (actors, crew, designers, director, or even producers) gets paid?

What benefit would there be, if any, if these small companies were transparent with their audiences about where their ticket prices go? If they approached their audience with the dilemma they face - wanting to keep ticket prices low but then having little or nothing left for the artists - would they be open to paying a few dollars more? Would they be more open to making donations? Would they be willing to be more supportive of small theatre in general? Get their employers to underwrite productions? Lobby their state/local politicians to create more arts funding?

You never know if there's a theatre lover in your audience who has a lucrative job at one of the Boston area's tech, finance, legal or healthcare companies, who has no idea that box office income never covers the cost of production and the artists involved are largely working without compensation.  This transparency could be the start of productive dialogue that could be a watershed moment for Boston theatre.

My Non-Equity Actor Manifesto

Dear Boston-area non-Equity theatre producers:
I am a non-Equity actor. I call myself a professional due to my two decades' experience, training, attitude and ability. I made a choice to work a full-time career outside of my art from economic necessity. I neither expect nor demand a living wage in exchange for my services.

However.

My time is valuable.
In addition to my full-time job, you're asking me to spend 4-6 weeks in rehearsal and 2-4 weeks in performance. When I'm working on a show, I leave the house at 8:30 am and roll in after 11pm. This is time away from my friends, family and partner. My cats miss me. My laundry and dishes pile up. My milk goes bad. I miss other people's shows. I miss family gatherings. I miss concerts, movies, museum exhibits, TV shows, and other cultural events. I spend money on gas, tolls, parking, bus fare, cab fare and subway fare to get to rehearsal.

My skill set is valuable.
Check out my résumé. I don't need any more exposure or experience, thanks; I've been at this for twenty years. Trust me. I've got plenty.

There is a limited set of circumstances under which I'll work for free.
It's my first time working with you.
I'm excited about the play, the role, the cast, the director, etc.
There's a realistic chance you'll bring me on board as an artistic associate, let me direct someday, etc.

You really should pay your actors.
If you don't already, I strongly suggest you make it your mission in the very near future to do so. This may mean more active/aggressive fundraising, a slightly higher ticket price, or choosing plays with smaller casts. Even if it's only a $100 or $150 stipend, it's a start, and it's meaningful and beneficial to us actors.

I know it's not (always) your fault.
I understand that there are economic realities at play, especially in this city. Performance space is expensive and limited. There's nowhere to rehearse. It costs a lot to put on a show, and I absolutely respect that you want to reach a broad audience and keep ticket prices low. I know you're investing as much if not more time and sweat into this as we are, and quite often you're not making a dime on this either. I don't accuse you of deliberately exploiting the actors of this city; I trust that the vast majority of you would pay us if you could.

But the more that actors are willing to work for free, the more that theatre producers become accustomed to actors working for free. When we set our value at zero, eventually our worth becomes zero.

When you pay your actors:

• You attract better actors, which usually improves the quality of your productions, which usually raises your profile.
• You make the theatre scene more competitive, but in a good way; actors with less experience are motivated to improve their skill set.
• You stymie the attrition of the area's talent pool. You give a reason for early and mid-career artists to stay around, and for artists to settle here.

Until that happy day when someone opens a checkbook and creates a complex of affordable blackboxes specifically for the emerging/small/fringe theatre scene, when the local university theatre programs are more willing to share their spaces and resources, and when there is increased mentoring between larger and smaller theatre companies, a major step in pushing our theatre scene forward is paying the artists you hire. And for our local actors to take a stand and demand compensation.

On Jumping Ship, or the Brack Scale

My friend Christopher Henley, artistic director of DC's WSC Avant Bard theatre company, started a discussion on Facebook yesterday bemoaning the tendency of some actors to 'jump ship,' leaving one production for another, and when (or if) it's ever OK for this to happen.  He openly acknowledged that in times past he was also guilty of 'poaching' actors from other shows, and decried that some directors also offer roles to actors and then retract them when a 'better' actor becomes available.

