THEATER REVIEW
Shakespeare in the farce
By John Farrell
Special to the Press-Telegram

HARDLY NEW, MIND you, but the summertime rage is for Shakespeare in the Park.
    Not O’Neill, or Shaw, or Sophocles. The Bard of Avon has tied up the summertime tighter than a reality-show
contestant’s bathing suit.
    Not even the Found Theatre, whose production space is indoors, has managed to resist the seasonal imperative, and it’s
new production, which glories in the title "Fly-by-Night Players Present: Plucked Again," attempts to remedy that defect.
    Written and directed by Cynthia Galles with, as the program notes, liberal input from Shakespeare, "Plucked Again" takes
playgoers to an imaginary outdoor production of "Othello," complete with trees and box lunches. But this is the Othello of
a comic nightmare, where virtually everything that can go wrong, does, to considerable comic intent.
    The problem begins with the actor playing Othello, who takes the wrong freeway and having loaned his cell-phone to
another member of the company, cannot be found. The stage manager has brought the wrong costumes — colorful bird suits
from the company’s children’s theater — and the wrong music. The company’s sign-language interpreter is with Othello, so
a substitute, who has no sign-language ability, is found. All this is before the production begins.
    Things are certain to get worse.
    The actors need work, so they proceed with the play, confident in the fact that Othello doesn’t appear in the first few
scenes. But when Othello’s entrance can no longer be avoided, he is impersonated first by a black sock puppet and then a
giant contrivance made of duct tape, tin cans and a walker borrowed from a patron, all this set to music that has the lilt of a
Laurel and Hardy chase scene.
    Laura Bosworth, who plays the director and Roderigo (everyone doubles in this production), is forced to cope with all
these disasters, and she improvises and alters the work as it slowly falls apart, determined to finish the play, despite
everything. She portrays desperate improvisation with the aplomb of Harold Lloyd.
    Galles plays Iago, the villain of the piece until, hit in the head by a sandbag, she changes roles and becomes Horatio,
Hamlet’s best friend. Groggy, this Iago eventually must play the dual role of Desdemona and Othello in the climatic murder
scene, because the real Desdemona, Joyce Hackett, is also unconscious, after being his in the head with a prop.
    This gives Galles the chance for a tour-de-force performance in both lead roles, disguised only by changing lighting
(provided by colored flashlights) and changing voice. After Othello kills Desdemona, her body is brought on for the final
scene. She inconveniently recovers her wits but only to imagine she is playing Lady Macbeth’s "bloody hands" scene from
"Macbeth."
    All this happens in hardly more time than it takes to tell with behind-the-scenes and before-the-curtain action occurring
simultaneously in a dizzying dance of action, disaster and reaction that makes for delightful, satirical farce.
    Not everything is perfect: The bird costumes the cast is forced to wear are a little too elegant, a little too Elizabethan, and
actually look good. And the cast hasn’t quite got the timing down to perfection, thought that will probably be solved by the
second weekend of performances.
    But that cast has managed to master a variety of characters and mad-cap changes without a hitch. Richard Hackett, for
example plays Cassio, Brabantio and the actor playing those roles, and infects each with eagerness and a terrifying
willingness to carry on despite everything. Galles is Iago, Othello, Desdemona and an actor and never stops to catch her
breath.
    Hackett’s brief essays as Desdemona are fine and she chews the scenery with convincing ferocity when she awakes as
Lady Macbeth. Claire Sharp also plays several roles, notably Iago’s wife, and keeps her head throughout.
    Kelsey Bryan-Zwick designed the effective lighting, is the sound technician for the production, and also plays the first
technician in the piece (no point in doing one job when three are available.) She sits at her sound board calmly while
disaster whirls around her. Virginia DeMoss manages as the other stage technician, called on to act as sign-language
translator when the real one gets lost. Her antic physical descriptions of while the action progresses.
    The Found is dressed up in trees, Astroturf and blue sky for the "outdoor" event, and guests are encouraged to
bring a picnic. (A box lunch from Tony’s Deli Restaurant next door is recommended.) This is the perfect antidote for
too much outdoor theater, although it may itself prove addictive (you may need to see it several times to sort out the
Shakespearean who's who).

Found Takes On Shakespeare’s “Othello” With Comedic Aplomb
By Priscilla Munson
Grunion Gazette Theater Critic

One way or another I  was supposed to get a  dose of the bard this  week. Where I got it, and how it was
packaged, came as quite a surprise.

Under the madcap brilliance of writer-director Cynthia Galles — with liberal input from William Shakespeare — The
Found Theatre took me inside for an evening of outdoor summer comedy.

With their newest offering, “Plucked Again,” Galles and her zany troupe have transformed their intimate downtown
performance space into the great outdoors. It is here in a lovely grove of fake white trees and evergreen Astroturf
that the Foundlings portray the Fly-By-Night Players in an ill-fated production of  “Othello.”

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. An indoor-outdoor “Othello” comedy is a big, fat oxymoron.

Well, you would be right, except that this is The Found. The company that is renowned for their prodigious mastery of
wild, wacky physical comedy set in unusual places.

Along with Galles, the troupe of Laura Bosworth, Kelsey Bryan-Zwick, Virginia DeMoss, Joyce Hackett, Richard
Hackett and Claire Sharp are in superior form as the Fly-By-Night Players.  Their show (within the show) was intended as
a well-rehearsed performance of the bard. But when the lead actor gets waylaid and the crew takes all the wrong costumes,
music and sound effects out to the park, theatrical mayhem ensues.

But the show must go on, even as things go from bad to worse under pressure.

Sans a live “Othello,” the Fly-By-Night Players must quickly fashion a makeshift, semi-robotic Moor out of what they’ve
brought or can find in the park. Standing 8 feet tall, with a shiny trash can lid for a head, a long black drape for a body, huge

The Fly-By-Night Players’ creative adaptation to the myriad of production problems is really put to the test when a piece
of falling scenery knocks the female lead (Joyce Hackett as Othello’s wife, Desdemona) out cold.

Not to worry! The bumbling actor (Cynthia Galles) who’s been playing Iago (a soldier under Othello’s command) while inadvertently slipping in and out of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Damn Yankees,” saves the day by playing both Othello
and Desdemona to perfection.

It’s in this spellbinding moment (in Act V of “Othello” where he kills Desdemona) that Galles shines as the gifted Shakespearean actor she is.

In “Fly-By-Night Players Present: Plucked Again” Galles’ artistic prowess reigns supreme. She’s woven a unique comedic
tapestry by combining broad strokes of  “Othello” and the Shakespearean style with excerpts from other plays, familiar
music like Stravinsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” voiceovers, shadow puppetry and ingenious bird costumes. It all
comes together to hilarious result.

Bring a box supper or gourmet spread and munch your way through this preposterous production that doesn’t have one single fly or pesky ant to deal with.

The Found Theatre’s “Fly-By-Night Players Present: Plucked Again” has come to roost at 251 E. Seventh St. until Sept. 13.

Show time is 8:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Call 433-3363 for your $10 ticket.