"Arcadia," a well constructed play whichmakes for a long echoing sit at MAMAI

Czech born Thomas Stoppard is a Jewish British playwright who escaped from his birth country in 1939, just before the Nazi occupation.  Living, in England, he has gained a reputation as one of modern English language’s greatest playwrights.  The recipient of an Academy Award and four Tony Awards, it is generally agreed by theatre analysts that “Arcadia,” a production of which is now on stage at Mamai Theatre, is one of the western world’s greatest plays.

A staging won the 1995 Tony Award for Best Play and then the 2011 Tony for Best Revival of a Play. It is the only play ever to be nominated by the Royal Institution (of Britain) as “the best science book ever written.”

The 1993 written “Arcadia” explores linguistics, philosophy, literature, personality, human rights, censorship, political freedom, science, mathematics, physics, manners, and sexuality.  Thrown in along the way are discussions of sexual jealousy, landscape gardening, dueling, chaos theory, and the war between Classical and Romantic aesthetics.

The play’s unusual format jumps back and forth between present day and the early nineteenth century.  The actions of the earlier era form the subjects and discussions of the present day scenes.  As the play progresses, the past blends into the present to the degree that at the end of the play, the two have blended together.  In a creative bent, Stoppard has four dancers, two from the present and two from the past, perform to the strains of a single waltz melody as the final lights go out.

Interestingly, all of the scenes in “Arcadia” are played in the same acting space, a large room in Sidley Park, an English country house, with a table as the center of attention.  As the play progresses, items from both eras appear on the table.  A laptop computer accompanies a space with quill pens and ink wells.  An apple which is cut and eaten in 1809, is consumed in the “today” scenes.  Homework, notes, letters and books written and read in the nineteenth century, are used in the present.

The activities of two modern sibling scholars, a literature researcher (Chloe Coverly, and a mathematician (Valentine Coverly), juxtapose with the lives of their relatives, who lived in the manor years earlier.

We observe as Thomasina Coverly, the sixteen year old daughter of the manor, studies with her tutor, Septimus Hodge.  Her modern day cousin, Valentine, finds her work and is impressed by her creative ideas about mathematics and physics, well beyond her age and the knowledge findings of the day.

A visit by Lord Byron, who does not appear in person in the play, stimulates much of the conversation in both eras.  In the present, Hannah Jarvis, a writer, investigates a hermit who once lived on the grounds.  (Could it have been Bryon?)  Bernard Nightingale, a literature professor, is looking into the secret life of Byron.  What really happened?  As it turns out, only we, the observers know.

And, as all the modern day investigation takes place, gossip and actual events of the past unravel.  Another connecting link is a “living” tortoise who supposedly bridges the parts of the tale.  (Unfortunately, Mamai’s production uses a plastic tortoise, which leads to confusion and deflects this important reference.)

Stoppard’s language choices are intended to reflect the colloquialisms of early 19th century England and modern England.  Unfortunately, due to the terrible acoustics in the room, plus some poor vocal projection, and the lack of vocal stressing, this, like the tortoise’s  purpose, is lost.

The play ends with the blending of the times. This device brings Stoppard’s beliefs together that Romanticism and Classicism, intuition and logic, thought and feelings, can exist in the same time and space, and that order can be found amid chaos.

Mamai’s “Arcadia,” under the direction of Christine McBurney, though well acted and staged, is hampered by Pilgrim Churches presentation space.  The intimacy works well, but the high ceiling, hard wall surfaces, niches and crannies that allow sound to roam, creates mind-blurring echoes. This is a play that requires listening fidelity.  Every line must be heard to grasp the nuances. (The major topic at intermission was the lack of ability to hear many of the lines.)

Cute and pixy Meghan Grover, developed a Thomasina filled with teenage angst and unbridled enthusiasm.  She, like so many of the 1800 character’s, however, needed a Romantic era shading to her acting.

Handsome Jason Kaufman created a consistent characterization as Septimus, Thomasina’s tutor, but spoke so softly that most of his lines were lost.  This is a tricky performance space and Kaufman fell into the trap of not realizing that the intimacy did not translate into conversational projection.