I've been in shows where actors dropped out during the rehearsal process; usually there was a conflict of styles between the director and actor making a professional working relationship nearly impossible.  In one particular case, the lead dropped out a week into the rehearsal process and I took over the role.  I almost followed in his footsteps - the director (also co-producer, adapter, and actor) was one of the most odious assholes I've ever worked with, and wound up burning so many bridges with the theatre community that he later left town.  Though to be fair, he got a far better performance out of me than most directors could.

And I'm not immune to jumping ship myself.  I did it once and things got very messy indeed.  Some of the mess, however, had nothing to do with my dropping out, but nonetheless there are lessons to be learned from the story.

In November 2007, I accepted the role of Boo in a production of Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo that would go up the following July.  It was a fairly new company: though non-Equity, it paid (as most DC-area companies do), but a few colleagues had reported negative experiences working for them.  It was a bit unusual for a non-Eq theatre to cast a show so far in advance, but it should be noted that no contracts were signed.  Typically signing contracts happens at the first rehearsal, still some six months distant

I was not 100% confident about the production; I wasn't a big Durang fan, and I had reservations about the cast and director.  But it was a lead role, and the producer had wanted to work with me for quite some time.  The year before both he and another company had offered me roles in overlapping productions and I took the other offer, so I felt I kinda owed it to him.  Also, at the time my calendar was distressingly empty so I thought, well, better than nothing.  I acknowledge that these by no means are the best reasons to accept a role in a play, and the onus was on me for accepting.

Barely a week later, another theatre (a bit higher on the DC Theatre food chain) announced its season (very late in the process, as in during the first production of said season).  I was overjoyed to see that their season closer was Howard Brenton's The Romans In Britain.  I was first introduced to this controversial epic a few years earlier in grad school, and I was happy to participate in a staged reading with this company over the past summer.  This was going to be a killer production, and I couldn't wait to audition... until I saw the production dates, which overlapped the dates of Bette and Boo.

I faced an ethical dilemma.  The show that I really really wanted to do, that I would knock down grannies to act in, conflicted with the show I'd already accepted, albeit half-assedly.  I made the decision that I would audition, and if they cast me I'd jump.  When would another opportunity to do this show come up?

A couple months later, auditions for Romans were announced, and, well, I went.  They were a bit unusual; we essentially redid our staged reading for the director (one of the area's leading directors, another reason I really wanted to do this show).  We then had callbacks where we had the choice of what scenes to do.

In the meantime, a colleague had dropped out of Bette and Boo.  He'd been offered a summer tour with American Shakespeare Festival in Staunton, a plum gig with an Equity card awaiting him at the end, so they let him go with no hard feelings.  Soon after they lost their Bette, under circumstances I was unaware of.

Eventually I was offered a role in Romans, joining a list of friends and colleagues I greatly admired.  I began drafting as tactful and apologetic an email that I could to the Bette and Boo people.  I felt very guilty about dropping out, but the devil on my shoulder pointed out that there were still two months before the first rehearsal, and I had signed nothing.  The producer, understandably, was very upset about what he felt was a lateral move, and that in all likelihood he would never cast me in another show.

My guilty conscience was sufficiently stricken that I made overtures to the Romans people that perhaps I ought to decline the role and return to Bette and Boo.  I got a very terse email from one of the production staff that indicated I would be pretty much blackballed from this company as well.  Perhaps this played into my insecurity, and ultimately I threw my lot in with Romans.  A plum ensemble part in a great play with a great director.  Even with the bitter taste in my mouth from that email, this was good, right?

Then the wheels came off.  Two weeks before the first rehearsal, word quickly spread thru my colleagues - Romans was scrapped!  The producers had neglected to secure the rights to the play in advance - not the first time they'd had this problem - and when they finally got around to it, they were denied.  Worldwide performance rights had been frozen for reasons that were unclear (perhaps a film, or a West End revival?), and not even a frantic phone call to the author's agent could change it.

We were understandably upset.  It was a huge cast, nearly two dozen people, and many had turned down other work... I'd burned bridges with another theatre company for this... and there was no show.

A frantic search for a replacement production ensued and long story short, within a week I wound up directing another epic theatre piece in its place, Peter Barnes' Red Noses, with enough roles for as many of the cast that didn't find work in other productions.  We had to scramble to fill several roles since most DC actors were already committed to the Capital Fringe Festival, Source Fest, and a couple other large-cast productions.

