So last week I read this review of The Shakespeare Theatre's new production of The Comedy of Errors and just knew the performance would be bad. You know there's going to be trouble when the reviewer thinks the director has done his best (but, alas, not quite managed) to make Shakespeare interesting, right?
I know visiting director Doug Wager's work from his long tenure as the Artistic Director of DC's other major regional theater, the Arena. He even staged (twice) an improbably good Animal Crackers as theater in the round. But while his skills worked well for a Marx Brothers production, they're all wrong for Shakespeare, or so I thought. He's the kind of director I always complain about --one who is essentially uninterested in the script or in the actor as craftsman, and utterly focused on sets, scenery and stage business.
So I entered the theater Saturday night with decidedly low expectations (which, in my case, is usually a good thing, since high expectations often ruin things for me). But, alas, I was quite right. I'm by no means a theatrical fuddy-duddy who thinks Shakespeare must always be played in Elizabethan dress with minimal staging. Indeed, I found the costumes here absolutely marvelous --it's a gorgeous production. Nor have I any problem with all the stage "business" Wager came up with, much of which would certainly have taken place at the Globe, too (although I have to say I found the elaborate scenery a bit distracting by the second act --lots of bit players have to come and go to strike items off a busy set). The problem is that with some exceptions I'll get to in a moment, Wager allows his players to swallow or run over their lines. You can tell from misplaced emphasis on certain words or the rapidity with which they're said that most of the actors do not truly understand what they are saying. Oh, they get the gist of them. But they don't understand the subtleties of them; their performances haven't been honed.
Want to know what an engaged director can do? Think of Robin Williams' performance in Awakenings. Granted, it wasn't a comic performance. But in my view, Robin Williams is a person who genuinely has enormous talent. But too many people bow to his "genius" and allow him to become manic, overbearing and self-referential, to the detriment of that talent. His best performances come when he works with someone who doesn't just say, "Run with it," but instead will help him to craft a performance. Wager seems to have let the whole crew just "run with it." The performances are manic at the level of stage business and underthought at the level of script. Plus, the two female leads are --not to put too fine a point on it-- simply dreadful.
There is light, however: Daniel Breaker as Dromio of Syracuse is simply terrific --he does very well with all the antics on stage, and manages to eke every drop of meaning and color from his lines as well. (He was the marvelous Ariel in last season's Tempest). Here's a nice profile of him from Sunday's WaPo.
I would be remiss not to mention three other fine actors as well, although they all played bit parts. The separated parents of the twin Antiphiloses --Ralph Cosham & Tana Hicken-- are intelligently played. And Floyd King's turn as Pinch proves the theatrical cliché about there being no small parts, only small actors.
I hope I don't scare you off. It's Shakespeare, by howdy, and still an entertaining evening. But it's an unrefined and therefore ultimately unsatisfying evening. (Do I ever like anything not directed by Michael Kahn?)
