Love's Labour's Lost in Santa Monica

Dominic Dromgoole the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare company's recreation of London's Globe Theatre carries the rare features of success in things artistic, the pound at the box office and fund-raising. His production of "Love's Labour's Lost," a hit of the Globe's 2007 season, is one of Shakespeare's early romantic comedies set in France and plays at Santa Monica's Broad Stage November 19th -29th.

Considered by some a difficult play to produce with its "complex word games, literary parody and pedantic verbal jousting," Mr. Dromgoole's production is noted for its physical comedy, "full of brio" and "robust." In the following interview the director discusses aspects of the play's background, notes on-the-road and advice to first-time directors of the Bard's work.

Espresso-Refill: What was your first experience of Shakespeare in a professional setting?

Dominic Dromgoole: Lord, can't remember, have dim memories of Brook's "Dream" when I was about six years old, a very intense "Macbeth" in a small studio theatre, and a wonderful trip to Stratford with my mother.

ER: What were the greatest challenges working the recreation of the Globe theater?

DD: Getting as much of the detail right as possible, and most importantly getting the spirit right, a place where people meet and instantly get excited.

ER: Why is LLL of particular interest to our 2009 audience?

DD: Because it is fun, and fresh and human, and reminds us of the healing powers of merriment.

ER: What was LLL’s appeal the Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences? Do the royal court references present a challenge?

DD: It is the filthiest play ever written, rammed with puns, innuendos and sexual allusions so dirty that they make most modern comedy seem tame. It was a popular hit in its day, and that must have been the reason. The court references are fun and cheeky, but not really of much interest to anyone but academics, so it's not worth worrying them too much.

ER: Do you identify with any of oaths in LLL?

DD: No, they seem absurd to me now, as I'm sure they did to the audience then.

ER: How often is the company given notes while on tour?

DD: They just got a whole wodge yesterday. About once a week - each new venue throws up new thoughts.

ER: Do you see generational differences in actors skills or values? Habits?

DD: Younger actors find it easier to embrace the Globe ethos - lights up, direct address, robust playing - than older actors who still live more in the shadow of Victorian Shakespeare and that whole tradition.

ER: What are the most common mistakes actors make when approach acting Shakespeare?

DD: Forgetting the audience. Shakespeare wrote for an audience, and it is important for actors to remember that their moment, or line, or scene, or journey, is not about the effect it has on them, it is about the effect each has on the audience.

ER: One of Shakespeare’s early comedies and set in France, did you find relevant information that relates to Shakespeare’s French landlords the Mountjoys? Was it playable?

DD: Eminently playable, and full of joy. Charles Nicholls' new book, The Lodger, is full of good stuff abut the Mountjoy's. It is remarkable how many strong and vibrant French women there are in Shakespeare's early plays. He was clearly very impressed, and slightly intimidated by someone in that household.

ER: Did you explore the play’s anti-immigrant sentiments?

DD: I think Shakespeare started out with one idea of what Armado was going to be - a satirical portrait of a comical and silly Spaniard/foreigner - but then the moment Armado opened his mouth, something shifted, and he started writing something rich and complex and sophisticated, as he always did.

ER: Two of Shakespeare’s sonnets appear in play. Does the acuity of the sonnet’s verse contrast with the play’s prevalent verse style?

DD: They are funny, and slightly extraneous set-pieces, but actually rather than being acute, they both introduce moments of quite startling tenderness in quite a robust comic world.

ER: Do you see any similarities of the “little Achademe” illustrated in the play in today’s society?

DD: Not really. Madrassas maybe, but to set the play near one of those would skew the comedy rather heavily.

ER: What is your advice to directors on their first outing with Shakespeare?

DD: Read the play twenty times, try not to read about other productions, make the actors feel comfortable and playful, and, above all, treat it as a new play.


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Photo: Mr. Dromgoole, © Sheila Burnett

"Love's Labour's Lost"
at
The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage

Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center
1310 - 11th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90403

310. 434. 3412


www.thebroadstage.com

Fun Tricks at Swedenborg

Step on the Wild Side

The “39 Steps,” currently at the La Jolla Playhouse, offers the fine Ridiculous Theatre styling of Hitchcock’s classic film of the same name. The difficult directing and acting style that didn’t work with the current Old Globe production of Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep” works splendidly in Maria Aitken’s restaging of her Tony Award winning production.

Each of the four actors in this excellent production is a facile comic ballet dancer in a buffo masquerade that squeezes Hitchcock’s chase movie to the stage with over 100 characters.

Catch it while you can before the show trots off to Seattle.


(l-r): Eric Hissom, Claire Brownell, Scott Parkinson and Ted Deasy


The 39 Steps
Directed by Maria Aitken

Adapted by Patrick Barlow
Based on an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon
Based on the book by John Buchan

Through September 13, 2009

With:
Claire Brownell
Ted Deasy
Eric Hissom
Scott Parkinson

Scenic/Costume Design: Peter McKintosh
Lighting Design: Kevin Adams
Sound Design: Mic Pool

http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org

A Year in the Life and Eliza-Speak

Recently I finished reading "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599" by James Shapiro. I find myself going back the WS for a sense of what is really important in life, his frequently ambiguous POV on the events in his plays and a sense of consolation.

