*The Comedy of Errors*: review by Reed McColm

A cheerful production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, the Bard’s earliest comedy (possibly his first play ever), was staged by Bill Marlowe’s Revelers Drama troupe at SFCC this month. Marlowe himself directed with expected energy and verve, using an unusually swift, clean, and locally flavored adaptation of the original by none less than The Inlander’s busy theater critic Michael Bowen. In addition to cutting, revising, and retouching the prose, Bowen also undertook a role of crucial authority onstage, in the person of the Duke, whose judge-like appearances bookended the play and both triggered and concluded the delightful confusion. That Bowen pulls off all his roles rather well was perhaps the happiest news of the evening, given the many ways his ambitious efforts could have disappointed.

The Comedy of Errors depends on something of a stretch. Identical twin brothers, sons of a wealthy merchant (here called Cleon), are separated soon after birth in a storm at sea. In the same storm, another set of identical infants, sons of a poor woman, are also separated. One boy from each set is thereafter raised by Cleon, while the other two mismatched boys are kept by the mother in another city, neither set knowing what happened to the other. (Hate when that happens.) And all of this happens decades before the play even begins. Whew.

Further complicating the bustle is that both sets of boys are identically named. Where Shakespeare called both twin noblemen Antipholus, Bowen renamed them Nicholas; the two servants, formerly each known as Dromio, were here both Yoyo. (Comical, yes — but is that more credible a name?). These sobriquets are of course necessary for misidentifications to work, but the befuddlement could easily spread out from the stage and hopelessly into the house. Shakespeare helped satisfy the problem by identifying one set as being from Ephesus, and the other from Syracuse; Bowen helpfully reset the towns as Hillyard and Kennewick, and — what do you know? — that was fun. Marlowe’s deft direction and, especially, his bright costume plot (Renae Meredith designed the set and coordinated costumes) made relationships clear, without betraying the (in)credibility of mistaken identities made by the characters.

review of The Comedy of Errors
by Shakespeare; adaptation by Michael Bowen
Directed by William Marlowe
SFCC Revelers Drama, Spartan Theatre
reviewed by Reed McColm; based on the March 13, 2010 performance

Bobo comments:

Reed was awfully generous here, given that he had directed the Interplayers production in February of Honky Tonk Angels, which Bowen savaged in print. Errors closed on March 14, but it's nice to hear another voice in local theater reviews.

[ photo: Reed McColm, from booksinmotion.com ]

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Bobo has finally been hired by *The Inlander*!

Three and a half years after beginning his attempt to present an alternative to the alternative to the *Spokesman-Review,* the powers that be at *The Inlander* have finally condescended to admit Bobo into the hallowed halls of their official Website. They've put him on their fancy-schmancy-but-still-in-beta homepage.

So — to return to the blog that you're already at (?!) — steer your browser to
inlander.com and click on the start page's "Arts & Culture" link. Then just scroll down a bit and click on the "Stage Thrust" icon in the left-hand column.
You will be right back where you started, and you will know the place for the first time.

still in the cage

Lessons from doing The Zoo Story
Bobo and Brian Russo were asked by Tom Davis of the Peaceful Valley community to perform the play one last time (we did four performances at Empyrean in late April) -- only this time, in an actual outdoor city park:
Saturday, June 21, at 7:30 pm, at Glover Field, outside where the marmots roam just east of the Peaceful Valley Community Center (which is itself below and just east of the Maple St. Bridge) Five bucks; cash only. Outdoors. We're apparently going to be miked, because of the rushing-river noise. We'll literally have to sweep up all the marmot shit out of the playing area in order to be able to perform. The setting does have a Central Park in NYC vibe, which is suited to where Albee placed his 1959 play.

Bobo doesn't think he was very good in the role. (Way to keep that confidence up, going into one last performance!) I mean, I don't think I completely embarrassed myself, but I think I overreacted while listening to Brian's Jerry rant on and on. I was OK. The knifing scene and tragic ending came off better than I feared -- I really thought it was going to be just laughable and awful, and I _think_ we avoided that. (Not entirely sure.)
I learned how much effort it takes just to publicize a play. Making all the arragnements, putting up all the posters, hoping against hope that somebody, anybody will show up. (We were hoping for 4 x 25 = 100 paid playgoers; we got something like 26 + 20 + 32 + 63 on the four nights. Expecting to LOSE money on this venture, Bobo actually made some money on this gig. Does that make him a professional actor? Ha. Far from it.
I was reminded of all the work that goes into memorizing and blocking and re-blocking a show. Best of all, every time I felt like giving half-effort ("But my job is so demanding!"), I'd remind myself: People who act and volunteer at the Civic (and lots of other theaters in this region) have other jobs, too. They're tired. They still give it their all. Stop whining.
I discovered that varying reactions while listening onstage is really difficult. Jerry is the star; Peter (my part) is just the straight man. Since Brian was the director and the Gonzaga student who was supposed to videotape our performance blew it, we've never really seen ourselves. I'm not saying I was badly directed, or didn't get any direction. I'm just not very good.
But it's good for a critic occasionally (was Guys and Dolls at the Civic really six years ago?) to get out there and take a whack at doing what he so presumptuously criticizes all the time.
The need to practice with props, over and over, paying attention to every little detail even in the awareness that you are not in an earthshaking Broadway show, and does it really matter even a little bit in the grand scheme of things? Just another tiny pebble in the grand edifice of theater history.
The need to bring it every night, never knowing who's going to be out there: The "green room" at Empyrean was their food storage area, a concrete cell. Russo spent the half-hour before curtain every night pacing around, smacking himself, muttering his lines. Opening night, he comes out intense as hell, blew me off the stage. Second night, not quite as sweaty or with it, he goes up entirely at one point (remember, he's got a 15-minute "dog" speech, and that's only one of his long speeches), has to backtrack obviously, I can't figure out how to help him -- and that's the night Michael Weaver was there.
So much for getting a job at ARt.
I really have no idea who showed up. Some friends from work. My wife and daughter. Patrick and Heather McHenry-Kroetch and Abbey Crawford on closing night.
The constant self-berating: could have done this better, should have done that better. Ho-hum -- actors go through that all the time.
The anticlimactic let-down at the end: We put all that effort into it, and now it's not going to be duplicated, ever again, quite the same way (or at all). Welcome to the transience of theater: all the more to be treasured, because we are all wisps, going going gone.

