March 24,00
March 24,00
Landon Sealey
Live Play Review: Sun, March 19,00
The Comedy of Errors
by William Shakespeare
One of the more subtle powers of live theatre is its ability to make your mind look one way while it is giving your senses something else. It is this "play" between mind and sense, the eternal struggle for the simple and the relevant, which great writers truly invent (or re-invent) when they pen a theatrical presentation. I say "re-invent" because great plays, like great films, lend themselves to the imitation of the phenomenology of everyday life. However, if the audience leaves wondering whether art imitates life, or vice versa, this success owes itself as much to the director as the original author (be he Poet or man). As with so many great writers, from Shakespeare's poetic overtures to Nietzsche "diecides" (or Divine Elegies/Epitaphs), Shakespeare has, in "The Comedy of Errors", sown the seeds for a revolution in sense and sensibility, an undiscovered country it would appear until March 2000, the years of our Lord. Appearances to one side, for the moment anyway, director Bruce Kirkley, has intuited the sensual and sensible relevance of the supreme advances in science ushered in by the latter part of the 20th century - namely, the discovery of the Multiverse:
The idea of multiple universes -- of regions of space and time beyond the universe we call home -- would seem like pure fantasy. And yet, more and more physicists appear to be embracing the idea of a multiverse -- an array of universes, of which ours is just one member.
The Globe and Mail, February 16,00
Whether our senses are ready for this merging of science and art or not, the synthesis of Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics into String Physics (fibrous corpuscles of matter, energy, and dimension reminiscent of discoveries made as far back as 18th century artists), the realm of the Operative Darkness (Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth) (in Mathematics, simply Zero, the cognitive ground for all real numbers and, thus, all technology) or sensual Creatrix of Cosmos as risen from superstition and religion into contemporary rediscoveries of male and female sacred sensuality(pure knowledge) into mainstream art, music, film and scholarship (William Irwin Thompson). To wit, our myths are taking to light, from scientific to literary to cultural conceit in the form of phenomena(cognition - self-awareness), phenomenology(cognition and non-verbal communication(emotion - knowing that we know - communication), and cross-gender respect (reflective consciousness or sacralized androgyne - modern notions of equality - seeing ourselves in each other and the earth, a Native Wisdom also known as a Medicine Wheel) respectively. Perhaps respect is truly "the muse of civilization"(Anonymous), operating along lines of all human/natural law from science to psychology to art to sentiment(supreme simplicity): "We are a nexus"(Anonymous) - a contemporary aphorism intuited by the first scientist/artists, from early Astrology to witchcraft and Druidry (Stonehenge) to Woman and reborn in 19th century feminist philosophy. Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" should be the theme song for our Taoist Technocracy, a silent and invisible Crystal City as far away as the human imagination, that small silent stream of life that runs through us all and into the ocean that is us equally. This presentation of The Comedy of Errors invites us to participate in the creation of all this, of the modern world, to celebrate the evolution of the body politic.
All this and more whispered in my ear at UCFV's excellent production of this late 16th century comedy. For it is through Shakespeare as much as a child that I learned to repeat well what I hear and always credit the source (respect all humankind). If respect begs us to listen well then this play and its director asks us, magically invites us, to do just that. That is, director Bruce Kirkley invites his audience to perform contemporary myth, from political correctness to technological imagination and both's androgynous implications - in terms of ancient culture, to be the singers and the song, to participate in writing the play, as Shakespeare himself, I believe, always wanted us to know, we are his source. [in terms of what I call sympathetic cultural iconography (a term I've transplanted or hybridized from "Advertising"), artist is the art, human is the environment, every human is a humanist, an artist-priest as much as cultural resource]. With assignment criteria such as "lasting value" and "relevance" now neatly out of the way, I would like to focus on some of the nuances of this production.
As the story goes, two sets of twins as well as a husband and wife are separated ( as were we in time) during a sea voyage. The wife, one child, and servant end up at a port city called Ephesus. The father, Aegeon, follows after his son Antipholus of Syracuse and son's servant, Dromio of Syracuse, leave in search of their brothers, Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus. One way or another, all end up in Ephesus, wherein the wife and mother, Aemilia, also resides as an Abbess. The father, Aegeon, is condemned to die save for the payment of one thousand crowns (perhaps, a metaphor for the movement through a substantial portion of human time). Confusion abounds and this play is set to explore the disquieting experience of having a complete stranger speak to you as though you were as familiar as a husband (or wife). Such conflict sets the stage whereby this particular director accentuates the nuances of gender and person that have occupied us politically for much of the 19th and 20th century, if not all of time. However, Mr. Kirkley delves even deeper by transposing the roles of man and woman (whereby male actors play women and female actors play men) and asking the audience not to think on this distortion(it became so hard to follow I began to ignore it - a strange and delightful experience, really) but to treat the play as though it, too, were a strangely familiar person - us? And who are "we", audience, citizens, or thespians? Mr. Kirkley has, in humanist and Shakespearean fashion, made the profession and process of acting a role (be it female or male) a subject of the play. Bridging one era to another is, of course, the dire necessity to resolve these misdirections, to bring sense and sensuality into alignment, a dramatically ironic need since we and not the actors are aware of this dire necessity to save the father, a supremely relevant dramatic diversion and sympathetic misdirection since it is just such a diversion of our attention which global human and environmental ecology precludes - this diversion being made possible by the fact that we are at a comedy: we know it will end well, unless Mr. Kirkley is a narcissist and not a humanist (laugh, in true Fraser Valley tradition, there's lots of grey area there). And, in deed, several viewers I have talked to didn't go along with the director's innovations, citing that even the actors seemed to forget who was supposed to be a man or a woman (a success in my book). Ironically, people in the late 16th century would probably not have understood or liked these gender innovations either because such a comedy commanded a strong tradition of male foil to female background - women then just didn't have social acceptance of self-determination to carry the self-assertion of the male lead roles. They likely would have found it too strange and expressionistic and perhaps even blasphemous.
If one of the themes, then, could be contemporary relevance, such a theme was accentuated by the use of music from the late 50's and early 60's. The music blended extremely well with the drama, rock n' roll in particular commanding the theatre and polity of the androgynous soul, the thespian in us all - underscoring, for me, the idea that actors are not truly free until their audience is (an idea touched upon by the course material - specifically, Unsworth's Morality Play). That the actors were free (and all seemed very comfortable in their roles) to explore both feminine and masculine personae regardless of sex and to the point of sensual intimacy in the midst of an appreciative audience is a testament to the greatness of our culture. This level of trust was well reciprocated even as a busking clown fraternised and flirted with audience members - proving that the historical and psychological conceit of the tragic libido is ultimately a source of laughter in the face of the freedoms won by both the will and imagination of man and woman.
The lighting was well done and the audience was well lit as well, making good use of this particular theatre architecture, which was small. The contrasted warm and cool colours of orange, blue and purple reflected by light, set and costume really transported my sense of time and mood as much as the play directed my observations of sensuality and self-knowing. This Mannerist or even Psychedelic poetry of the mind and senses was probably the intent of the director since the role of 1st Merchant or mind-doctor was played by a 60's Hippie and the costumes of the male actors were adorned with gaudy sensual ornament, these and some well placed pelvic thrusts, drawing laughing applause from the audience. All in all, this production made me laugh, made me think, and made me see my self and others differently. The actors involvement of the audience was also a factor in spreading the love, so to speak, Chandra Goodey's character in particular (Dromio of Syracuse) doing a good job of comfortably blurring the line between character and audience as she made at least two well timed forays into the crowd. I enjoyed it immensely.