Frequently disillusioned with the work I see on stage in my community, I find I need to look at a source of a life lived in art and mystery; Mr. Shapiro's book presents juicy cases of cause and effect scenarios that seek to explain WS, but we have few facts about him, rather, we rely on interpretation of circumstantial evidence. Contradictions in character/person, my character and in people are becoming more salient to me at this point in the understanding of my "chapter.” Mr. Shapiro writes in a page-turning style.

Also, I found a link to a conference on Shakes. Below is the link to a pod-cast on speaking Shakespeare that includes a speech sample of "original" Elizabethan speak.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/more/will/?podcastItem=speakingfinal.mp3


Interview with James Shapiro: http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=24301&isbn13=9780060088736&displayType=bookinterview

"Spamalot" director Mike Nichols was born in what country?

Broadway San Diego’s next mega musical hits with “Spamalot” based on the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

In a preview video on the making of “Spamalot” the perturbed book writer and Python Eric Idle is seen leaving the show’s first day’s rehearsal saying, “I have to rewrite act two.” That task, set out by director Mike Nichols, proved to be the next daunting step to securing “Spamalot’s” success. The show earned Mr. Nichols his 18th Tony Award for direction and Mr. Idle two 2005 Tony nominations, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original score; he won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.

Broadway San Diego’s Susan Chicoine distributes the most prolific media releases and “back grounders” I’ve had the pleasure to read. Following are section headings from “Spamalot:”

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life! Song Facts, SPAM FACTS from The National Tour (23 bullets worth!), Quotes from Women ~ Pythons Are A Girl’s Best Friend!, Monty Python and the Holy Grail Quote Quiz, The Movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail Trivia Quiz, Monty Python Trivia Quiz, Top Myths About Monty Python’s Spamalot and Drink Like a Knight and See Killer Rabbits!, a series of drink recipes named in “Spamalotiana.”

Here is a quiz on Director Mike Nichols’s trivia.

1. Spamalot director Mike Nichols made his Broadway directing debut with what Neil Simon comedy?
Answer: “Barefoot in the Park” in 1963 starring Robert Redford & Elizabeth Ashley.
2. What was the first motion picture Spamalot director Mike Nichols directed?
Answer: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1966 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.
3. How many Tony Awards, including the one he won for Best Director of Musical for Spamalot, has Mike Nichols won?
Answer: Mike Nichols has won more Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play than any other individual. His five nods were for Barefoot in the Park (1964), Luv and The Odd Couple (1965), Plaza Suite (1968), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972) and The Real Thing (1984). He has also won in other categories for directing the musical Monty Python’s Spamalot (2005) and producing Annie (1977) and The Real Thing (1984). That makes a total of eight Tony Awards.
4. What other Broadway musical did Spamalot director Mike Nichols stage?
Answer: “The Apple Tree” starring Alan Alda in 1966.
5. Spamalot director Mike Nichols was born in what country?
Answer: He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany.
6. Spamalot director Mike Nichols won an Academy Award for direction what film classic?
Answer: “The Graduate” in 1967.
7. Spamalot director Mike Nichols won Emmy Awards for what two made-for-TV films that originally aired on HBO?
Answer: “Wit” and “Angels in America.”
8. Name the famous comic actress/writer who Spamalot director Mike Nichols teamed up with for classic comedy sketches. Hint: She also wrote the screenplay for the Mike Nichols films, “The Birdcage” and “Primary Colors.”
Answer: Elaine May.

Photos:

Mike Nichols, photo credit: popularpersons.org

The Company

Merle Dandridge as "Lady Of The Lake"

Christopher Gurr as King Arthur and Company

Production Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

“Spamalot”

San Diego Civic Theatre
3rd and B Street
Downtown San Diego

September 8-13, 2009

Performance Times:
Tuesday and Wednesday at 7PM
Thursday at 7:30PM
Friday at 8PM
Saturday at 2PM & 8PM
Sunday at 1PM & 6PM

Tickets:
$18--$87

BroadwaySD.com

Herringbone at the La Jolla Playhouse

HERRINGBONE, at times a red herring bone, is a dark musical theatre piece I would have expected to see in the La Jolla Playhouse’s Edge Series, rather, it’s a standard offering. This is a good thing. The BD Wong carried one actor show is the Playhouse’s first genuine noncommercial production in its current programming and is appealing in its challenge. Better if it had been originated in La Jolla; it is a package from New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre that retains its original artistic team.

Gothic in atmosphere with Brechtian informed qualities, sweated out by Mr. Wong under the deft direction of RSC alum Roger Reece, HERRINGBONE showcases the quirky, ironic and at times hauntingly lurid words and music by Ellen Fitzhugh and Skip Kennon respectively incorporated into Tom Cone’s reincarnation of his play by the same name.

