Cymbeline is usually considered one of the late Romances or so-called problem plays. The production playing in Withrow Park, though, is a comedy, pure and simple.
By William Shakespeare, adapted by Andrew Joseph Richardson
Directed by Brendan McMurtry-Howlett
Tuesdays through Sundays, 7 p.m., until Aug. 31 in Withrow Park
Shakespeare’s First Folio classified it as a tragedy. Nowadays, however, Cymbeline is usually considered one of the late Romances or so-called problem plays.
Brendan McMurtry-Howlett, who directs the Theatre in the Ruff’s version called Cymbeline’s Reign that’s now playing in Withrow Park, has no doubt in his mind. This is a comedy, pure and simple.
Take, for example,
that tricky arch-villain Iachimo. He’s the one, if you remember, who
bets Posthumus that he can seduce his virtuous wife, Imogen, and provide
proof of his nasty deed afterwards.
Usually played with a
sneer and a hiss, David Patrick Flemming’s Iachimo has a horrendous
caricature of an Italian accent and looks for a laugh whenever he can
find one. And while he manages to find quite a few, it is at the expense
of consistency and dramatic tension.
The original play has
three strands. The first is about love lost and found; a young woman
(Imogen) marries a man named Posthumus, but her father (Cymbeline)
thinks she has married beneath her and, because he is the king, banishes
his son-in-law.
The second is about a pair of king’s sons who are lost and then found.
And the third is about a king whose land is being invaded by the Romans (who generally don’t have horrible Italian accents).
In Cymbeline’s Reign, Andrew Joseph Richardson (who also plays Cloten) cuts the missing-sons storyline completely.
Not only does this
radically alter the heft and momentum of the play, it also gives him a
problem with the battle scenes, in which the sons are big heroes. He
solves it by having Imogen bumbling, stumbling and comically dispatching
Roman after Roman.
With the emphasis
firmly on broad, unsophisticated comedy, the piece takes on the feeling
of a medieval pageant or Morality play, something that’s heightened by
the appearance of the God Jupiter.
Which begins us to
McMurtry-Howlett’s conviction that this is a play about humans tossed
around at the whim of the gods, that whatever anyone tries to do in the
play, someone is there to throw a spanner in the works.
I enjoyed Hume Baugh’s
Cymbeline – all choleric rage at the start of the play but something
very different and deeper by the end of it.
As Imogen, Kaitlyn
Riordan adroitly shifts gears in almost every scene – girlish
enthusiasm, loving young wife, betrayed lover, comic
girl-disguised-as-boy, accidental warrior, you name it.
Richardson’s Cloten is
somewhat dull and uninteresting, while Melee Hutton eschews melodrama
and plays the nasty Queen tamely, with claws sheathed. Victor Dolhai,
however, is an amiable and believable Pisanio, and Jesse Griffiths a
straightforward Posthumus.
As a whole, however, the company radiates energy and commitment to the work and to each other. That’s really good to see.