Stuart Hoffman did use the Romantic era acting style of overdone shading, but since he was one of the few who did, his bulging eyes and over pronunciation made him look out of sync with the rest of the older-era cast.

The modern day cast members had an easier time in developing characters as they only needed to be realistic, sticking to modern acting style.  Scott Esposito’s Bernard was properly fey dusted, and Khaki Hermann, as his sister Chloe, was realistic in her character development.  Christopher Bohan was a little over-the-top, feigning characterization instead of realistically developing the insecure,  opinionated researcher, Bernard Nightingale.  (Is the character a buffoon, a caricature, nothing more than a device for laughter?)

Don McBride’s fragmented set and Benjamin Gantose’s lighting designs worked well.  Jenniver Sparano’s costumes were era correct and helped separate the time periods.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  “Arcadia” is one of the English language’s great plays.  Tom Stoppard’s language is poetic and poignant.  His use of dichotomies is impressive. This is a play worth seeing and Mamai should be praised for selecting and staging the script.  That said, the almost three hour sit became frustrating as many lines could not be heard, echoes exceeded clarity, acting styles weren’t always consistent to their era. The theatre desperately needs to find another venue.  It’s a shame that their quality work and the efforts of the cast are spoiled by the blurring of the dialogue, which is the basis for understanding the playwright’s brilliant efforts.

Mamaí’s “Arcadia” runs through August 3, 2014 at the Pilgrim Church, 2592 West 14th Street, Cleveland. For tickets go to:  http://www.mamaitheatreco.org

Eric Coble, a Cleveland Heights-based writer, is the author of the Alexandra Trilogy.  Each play showcases Alex/Alexa/Alexandra at different ages and stages of her life.

The series starts with “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee,” which was staged by Actors’ Summit in their 2012 season.  The plot finds twenty-two year old Alex, a college grad, working as a barista. Alex’s plan is to have no plan at all.  But into her life accidentally flows handsome, artistic and some-time repairman, Christopher, who seems, in his subtle, and often bumbling way, to have other ideas for Alex’s existence.

“Stranded on Earth,” which finds Alexa, in her 40s, is the second script in the series, but was written last.  It is presently getting its regional premiere in a co-production of Mamai Theatre Company and Theater Ninjas.

“The Velocity of Autumn,” which recently had a Broadway run, garnered Estelle Parsons a Best Acting Tony nomination.  The play had a run at Beck Center last season, feaqturing a superb Dorothy Silver performance.   Velocity was the third play in Coble’s Alexandra trilogy.

Velocity found 78-year old Alexandra barricaded in her NY brownstone,  resisting being put “away” by her children.   She does have slips of memory, her knees and back hurt, she can no longer hold a paint brush, but she is sharp enough to know that she doesn’t want to leave her home and go to an extended care facility.  She thoroughly believes, ‘There are good and bad ways to die.” 

The one-hour, “Stranded on Earth,” an existentialistic exercise, finds Alexa in a state of emotional distress, “asking why do I exist?”  She’s a creative artist who finds herself in the midst of midlife chaos.  Everything has changed.  She isn’t sure where her life went off track and how, or if, can she get restarted.

As she probes and rants, she creates a Jackson Pollack-like abstract painting, tossing and splattering paint from above, then wallowing in it and then traipsing around, blurring the colors to create a final image that is much like her chaotic thoughts.

Coble’s poetic writing in “Stranded on Earth, in contrast to his sequential and traditional verbiage of “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee” and “The Velocity of Autumn” is a little off-setting.  Alexa’s grasping to make things come together in some logical form not only alludes Alexa, but, at times, the viewer.

Coble, who lived on Indian reservations as a youth, uses allusions to the artistic and religious pattern of creating “unfixed sand paintings,” ritual artistic arrangements which are destroyed or blow away after a ceremony is finished.  

Derdriu Ring is compelling as Alexa.  Hers is an impressive performance.  She flows in a torrent of torment, unable to find the right colors, blends, words, images, and clarity to explain to herself, or convey to the viewer, a clear line that makes us believe that she, and us, will be able to find our way.