The story follows a humble yet hopeful Depression era southern family, sporting its ideal little eight-year-old boy, George, a recent winner of a small town speech contest on American patriotism. Depression era entertainment highlighted child actors. George’s success leads his family to invest in acting lessons that lead to bedevilments and George’s possession by the spirit of a vengeful and lascivious vaudevillian midget hoofer, Lou, who taps the kid and family to profit and, well, you can guess the moral outcome. Eventually, the simple minded horny hotel clerk, Dot, feeds the vaudevillian’s domination of George, which tilts the story to a horrific sexual molestation as Lou satisfies his voracious carnal appetite.

HERRINGBONE trucks with the dark under belly aspects of the give and take of emotional-spiritual nature of acting and America’s ambitious Hollywood fame hungry obsessions at any cost. HERRINGBONE is about numerous topics that a second viewing would prove more satisfying.

Early in the evening, we sense George’s doom. Fame and power hunger drives the evening’s characters and with it the poltergeist’s sexual molestation that arrests George’s development and the result is lasting. The opening of the show presented us with George, head in hands, in a dimly lit drab canvass colored room and closes with the same image only what we assumed was a dressing room changes to the isolated feel of a padded cell.

The story takes on the slow cumulative rhythm of a bolero as the first act plods to populate itself with nine of the ten character’s Mr. Wong, best known for his Tony Award winning performance as M. BUTTERFLY and television roles, skillfully manifests. Act two ratchets up to psychological-spiritual terror and it seems the two and a half hour evening could lose one hour to the same results.

It is Mr. Wong’s diminutive athlete body and voice that must carry the show. This Mr. Wong does and it is an evening of endurance for actor and George alike. The show is a tap dance obstacle course of demanding pinhead character turns and fancy footwork. At times Mr. Wong is working too hard, which may change as HERRINGBONE’S run progresses.

Mr. Reece is a firm practitioner of theatre as communal creative process. Though HERRINGBONE’S titular character is born of deforming family dysfunction, the work is rendered from a vividly functional family of artists. Less serves more in Eugene Lee’s spare scenic design of black high-gloss concentric turntables, pivotal doorway set in dark obscurity framed by classic chaser lights.

Chorographer Darren Lee seamlessly blends a movement vocabulary and vaudeville dance into Mr. Rees’s staging giving Mr. Wong syntax of movement that keeps the ten character’s distinctive. Musical Director Dan Lipton, also at the piano, has trained Mr. Wong through the series of ditties and soliloquies, which at times bare a hint of stressful Kurt Weill-like strains. Mr. Wong’s baritone range proved the richest, yet, he tended to sing flat.

William Ivey Long’s striped pants, white shirt and vest serve as a basic skin for the chameleon demands and his two-toned tap shoes help us keep an eye on Mr. Wong’s telling character touches. Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design and Leon Rothenberg’s sound design deepen HARRINGBONE’S nightmare side-show atmosphere.

This is a tough show for the audience and performer. Mr. Reece and company demand the audience work to keep up with the show, a good risky choice.

The company uses an alienation technique of approach-repel in storytelling; the show progresses with our investment then is abruptly stopped by the narrator’s or BD Wong’s editorial comments on story or the evening’s performance. The derailing reminds us we are sitting in a theatre watching an actor attempting to conjure a story. Returning to the action is a challenge and requires re-attuning oneself to the show’s particulars in order to keep up with the story. We do resume relationship with the show due to Mr. Wong’s performance and our concern for George.

I remained a reluctant participant with the piece till well into act two when the story dynamics converge, making the last 20 mins of the show worth its taxing trip. Mr. Wong’s commitment to the role and tour de force performance in these remaining minutes in a paranoid schizophrenic auto-immune suffocation of George’s last shreds of innocence is hypnotic and horrific. We sit helpless witnesses to Lou’s last power grabs, mixing molestation with his Hollywood star ambitions, that crumble to his downfall and little George’s dive into insanity along with him.

For an edgy evening of theatre, HERRINGBONE is worth the workout.

Photos by Craig Schwartz.

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Herringbone

Starring BD Wong

August 1 - August 30, 2009

Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre

book by TOM CONE
music by SKIP KENNON
lyrics by ELLEN FITZHUGH
directed by ROGER REES
based on the play by TOM CONE

La Jolla Playhouse Box Office
(858) 550-1010

www.lajollaplayhouse.org

Restoration

Claudia Shear as "Giulia" (left) and Natalija Nogulich as "Beatrice" in La Jolla Playhouse's world-premiere production of RESTORATION, photo by Craig Schwartz.

La Jolla Playhouse presents the world premiere of Restoration, written by and starring award-winning playwright/actress Claudia Shear (Dirty Blonde, Blown Sideways Through Life). Natalija Nogulich whose Hedda rocked the Playhouse in 1987 returns in the multiple roles of Marciante/Beatrice/Nonna. The show plays through July 19, 2009.

(L-R) Claudia Shear as "Giulia," Kate Shindle as "Daphne," Natalija Nogulich as "Marciante" and Alan Mandell as "Professor Williams, photo by Craig Schwartz.