An Inventive "Cymbeline" Hits Mark
Sacramento Bee
William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" severly tests the patience of its audience and the resources of a
performing company. And Friday evening the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival evoked compelling theater from the script
and prompted its patrons to keep an eye on the stage instead of the exit.
Though dated a few years after the formidable "King Lear," this wayward tragedy was apparently written during a time
when the author's mind was wandering away from detail and poetry. It is a complex and elusive play with a Gilbert &
Sullivan sort of ending, but one that contains powerful elements that can be embellished by those who care.
Shakespeare set his scene just after the scrim of antiquity had been lifted from England and when the island nation was
making its first dim appearance in history. The legions of Julius Caesar were raiding the country, opposed with
questionable effect by a leader named Cunobelin, whose name Shakespeare saw fit to change. But the tale of a
besieged king is just one of a number of themes that run through the script. Also to be considered is a wife separated
from her husband and then reunited, the travails of two banished brothers, and a wager on a woman's virtue that
causes havoc.
The play shuttles between London, Rome and Wales and between castle and cave. A head is severed in one savage
incident, and in one scene that can sorely tax a director and the company's accountant, Jupiter is supposed to make an
entrance on the back of a phoenix and throw around some thunderbolts, as is his custom.
Such goings on often fare better in their own historical period, for like the horrific actions in "King Lear" they seem best
explained in a context of ancient barbarity. Director Laird Williamson, however, has moved the action on fast forward
to a nation under the 20th century black uniform and automatic rifles of fascism. Directors do that all the time now with
Shakespeare, though they do not see fit to produce Neil Simon or Noel Coward in Elizabethan costumes.
Here the trappings are high-tech, with a great deal of metal and a touch of neon, and this and the contemporary
costumes do not blend easily with such Elizabethan speech as "O thou goddess, thou divine nature, how thyself thou
blazonist" and "their royal blood enchafed as the rud'st wind." For a modern context only diverts the play in even more
wayward directions and adds yet another layer of complexity.
But if clarification is lacking here, Williamson has created a production of his own - more Berkleian than Shakespearean,
filled with motion, energy, inventive touches, and even humor in places where the audience is not supposed to laugh.
The cave is a metal frame, also used for a bed, a platform, a battle tank and other uses. Cloten's bloody head is tossed
around as though one were watching the World Cup, and the battle scenes and the entrance of Jupiter are deftly done.
Some fine acting, with a pace that ranges from fast to the frenetic, is generally on view. Douglas Sills is a wonderfully
villainous Iachimo, who bets against a wife's virtue, and Julian Lopez-Morillas is a high-pitched and whining Cymbeline.
Robin Goodrin Nordli handles Imogen's melodramatic moments with ease and insight, and John Bellucci, Bob Devin Jones
and Peter A. Jacobs, and their many colleagues, are just right for this sort of hot-dogging version of a flawed 17th
century classic.
"Cymbeline" is the last festival production to be presented in the company's wooded, rocky amphitheater (a new venue
is being built for next season). And while it is not a model of clarity, it is an exercise in cleverness - and, against all
reason, a highly entertaining play.
-Alfred Kay, Sacramento Bee
August 5, 1990
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