One of the actors we pulled in was the replacement for the original Bette.  A couple weeks into their rehearsal process, Bette #2 was having personality conflicts with the director and having a miserable time.  When a mutual friend informed her that we were looking to fill roles, she jumped ship into our show.  It would be a great move for her, since she went on to work with this company for years, but still, at the time, the other company was really pissed.

I'd like to say that Red Noses became a smash hit and was a dream fulfilled, but not exactly.  It was a show that I'm proud of given the circumstances in which it came into production, but we had so many strikes against us - lack of time, lack of money, working in an AC-challenged sweatbox in July - that the show was a disappointment.  Low audiences and horrid reviews led to a production that finished several thousand dollars in the red, and was an arguable nadir for this company.  My own confidence dashed, I wouldn't direct another play for three years.

Likewise, Bette and Boo wound up going through their own nightmares.  Not only did they have to replace nearly a half-dozen actors, through an apparent administrative oversight they also had neglected to secure the performance rights for Bette and Boo.  The publisher pointed out that there was a major Broadway revival running, and under no circumstances could they greenlight them.  By this time they were in tech rehearsals and had invested thousands.  Ultimately after much begging and pleading they were allowed to perform, but they couldn't publicize nor could they be reviewed.  The company went into hiatus afterwards, and only recently have they resumed regular productions - apparently they're now doing very well.  The Red Noses people are doing well now too; they finally escaped their rusty warehouse purgatory into fancy new digs across town, and they are ascending to new heights of success.


Ultimately, I ought to have practiced better judgement in choosing what projects to audition for, and which offers to accept.  And that brings me to cite a very helpful comment to Henley's posting.  My friend and colleague Joe Brack listed the five criteria he uses when contemplating job offers: Money, Travel, Director, Role, and Cast.  If three out of five criteria are favorable, he will take a role.  I hereby resolve to adhere to the Brack Scale.

The Brack Scale presupposes that you've already established yourself as a working actor.  It sometimes is worth it to take a role that fails the Brack Scale test if you have no resumé, but really it's up to the actor to make the judgement call.

I recently had to apply the Brack Scale when I turned down an audition invite.  Great role and minimal travel, but no money, and I didn't know the director or the cast.  I also had resolved to take a few months off until my next gig in the spring.

And I think ultimately the key is having the self-possession and confidence to decline work.  It's nice to be offered work, but accepting work because of insecurity can lead to trainwrecks.  It's good for the ego when somebody is interested in working with you, but it's OK to say no.  If you're good enough, another offer will come, and it's better to decline a role that you have reservations about than to accept it and back out later.

Heaps of praise for ARCADIA - one more week!

The blogosphere is going crazy for Bad Habit Productions' "artful staging" of Tom Stoppard's modern classic Arcadia.

Thomas Garvey, The Hub Review (added 8/30/11) 
"Helped immensely [by being] acted by smart, quirky people who understood what it was about, rather than by a crowd of Equity actors attempting to simulate a professorial intelligence they didn't really have."  
"John Geoffrion brought a welcome spark to Bernard Nightingale, the egotistical, Stoppard-like Byron expert who stomps all over the work of the Byatt-like Hannah Jarvis.  Geoffrion was one of those slight miscastings in the show that worked pretty well anyway - he played Nightingale as more of a twit than a dick, and so the sexual tension between him and Jarvis went missing - but he threw himself with such eager fire into his rants on art and science that you didn't really mind."

Beverly Creasey, Boston Arts Review:
"Bad Habit [makes] the complicated absorbable, the complex illuminated, and the humor utterly delightful... John Geoffrion is hysterical."

Killian Melloy, EDGE Boston:
"Director Daniel Morris ... has a first-rate cast to work with: There is not a weak link or uncertain performance to be seen in this ensemble."

Bryce Lambert, Boston Lowbow:
"Easily the best fringe show I've seen this year."

Sheila Barth, Theater Mirror:
"Bad Habit ... has raised the bar higher and taken Stoppard's timeless play to an exciting level."

