The Wicked Wilde Shakespeare Festival
Since 1993, Lisa Wolpe has gained a strong reputation in Los Angeles for her innovative productions of gender-bending Shakespeare, with her all-female productions.
This summer, she has gone further with three hour-long productions of two of Shakespeare’s tragedy’s: “A Winter’s Tale” (now re-titled “A Tyrant’s Tale) and “MacBeth3” (where-in three actors play Macbeth, Lady M., Duncan, Banquo, Witches, MacDuff, etc., and a 75-minute-long THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST” (in which Jack and Algernon are played by women, with Lady Bracknell being played by an older man).
A TYRANT’S TALE is the least effective of the three. A reimagining of A WINTER’S TALE, set in ancient Greece but clothed into a vaguely late Victorian time-period, she takes the worst of Shakespeare’s violent melodrama and cuts much of the broad comedy which never helped his wacko tale of King Leontes (Scott McRae) accusing his chaste wife, Hermione (Heidi Rose Robbins), of infidelity. He has her executed (although she is somehow frozen in marble) amid recriminations towards the King by her friend, Paulina (Lisa Wolpe). Sometime later, we find the daughter of that marriage, Perdita (Laura Covelli) falling in love with the son of his former best-friend, Polixenes, or something akin to that. It magically all comes out well, with Leontes larnin’ his lessons. Or something. It’s a dreadful play, and a not-much-better adaptation, not well directed by Ms. Wolpe. Ironically, her Paulina isn’t as believable as when she plays Jack in “Importance.” Very odd to find a quality actress more comfortable as a man than as a woman. In addition, one may assume that it was much too difficult to produce, cast, direct and act in two of the three plays, especially on a miniscule budget. And it mostly defeats her with TYRANT’S.
The MACBETH3 is the best of the bunch, having been adapted and directed a while back. Here, in some sort of post-apocalyptic earth, three men play all the characters. This allows a fine actor, Kevin Vavasseur, to play Lady Macbeth, as if she were a muscular Blanche Dubois, an interesting interpretation, but one that works. He is ably assisted by Andrew Hefferman as Macbeth and Scott McRae in five other roles.
Oscar Wilde’s THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST is a forthright presentation, changing very little of Wilde’s intent, which was to act as a frothy-mirror to the social affectations of his day. The production is well-mounted, funny, and well-acted by all. As stated above, Ms. Wolpe plays a solid Jack, with voice and movement extremely clever in keeping the character’s needs in front of us. Cynthia Beckert is an agreeably frivolous Algernon, and although she speaks as a man would, she moves still as a woman –thus denying us total belief.
And as entertaining as her production is, what director Wolpe misses is taking the entire notion of gender-bending and casting all the roles upsidedown. By casting two young and talented actresses as the objects of Jack and Algernon’s affections, Gwendolyn (Katrinka Wolfson) and Cecily (Laura Covelli), she allows the comedy to be played much more conventionally. It struck me that the notion of casting against gender should have included having a male Miss Prism (a finely fussy Linda Bisesti here) and a female Dr. Chasuble (an even better Mark Bramhall). By gender-reversing the highly-stylized and budding love-relationship of the schoolteacher and the parson, and allowing both Lane and Merriman to be played by women, it would have made perfect sense in this topsy-turvy world of hers. It does seem odd not to have cast it thus, considering the importance Ms. Wolpe places on allowing her actors to stretch themselves in alternative-universe ideals, a notion this critic heartily supports.
The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, which Lisa Wolpe founded and runs, has discovered a lovely little community theatre to produce her trio of plays in, the Miles Memorial Theatre, built in 1929, set in a quiet and pretty park in Santa Monica, California.
While understanding the limitations Ms. Wolpe was given surrounding her experimental theatre, the whole is not as sustained as the individual parts might suggest. May she continue to thrive, but with more completeness than this summer season has allowed.
THE WICKED WILDE SHAKEPSEARE FESTIVAL continues through June 27th, 2010, at the Miles Memorial Theatre, 1130 Lincoln Blvd, Santa Monica. For reservations: 800.838.3006 or at www.brownpapertickets.com.