Cymbeline

• Cymbeline
• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Wickham Avery
• Produced by dog & pony dc
• Reviewed by Tim Treanor

What a bad idea this is! Dog & pony dc has re-conceived Cymbeline – definitely a minor part of Shakespeare’s canon – as a theatrical exercise in which actors change roles with every scene. To imagine an equivalent, suppose that Arena Stage decided to do the same thing with Death of a Salesman. In the first scene, Rick Foucheux would appear as Willie Loman, and Nancy Robinette as his wife, Linda. In the next scene, the Loman sons Biff and Hap would be played by – Rick Foucheux and Nancy Robinette, respectively. In the next scene, where the Loman family is all together, Robinette would play Biff, Tim Getman would play Linda Loman and Virginia Kull would play Willie Loman. And then…but you get the picture. That’s what happens in this production of Cymbeline.

What makes it worse is that Cymbeline is a play in which Shakespeare indulged his worst predilections toward having his characters skulk around in disguise. Briefly, Cymbeline is a Briton King who is outraged to discover that his daughter, Imogen, has married his ward Leonatus. (Cymbeline had hoped that she would marry Cloten, his second wife’s moron son from a previous relationship). He banishes Leonatus to Rome, where Iachimo, a local braggart, bets big bucks that he can seduce Imogen. Leonatus accepts the challenge, and though Iachimo fails in his mission, he obtains enough information from her to make it look as though he succeeds. Enraged, Leonatus instructs his servant Pisanio to whack Imogen. Instead, Pisanio leads her, disguised as a boy, into the countryside, where she meets – her two brothers, stolen in childhood and raised as rough shepherds, unaware of their royal heritage. Cloten, following Imogen while dressed as Leonatus, annoys one of the shepherd-princes, who proceeds to slice his head off. But when Imogen discovers Cloten’s headless body dressed in Leonatus’ clothes, she draws the natural conclusion. You can see the shades of other, better plays in here – Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, even The Rape of Lucrece. Eventually, it all gets sorted out in the end where, as the great Desi Arnez was prone to say, there’s a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

Thus dog & pony dc has managed to merge one of Shakespeare’s most confusing plays with one of the most confusing forms of presentation possible. The result is, well, confusing. Imagine Imogen, played by a woman, pretending to be a man, talking with her two brothers, both played by men, and laboring under the belief that they are shepherds. Then, in the next scene, Imogen – still a woman pretending to be a man, but now played by a man, talk with the brothers who are now played by women. Had enough?

Director Avery attempts to counteract this confusion by assigning a dominant characteristic to each principal character, so that no matter who the actor is we can identify him by that characteristic. Pisanio always held his arms rigidly at his sides, and Cymbeline always appeared to be holding horse’s reins, even at the table, but other than that I could not see the scheme carried out.

But – so what if I could? If the dog & pony plan had worked perfectly the audience would have sat around saying “Oh, I get it, she’s supposed to be the Queen now!” instead of watching the story unfold. But watching the story unfold is the raison d’etre of theater, and of all the fictive arts. Thus dog & pony’s approach is at best distracting and at worst confusing.

Even worse than the confusion is the total absence of coherent character development.  For example, in the first scene in which Iachimo, the villain, appears, Christian Sullivan makes him seem like a misogynist bully, whose mistrust of women is a part of his religion. In the ensuing scene, Jim Gange makes Iachimo a scheming lecher, akin to Iago. Either interpretation is valid, and either could be developed effectively. But it is one or the other. In dog & pony’s production, it is both, plus the character interpretations of everyone else who gets to play that role. Which is to say, it is nothing.

What makes all this so frustrating is that it is evident that there is real talent on the stage, and a real understanding of the Bard’s stuff. Avery and her dogs and ponies are the genuine article, and were they to present an audience with a genuine Shakespeare play instead of a project from the honors class in a high-class theater graduate program, they would do the Master proud and the audience well. Sullivan and Rachel Grossman are, in my view, particularly strong in this ensemble.

In his interview with Richard Seff, John Kander said that he and Fred Ebb were the last songwriters who were “permitted to fail” on Broadway. The ability to take risks and fail was key to their greatness. The money stakes are too high on Broadway now, but here in DC a certain amount of experimental failure is all right, even good. Dog & pony, a new company, has taken a healthy swing and has not connected. Here’s hoping that the next effort will be more productive.

• Running Time: 1.45 (no intermission)
• When: Thursdays through Sundays until April 27. Sunday shows are at 2 p.m.; all other shows are at 8.
• Where: Round House Theatre Silver Spring, 8461 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD.
• Tickets: $14 – at the door, or on the website.