John Perich, Periscope Depth
"Bad Habit Productions' Arcadia is well cast in every role"

Becca Kidwell, New England Theatre Geek 

Only FOUR MORE PERFORMANCES!!  Must close August 28th.
Thu 7:30pm, Fri/Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm
Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont St, Boston MA

Tickets $18 online  in advance, $23 at the box office

Plays About People Talking

Petey: There's a new show on the pier.
Meg: Oh, Stanley could be in it, if it's on the pier.
Petey: This is a straight show.
Meg: What do you mean?
Petey: No dancing or singing.
Meg: What do they do then?
Petey: Just talk.
(pause)
Meg: Oh.

Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party

When the curtain rises on that little three-walled room, when those mighty geniuses, those high-priests of art, show us people in the act of eating, drinking, loving, walking, and wearing their coats, and attempt to extract a moral from their insipid talk; when playwrights give us under a thousand different guises the same, same, same old stuff, then I must needs run from it, as Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower that was about to crush him by its vulgarity.

Treplev, in a particularly poorly-translated speech from Chekhov's The Seagull

I saw Happy Medium's production of Douglas Carter Beane's The Country Club last night at the Factory Theatre.  Expertly acted, fantastic chemistry between the characters, nice set, very well-directed, a really terrific production.

Except that I disliked the play itself, on principle.  It's witty, erudite, got some great zingers, etc., which was entertaining up to a point, but in addition to its conventional and obvious structure, it represents an outmoded genre of theatre that I for one am tired of, one that I think does damage to live theatre in general: Plays About People Talking.

(It's also a specific subgenre of PAPT that I, as a lefty, find tedious: Plays About Affluent White People Talking About How Miserable They Are.  But that's not my principal point.)

Douglas Carter Beane fails to effectively answer one essential question: Why Is This A Play?

To re-phrase: what is so intrinsically theatrical about this story that it can only be told as live theatre, as opposed to a movie or a TV show?  And if the answer is "nothing," then that's an issue.  Is this only a play because nobody bought the film rights?

In addition to The Country Club, there are other notable contemporary examples.  Among them:

• Collected Stories and
• Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies
• The Substance of Fire by Jon Robin Baitz
• Burn This by Lanford Wilson
• Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and
• The Lisbon Traviata and
• Master Class by Terence McNally
• Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
• Seascapes With Sharks And Dancer by Don Nigro
• pretty much everything by Neil Simon

(I'll add more as they come to me.)

Counter-examples that I've seen lately:  Most of Whistler's work, especially Tales From Ovid, and IDS's Eurydice.

There was nothing intrinsically theatrical in The Country Club.  There's no connection or engagement with the audience, directly or indirectly.   The fourth wall remained intact.  It was your basic fishbowl play.  We sit and watch people in a one-way fishbowl.  We see in, but they don't see out; the fish do not acknowledge the watchers.

I can easily forgive plays written before the advent of motion pictures, since live theatre was the only creative outlet for performed stories (so Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Shaw easily pass).  But Treplev was right: since the advent of film, television and other live performance media, the theatre needed to find new forms.  Plays like The Country Club are a relic of an obsolete performance style.

Arguably the theatre's greatest strength, in addition to the immediacy and connection of live performance, is its use of alternative symbology, and that symbology's transportive nature.  Onstage, a frying pan can represent a steering wheel.  A feather can represent a bird.  Two actors standing on ladders are George and Emily flirting through their open windows.  Onscreen, a frying pan is a frying pan.  Onstage, a thing is what we decide it is.  Onscreen, it is what it is.

Some plays work because of their use of language; what's transportive onstage would sound overly flowery and unnatural on film.  Hence the poesy of Stoppard, Albee and Overmeyer, the hypnotic memory plays of Pinter, and the gutter poetry of Mamet work better onstage than onscreen.  They don't aim for realism, but acheive a heightened hyper-reality or conversly a dreamy surrealism.  So they get a pass.

Ultimately, PAPTs do long-term damage to the art form.  Why should my above-cited Meg and Petey pay as much as $100 per ticket for the same experience they could get at the cinema for $10, or at home on TV for free?

