What’s hot on the Lexington theatre scene

by Julie Kuzneski Wrinn

November 2014

As mainstream movies become ever less appealing to anyone with respect for the life of the mind, let us turn more often to the live, local, ancient but ephemeral art of theatre. This month Lexington will host a spontaneously combusting Shakespeare Festival. What does that even mean? In the space of 10 days at four different venues and unbeknownst to the directors themselves, the Bard’s plays will proliferate: Shakespeare in Mind, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing. Each is a school production cast entirely with student actors. Kudos to our theatre educators for embracing a formula that I strongly believe in: number of memorized lines by Shakespeare times number of youth speaking them or hearing them as crew members = an enormous benefit to our community even before a single audience member arrives.

But you should definitely arrive, at as many stops as possible on this Shakespeare Crawl, and don’t for a second let the actors’ amateur status give you hesitation. In the words of Mark Stoops, “Why not?” Just as we marvel at young athletic talent, so too should we revel in the burgeoning abilities of our next generation of theatre artists. And Shakespeare surprises us, over and over again, with his relevance. The beheading at the end of Macbeth, or the slut-shaming in the otherwise sparkling banter-fest of Much Ado About Nothing: such scenes once struck me as archaic, impediments to the relatability of literary masterpieces. But headline news is forever traceable in Shakespeare.

This phenomenon inspired an ambitious world premiere at Transylvania University entitled Shakespeare in Mind. Directed by and a project of Transy theatre faculty Michael Bigelow Dixon, the script is a series of 13 short plays, poems, and songs written by Transy students, faculty, and an impressive list of eight professional playwrights from around the country who were “invited to submit original short plays or revised sonnets and soliloquies that place Shakespeare centerstage in the lives of the Millennial Generation.” A sampling from the 80-minute performance:

Shakespeare’s Brainscan, by Elizabeth Wong
Starcrossed by Brooke Jennett and Mollie LaFavers
Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Today, by Richard Dresser
Iago on the Bus, by Dean Staley
Out Light, by Jane Allard
Desdemona’s Heart, by Jeremy Paden

The production also includes original music by composer Nikos Tsaskalakos, and costumes by Missy Johnston combining Renaissance fashion with contemporary clothing.

To truly appreciate such a Shakespeare smorgasbord, it’s necessary to have fluency in the plays themselves, and Lexington regularly affords that opportunity. For students, probably Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet are the most common gateway plays, but Macbeth, as the shortest and spookiest and, in its depiction of evil, most menacing, also has some accessibility to teenagers. Still, it’s ambitious. As 40-year theatre veteran and SCAPA/Lafayette teacher Paul Thomas explained, “I felt that, being a gifted and talented program, SCAPA should always tackle challenging material. Having done such titles as Amadeus, The Elephant Man, Twelve Angry Men, and All the Way Home, it was time to take on the master himself: Shakespeare.” Mr. Thomas acknowledged that “the Elizabethan English was a challenge, but that is precisely why my actors needed to take on the task. Some of the seniors have had work with Shakespearean monologues and sonnets, but the language was new to almost everyone else.” And the infamous beheading scene? Undoubtedly the cast is aware of it, but as any performer knows, the experience of repeated rehearsals carves a work into your brain, for better or worse. Mr. Thomas said, “Due to the troubling images coming from Syria and Iraq, I have deleted the beheading of Macbeth at the play’s conclusion. However, the story reminds us that evil is always with us.”

Theatre teacher Nathan West at Lexington Catholic High School hadn’t intended to do a Shakespeare play, but allowing his seniors input into the drama club’s season, he was surprised by how hard they lobbied for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Shakespeare is still important to high school students” is the good news from Mr. West. I was in ninth grade when I saw my first Shakespeare play, thanks to a field trip to the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, a 90-minute bus ride from my hometown. It was to Midsummer, and I remember understanding barely a word, as if Elizabethan English were a foreign language. But as with any foreign language, fluency is a journey, some adapt sooner than others, and the teenage years are the best time to embark. The many antics and visuals of Midsummer make it an ideal first experience of “Shakespeare without subtitles.” In the Lexington Catholic production, the leads are double-cast, further enhancing that formula of number of lines times number of students memorizing them, while the fairies, Theseus, Hippolyta, Puck, and Oberon are single-cast.

Finally, after medieval Scotland and the woodlands of antique Athens, we arrive at the coastal Italian villa that is the setting for the University of Kentucky’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Matthew Johnson, formerly of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, the cast are all UK undergraduates. Was the Elizabethan English still a challenge for these more seasoned thespians? Yes, but Mr. Johnson explained that many of his actors had completed a course in “Shakespeare Page to Stage” last spring. He pushes them to illuminate as much of the poetry as possible, not just for their own understanding, but to convey that understanding to audiences. So many of the play’s off-color puns and jokes rely on a knowledge of Elizabethan colloquialisms that audiences may lack but which can be conveyed in other ways through the staging of the play.