Did going through all these difficulties make me a kinder and gentler critic? Not according to the adherents of Man of La Mancha. More on that in a moment. But Bobo is very much aware that there are dozens, hundreds of people in this town far more talented that he is at singing, dancing, acting, you name it. I'm in awe of the dedication and resolve on view on stages all around here. I often come out of plays thinking, How did she do that? I could never do that.
Disagree with me if you want, but don't think that I'm not a supporter of the Spokane theater scene.

opening-night review of *The Night of the Iguana*

Dark Night of the Soul
on Spokane Civic Theatre's Main Stage through March 8

What people do when they're trapped reveals character. In Tennessee Williams' *The Night of the Iguana,* the threats are loneliness, poverty, cynicism and spiritual emptiness -- and a seedy Mexican resort offers no apparent escape other than the pleasures of the flesh.
In a solid, sometimes uneven, production that nonetheless illuminates most of Williams' emotional high points, director Marianne McLaughlin has created a dark night of self-examination for three lonely souls -- earthy widow, generous artist, self-castigating minister -- in the unlikely environs of the Costa Verde Hotel (and at Spokane Civic Theatre through March 8).

Ric Benson has the exasperation and wheedling of Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon down without catching the self-disgust. With suspenders dangling and a plaintive tone, Benson projects the sleaze of the used car salesman or televangelist, but not the corrupted fleshiness of the man who's sought out young girls and booze as a means of escape. His cries of anguish and "Great Caesar's ghost!" were unconvincing; later, angrier outbursts (flinging his clerical collar into the bushes, a re-enactment of the contempt he felt in the pulpit for his well-fed parishioners driving around in their "shiny black cockroach sedans") were more convincing.
Since we discover that Shannon, from an early age has associated sexual pleasure with punishment, it's not surprising that he's tormented, histrionic, torn between the promptings of the flesh and the spirit. But with biceps tensed beside his clerical collar and false black shirtfront -- and with his face frequently turned, full of questions, up into the light -- Benson sometimes embodies the spiritual/sexual divide in Shannon's soul. Of course, it doesn't help that in Williams's overwritten second act, Benson is saddled with speeches spelling out what the iguana symbolizes.

In a promising Civic debut, Manu Peters presents a Hannah Jelkes who's less ethereal, less spinsterish than the norm. There's a kind of moral earnestness and idealism that emanates from her dignified line delivery that anchors this production's stance against despair. It's the evening's best characterization. Often Peters is helped by McLaughlin's direction (a parallel appearance with Shannon -- Hannah in her artist's frock, the reverend re-frocking himself, both of them girding themselves against their fears).
There's pain in her face as she listens to her grandfather recite poetry or to Shannon's complaints against God. Hannah spends much time caring for others; without being fussy about it, Peters uses the stage business to make her character seem filled with empathy. Breathing deeply to calm herself, clutching a beautiful but flimsy robe around her, Peters stands up to Benson's seductions of mind and body, charting her own course in a world that doesn't much care for sketch artists or "a minor-league poet with a major-league spirit." Hannah needs to stand up among the epicures as a pillar of rectitude and self-reliance; Peters has the simple dignity to do just that.

Melody Deatherage is surprisingly sensual and earthy as Maxine the horny widow. She unbuttons her blouse, paws Shannon's chest and -- at first sight of others' misforutnes -- throws her head back with a cackle. Released from a loveless marriage, she's betting that cuddles and rum cocoas will help stave off the gulf in her soul. But she leaves Shannon's rejections -- push-backs and insults, like a warning that she can't afford to be a "sexual snob" anymore -- awkwardly underplayed.
Judi Pratt, meanwhile, has a nice comic turn full of throaty hauteur as the leader of the puritannical pack stuffed into Shannon's tour bus and none too happy about it.

Set designer Peter Hardie spreads cane chairs across the verandah of a flimsy hotel. Jungle sounds emanate from just past the walkway there, and rivulets of water drip from tin roof's grooves during the first-act-ending (and, since this is Williams) symbolic downpour.
The opening guitar-violin-crickets-harmonica sequence is only the first instance of crisp offstage sounds credited to Bryan D. Durbin and Steve Fisher along with Becky Moonitz as music consultant.
Costumers Susan Berger and Jan Wanless do their usual capable job -- with the ornate flimsiness of Hannah Jelkes' last-act Asian robe a real highlight -- though in the early going, there are rather too many men running around in off-white suits.

Chris Carbis' elderly poet chimes in like a chorus, emphasizing how we should strive against the "betrayal of despair," about how so much of life involves "bargaining with mold and mist." Most of us strain to find ways of evading despair and instilling life with significance before the long decline toward death. In the final debate between Hannah and Shannon -- and in the final image of a character thrown back on slender resources -- McLaughlin's production of Williams' final masterpiece depicts our struggles against despair often enough to prompt thought long after the jungle sounds have faded away.