We need to sell the experience of live (non-musical) theatre as something more than People Talking.  Most of my list keeps getting produced only because there are movie stars in them.  How sustainable is that in the long run?

Thoughts On Defending the Invalid

Howard Sherman of the American Theatre Wing posted a pretty great article titled "Defending The Invalid" about the present and future of theatre.  Yet one of his talking points really struck me, and not in a good way.

4. Yes, it’s expensive to attend in most cases, but when was the last time you bought a ticket to a sporting event or rock concert. Inexplicably, people endlessly discuss how expensive theatre is, but they’re not as quick to say the same of some other forms of live entertainment. I think this is rooted in the idea that theatre is elitist and so this argument is trooped out to reinforce the stereotype, when other entertainments are at least as expensive or even more so. Ironically, sports and rock are priced high in order to pay outrageous sums to a relative handful of people who are often distant figures rarely making a personal connection with their audiences. Theatre is expensive in order to support a distinctly human interaction that is incredibly labor intensive at every level, but if you want to have a moment with your heroes, just take a quick survey of any venue where it’s performed and find the stage door. You’ll see your heroes, maybe even speak with them and get an autograph or a photo, instead of discovering that, say, they’re already on the way to their airport so they can fly home and sleep in their own bed, while you’re still trying to get out of the parking lot.

Although the rest of the article is very on-point, my response to that particular talking point is this:

Balls.

Allow me to elaborate: theatre does not need to be expensive.

I posted a comment on his article (with additions/edits below) thus:

The overriding sentiment of the above talking point can be summarized thus: “Why won’t people pay $100 to see live theatre? Don’t they know how good it is for them?” And that seems shockingly disconnected from reality.

When live (non-musical) theatre and its practitioners are as much a part of the cultural landscape as sports and pop music, then it’s entirely justifiable to price it accordingly. Wake me, however, when Denis O’Hare and Norbert Leo Butz reach the same level of hero worship as Derek Jeter and Justin Timberlake.

I accept that Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Regional LORT theatres operate with high budgets out of necessity, given Union payscales for actors and crew, and the (flawed) assumption that artistic legitimacy must be measured in dollar signs.  When the latter view is taken to extremes, monstrosities like Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark come to pass.

The ideal paradigm for theatre in which [an earlier] commenter’s vision of “Theatre … building empathy, connection and passion for life” can be an actual reality (instead of a quaint trope or marketing phrase), is in smaller venues. A reduction of scale, but not of vision. A performance at a black box theatre seating 99 or less — where one is separated from the performer by inches instead of hundreds of feet — offers a uniquely intense, personal, intimate experience, and is usually economically comparable to a movie ticket or restaurant meal as opposed to a Sox game, a rock concert, or a night at the symphony or opera. And you can wear jeans and not feel judged.

Plus many of the groups I work with bring beer, wine and cookies to share with the audience after. You can’t get more up close and personal with the artists than that.

Over to you, Bread and Puppet Theatre:

John's Boston Debut: THE MASTER FORGER (and a special deal for my readers)

In the days following the end of WW2, wealthy Dutch art dealer Han van Meegeren faces the death penalty for selling a priceless Vermeer to Hermann Goering. Van Meegeren offers an unusual defense: he's no traitor, he's a forger. HE painted it, along with numerous other recently discovered 17th-century Dutch masterpieces. Now to prove his innocence, van Meegeren must paint for his life. Come see David Wiener's stage adaptation of the true story of the greatest art fraud of the 20th century!

 11:11 Theatre Company
presents the New England premiere of
THE MASTER FORGER
by David Wiener
directed by Brian Tuttle


with Jack Schultz (Han van Meegeren), John Geoffrion (Inspector Lyster), Tony Dangerfield (Dr. de Reinsleer), Lauren Eicher (Miss Hougen), Andy Crane (Hermann Goering/Judge Boll), David Rogers (Maj. Jones), and Gabriella Ciambrone (Girl)


Two Weekends Only!
Fri Jan 28, 8pm
Sat Jan 29, 8pm
Sun Jan 30, 3 pm
Thu Feb 3, 8pm
Fri Feb 4, 8pm
Sat Feb 5, 8pm

THE FACTORY THEATRE
791 Tremont St, Boston MA
(Orange Line to Mass Ave, or #1 bus - use rear entrance on Northampton St through parking lot)

Use the promo code CANVAS when ordering online to get $12 tickets (normally $15/$17)
Order tickets here

Theatre Review: I AM HAMLET

"Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." - Nelson Algren.