Much Ado is best known for the romantic sparring of Beatrice and Benedick—forever cast in my mind as Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson from the 1993 film—but their plotline is just one of three. The challenge for any director, said Mr. Johnson, is managing the shifts in tone from their romantic comedy to the anguish of the deceived lovers Hero and Claudio to the machinations of Don John against his brother, Don Pedro. Tying these plotlines together is the “wacky, Marx brothers” tone of the constable Dogberry, whose sins against rhetoric run the gamut from malapropism to redundancy:

Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

Both productions, Midsummer and Much Ado, have been judiciously cut to a running time of about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

There ends our Shakespeare festival, but one more classic awaits: Studio Players presents Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, directed by 34-year theatre veteran Gary McCormick. Mr. McCormick said that it’s the most-produced play of all time but hasn’t been mounted in Lexington in recent memory. Certainly Ms. Christie’s novel by the same title (and variously offensive earlier versions of that title) is considered a modern masterpiece, her best work, and, with over 100 million copies sold, is ranked 7th among world-wide all-time bestsellers (after Harry Potter but before Lord of the Rings—it’s kind of a fascinating list.

The premise is notorious: ten people are lured to an opulent island country estate, heckled about their past misdeeds by a mysterious figure, and murdered, one by one, in the manner of the children’s rhyme. Later in life, Ms. Christie revised the grim ending (it was a hanging) to offer the solace of survivors and a romance, and that is the version produced here. The cast features four actors making their Studio Players debut, plus another six who are veterans of the company. Mr. McCormick explained that the production at the Carriage House uses other areas of the building to evoke that country estate. The squeaky stairs down from the green room to the stage—apparently the bane of many a Studio Players production—are deployed here to dramatize houseguests fleeing attack upstairs. Most of the murders take place in front of the audience, in dark-and-stormy-night conditions, and Mr. McCormick said it was especially fun to procure costumes and furnishings that are faithful to the 1930s time period. With this production, it sounds like Studio Players has hit the sweet spot of its audiences.

Last in this round-up is Balagula Theatre’s production of Venus in Fur, a naughty comedy that Balagula loyalists will immediately perceive as a perfect choice for the organization. Directed by theatre veteran Joe Ferrell making his Balagula directorial debut, the two-person cast stars Rachel Rogers and Kevin Hardesty. Co-artistic director Natasha Williams explained that Ms. Rogers and Mr. Hardesty, also a couple offstage, had previously appeared in Balagula’s productions of Don Juan on Trial and 1984, and together with Mr. Ferrell, hatched this plan to do Venus in Fur together.

The script by David Ives is a play-within-a-play adaptation of the 1870 novel Venus in Furs by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch—and if that seems too unrelentingly arcane, know that the novel and its author inspired the term “masochism.” Ms. Williams is a fan of Ives’s work and has produced several of his short plays at Balagula. Venus in Fur premiered Off Broadway in 2010, moved to Broadway in 2011, and was nominated for a Tony Award for best play. Its then-25-year-old lead actress, Nina Arianda, won a Tony for her star-making performance and was such a critics’ darling that even I heard about her at the time. “Venus in Fur invites both carnal and cerebral excitement” is how the Village Voice put it, and Balagula publicity calls the play “sultry and intelligent.” I’d say it sounds like the perfect antidote to typical treacly holiday fare.

PERFORMANCES (chronological by opening night)

Shakespeare in Mind
World Premiere by Transylvania University
7:30 p.m. on Nov. 13, 15, 20, 21, 22 (no performance on Fri., Nov. 14)
2 p.m. on Sundays, Nov. 16 and 23
$10 general admission, $5 with Transy I.D.
Lucille C. Little Theatre (parking lot on W. 4th St. at N. Upper)
running time: 80 minutes without intermission

And Then There Were None
The Agatha Christie masterpiece
Studio Players
8 p.m. on Nov. 14-15, 21–22, 28–29
2:30 p.m. on Sundays, Nov. 16, 23, and 30
$20 admission, $11 students
Carriage House Theatre, 154 W. Bell Court
running time: 90 minutes

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Lexington Catholic High School Drama Club
7:30 p.m. on Nov. 19, 20, and 22 (no performance on Friday, Nov. 21)
$5 admission
Lexington Catholic High School, 2250 Clays Mill Road
running time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Much Ado About Nothing
University of Kentucky Dept. of Theatre
7:30 p.m. on Nov. 20, 21, 22
2 p.m. on Nov. 22 and 23
$15 general admission, $10 with UK I.D.
Guignol Theatre, 465 Rose St. (parking lots on Rose Lane, or Euclid at Lexington Ave., or behind Memorial Coliseum/Joe Craft Center)
running time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Macbeth
School for the Creative & Performing Arts (SCAPA)
8 p.m. on Nov. 21–22 (also 10 a.m. and 12 noon those days)
$15 general admission, $12 students and senior citizens
Beeler Auditorium, Lafayette High School, 401 Reed Lane
running time: 90 minutes without intermission

Venus in Fur
Balagula Theatre
8 p.m. on Nov. 28–28 and Dec. 5–6
2 p.m. on Sundays, Nov. 30 and Dec. 7
$20 general admission, $15 students
running time: 90 minutes