Shakes, Mold and Off-Stage Wars: “Troilus and Cressida”

Danny DiVito, actor turned director, performed as a company member in a NYC basement theatre that ran its electricity off of a hot subway rail (every time a subway went by the lights flashed and the theatre rumbled). I refrain from commenting on San Diego’s Starlight Bowl similarities. Suffice it to say that during DiVito’s performances did not stop for the subway.

Though it is not subterranean, Compass Theatre reminds me of the basement theatres in which I performed in NYC during the early 1970s.

Occasionally the project of a company’s faithful, this type of house’s lobby is coffin-sized and transformed into an abstract of theatre splendor with the de rigueur 8 by 10s of the actors. Sometimes holiday lights are used to frame pictures, or aluminum foil is a design motif.

Upon entering the playing space the scent of mold greets the nostrils. The stage’s ceiling is home to a variety of pipes and is high enough for an actor to wave his arms dramatically without hitting a light instrument. We get to choose where we’ll sit for the evening from 49 beat-up seats loosely screwed to uneven wooden platforms.

Paradoxically, Compass Theatre – formerly 6th @ Penn - and its brethren are essential to the Theatre’s growth.

Such is the home of Shakes’ “Troilus and Cressida,” Thurs through Fri till Oct 5th. Director Welton Jones, for Union-Tribune Theatre Critic, directed the show for steady pace. He and fine Theatre Generalist George Weinberg-Harter collaborated as dramaturges to cut “Troilus” for clarity in plot and to our 2008 attention abilities. The result is a two-hour evening.

PLOT
The setting for the story is the long running Trojan War. Troilus, a brother of Paris, falls in love with Cressida. She loves him, too, but plays hard to get. The plot covers the heroes from Greek mythology including Ulysses, Achilles and Ajax and their plans to try to end the war. The themes cover betrayal and jealousy. In theory, rape, pillage, sodomy, maiming, beheading and looting is the war life of the populace. San Diegans rest assured the obscenities transpire off-stage.

EXECUTION
Mr. Jones keeps the action moving, rather description and discussion of the off stage events and war strategies at a more than steady. The speaking and playing of the text comes up short even with the cuts. Worse, the sensual war battered setting of “Troilus” is essentially absent for actors and audience.

EPHEMERAL
This is a company of wildly divergent acting styles and skills best brought together by the costume design and color palette. Watching “Troilus” is like watching work attempted in a gym: the results are incremental and personal. The evening is enjoyed neither for its whole nor a sum of its parts: it is savored for its moments.

Mr. Jones performed transformational work with some San Diego’s small theatre’s frequently seen actors. Though sustained select moments in various scenes, Jones elicited deliberately understated passion and focused readings from stalwarts Ed Eigner, Gerard Maxwell and the prevailing George Weinberg-Harter. I relished these moments. Experiencing them enabled the taxing evening worth while for they signaled a sea change in the work of actors normally chosen to hand-in work as a “type” or pawn their schtick by directors unable - or worse - unwilling to guide them into new living characters.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY
The greatest miscalculation of attack on this so called “problem play” is action. If we observed the characters inextricably enmeshed with the toils of war and its attendant madness (in both maintaining and suppressing sanity), filth (say, cleaning bandages), starvation (fighting for food) and individuals’ struggle for survival (cruelty against one other) would have given Shakespeare’s characters a context in which to develop a sense of reality. A director could have realized comic opportunities from such circumstances as well. For the better part of the evening we observed characters speaking and moving in senseless stage crossings: madness unto itself. Surprising also is that Mr. Jones, a widely traveled, well read and seasoned theatre writer did not recognize this absence of reality-based action.

THE 15
The fifteen minutes of highlights included:
• Padarus’ (Weinberg-Harter) amusing provocation of the slow Troilus (Michael Zlotnik) to bed valley mall voiced Cressida (Brenna Foley).
• Weinberg-Harter’s song renditions (also of his composition) pricked us with comic relief.
• Laura Kaplan as Cassandra almost shook the balls off the men in this role -- she should have. Maybe she’ll try an entrance while pulling out her hair and screaming. It’s worked for Diana Rigg. An actress needs her own metaphoric set of balls to make this character work against a set of testosterone driven pissing contestants.
• Shelley Williams’ costume designs shot the best stab at setting the period and tone for the show, proved economically convertible and her palette enriched the evening’s experience.
• Ed Eigner’s performances as the Prologue, Menelaus and Priam, though not greatly varied, proved royalty in substance.
• Gerard Maxwell’s Act 2 monologue.
• Christian Lopez’s set design with its midget periaktoi and mix of painted murals and architectural pieces.

Michael Zlotnik received terrific notices for his work with New Village Arts in Odet’s “Awake and Sing.” He is not a “personality actor.” This was my first exposure to his work. Intelligent, diverse in choice, physically possessing in his characters and vocally flexible are some of the skills this young actor already can count among his skills. A word to hungry young actors: this guy has London training. He is the type of actor directors’ value in the canyon (not for long) of casting between community theatre and “Class A” Regional Theatre. Lucky are those directors that engage this thespian’s time upon the stage.