Very sound advice, that. I would add a codicil: never go to plays (especially Shakespearean adaptations) written and directed by someone who bills himself as "The Shakespeare Guy." Would that I had heeded that advice this evening. Having seen the list of Joe "Shakespeare Guy" Siracusa's other Shakespearean adaptations, including "A Midsummer Knight's Ice Cream" and "The Bard and the Bear," a creeping sense of dread set in as I awaited the curtain.

A wise man once said, "The play's the thing." It's a quote that both writer/director Siracusa and actor Brian Morey should know well, and it's a pity that they put the focus elsewhere, on a self-indulgent production that puts the focus on the actor, the performance, and a grab-bag of gimmickry rather than on the play itself. I found it to be a rather intolerable display of ego, both of the writer and performer. What does it add to our understanding of the play, or of its title character? Nothing.

This is a one-man show; and no, it's not a re-telling of Hamlet from the perspective of a single character. Morey plays everybody, so inevitably the show won't be about Hamlet (the play), or Hamlet (the character), or for that matter Shakespeare. It's all about Morey's bag of actor tricks, and not a single one goes unused. His entire vocal range is utilized, as are a dozen distinct stereotypical characters and physicalities, he dons all manner of costumes, masks, and wigs, and he sings his heart out in a variety of styles and pitch ranges. He makes sure he shows us the length and breadth of his substantial talent and training, and won't let us go until we know just how hard he's working. And that's the problem here; this show is not built for the audience to appreciate the psychological profundity of Shakespeare's humanist masterpiece, it's built for us to marvel at the efforts of a single actor.

The strength of an actor, we're told, is his or her ability to lose one's sense of ego, and go boldly and fearlessly into situations of emotional vulnerability or extreme ridiculousness. And Morey certainly finds himself in such situations. As the Ghost, wearing a giant horned helmet, wearing platform shoes and bearing an enormous shield, I'm sure he felt fearsome indeed, but it was all I could do to suppress the urge to shout "NI!!"

And as Ophelia, which he performs in a white dress and blond wig, I really wish the burly brunette actor had shaved his full beard, especially when he launched into an earnest falsetto (and self-composed) love ballad. High camp? Apparently not. If he was daring us to laugh, it was a dare I only resisted by biting the inside of my cheek to the point of bloodletting.

Siracusa's adaptation doesn't do Morey any favors either. Shakespeare's text has been re-assembled in order for Morey to only have to play one character at a time, turning dialogue into monologue, but in some places Siracusa cops out and has Morey shout to offstage characters and converse with a pre-recorded voice (also Morey). The Players sequence is done as a pre-filmed silent movie - quite cleverly, actually - in which Morey of course plays every character (and provides, thankfully, a beardless Ophelia), including the watching courtiers, while the actual solid flesh actor gets to take an early intermission. This is a solo show, so I call "cheat."

Siracusa also takes some liberties with the wording, adding in his own original contributions which jar. Really, why does Ophelia say "Oh, my lord, I have been so scared of Hamlet's madness!" Does he think we wouldn't know what "affrighted" means? And we really don't need the updates: "I am Hamlet. I am being watched. People are trying to kill me." And when Morey namedrops both himself and the BCA in the "What A Rogue And Peasant Slave Am I" speech, it's Brechtian in the worst sense of the word, and to no apparent purpose.

A scene most telling in its absence is Act Three, Scene Two, Hamlet's advice to the players. It's sound advice that Siracusa and Morey seem to have deliberately chosen to avoid, to their peril: "Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise". And later on, he famously counsels "for anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature."

Would that they had.

PS - A recurring line, both spoken and sung, is "Something's Rotten in Denmark. Something Stinks." Although they open the door for me, I won't take the bait. It's just too easy.