The Sunday, September 21, performance of “Merely Players” felt
a bit rushed, as though there was too much content for the hour-long
performance. The small troupe flew through one select scene from each of several
of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, which at times included masks, pantomime,
and puppetry. Each scene was preceded by an identification of the play, act,
and scene, followed by an introduction of the iconic male and female characters
by way of their specific archetypes.
The puppetry element had promise, but paired with loud music
and singing, the emotionless faces and stiff gestures distracted from the
characters’ lines, which seemed to have been previously recorded and played via
loudspeaker.
When performing Shakespearean theater, regardless of how eternal
and beloved Shakespeare’s work is, it shouldn’t be taken for granted as a
guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Because his verse is layered and playful, with
meaning embedded in poetic turns-of-phrase and complex witticisms, every effort
to convey the brilliant nuance must be undertaken, with a careful
interpretation of his satire and tragedies through body language and vocal
cadence.
Not all of the players involved in this production were
selling their characters. There were recurring problems with timid vocal projection
and stumbled annunciation, and at times the rapid-fire line recitation possessed
little inflection or emotion.
I assume that part of the difficulty was due to the
aforementioned time crunch, and the ambitious nature of trying to fit six
scenes plus additional creative content within the space of an hour.
That said, the group nailed two particular scenes: an early,
spicy interaction between Petruchio and Kate from
“The Taming of the Shrew,” and the emotionally-charged scene in “Othello” in
which the Moorish prince confronts and murders innocent Desdemona. The
difference was mostly brought about by the fact that the actors lost themselves
in their characters’ interactions, creating a space in which the story unfolded
with dramatic immediacy, regardless of the near absence of sets and costumes.
In “Taming,” the pair of players dove into a performance
packed with chemistry, perfectly conveying Petruchio’s
confident teasing and arrogant mocking of his target, Kate, who matched every
remark with bile-filled loathing and indignant scorn. The gestures, blocking,
and expressions were spot on. Tittering from the small audience mirrored my own
amusement, and I actually found myself eager to see the rest of the story
played out between the entertaining duo.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2014.