Director Jeremy Paul, the artistic director of Ninja, has helped Ring develop a mesmerizing performance.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: Mamaí’s mission is “to create intelligent, relevant classical theatre that offers an artistic home for Cleveland’s theatre artists, and equal opportunity for women in the professional theatre community.”  Theater Ninja’s goal is to “reimagine how and why we tell stories, and help us to create deep, fascinating worlds for the audience to explore.”  Their production of Eric Coble’s “Stranded on Earth,” with a master class demonstration of finite acting by Derdriu Ring, well meets both organization’s purposes.  

Mamaí and Theater Ninja’s STRANDED ON EARTH runs through June 22 at the Pilgrim Church, 2592 West 14th Street, Cleveland, For tickets go to:  http://www.mamaitheatreco.org

Oft brilliant, but flawed MEDEA, introduces new professional theatre company

Mamaí,  Cleveland’s newest professional theatre, opened its summer season with a monumental undertaking, a staging of the U.S. premiere of Brendan Kennelly’s translation and script modification of Euripides’ classic tragedy, MEDEA. 

The company’s mission is “to create intelligent, relevant classical theatre that offers an artistic home for Cleveland’s theatre artists, and equal opportunity for women in the professional theatre community.”

MEDEA, considered by many theatre aficionados as one of the greatest plays every written, relates the tale of revenge by Medea, the wife of Jason (of the Argonauts).  Medea, noted as a sorceress, was the daughter of Acetes, king of Colchis, who aided Jason to accomplish his quest for the Golden Fleece.  Medea fell in love with Jason, killed or assisted in killing her brother, and betrayed her father, in order to assist the handsome and manipulative Jason.  They flee to Corinth, where they live for about ten years, rearing two children in relative peace, until Jason, an opportunist, leaves Medea and marries Glauce, the King of Creon’s daughter, with his eye on the throne. 

Medea’s reaction is one of a scorned woman.  Jason’s betrayal turns her into a vindictive psychopath intent on getting revenge at all costs.  She writhes in agony, rants with rage, plots destruction, and acts with no conscience.  Asking “Why must a man always be seeking something?” she contends she “will not be a woman civilized by men,” and rages against Jayson’s infidelity and lack loyalty.  The result is fiery death for Glauce and her father, the infanticide of her children, and Jayson losing love, political position, and his heirs. 

Euripides leaves the viewer aware that Medea has wreaked her revenge, but, he asks, “At what cost?”

MEDEA holds great importance in my theatrical training.  While attending the University of Michigan I had the astonishing experience of working on a production of the script with Dame Judith Anderson portraying Medea, and Jason Robards, Jr, as Jason.  That script was the traditional translation by poet Robinson Jeffers, who was also on the Wolverine campus to share his views regarding the play.

Though the basic story is the same, Brendan Kennelly’s translation and enhancement makes changes in the plot and its development.   The chorus is mainly fragmented into individual characters (a newscaster, several attorneys, a neighbor and a barista).   The children are girls rather than boys who would have been Jason’s heirs, carrying on his sperm and name.   Medea no longer flees in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by her grandfather, the Sun-God.  Jason does not collapse in defeat as his dreams of power disappear, realizing his wrongs—a component of classical tragedy.

Kennelly and/or the director, Bernadette Clemens, have added modern touches to the traditional aspects of the story.  Present are cell phones, i-pads, lawyers, picket fences, and current language being overlaid over traditional rhyme patterns.  Ancient staging devices, such as speaking directly to the audience, are accompanied by interactive spoken lines.

Mamaí’s production is filled with brilliance and frustrations. 

Tracee Patterson’s emotional-breakdown performance is amazing.  She grabs and holds every scene in which she appears.  Her only flaw, which is minor compared to the outstanding level of her acting, is the difficulty in understanding some of her lines.  This was caused by her bending heavily at the waist to illustrate angst, and the director’s pattern of having performers speak to the back wall, cutting off understandable sound.  Yes, Ensemble’s Theatre’s stage, on which the play is being performed, is a small space, but the hard walls and high ceilings causes sound problems even when the actors are facing the audience, but when they don’t, the words get totally lost.

Also strong is Anne McEvoy’s presence as Medea’s lawyer.  Mary Jane Nottage’s opening monologue was well presented, but much too long.  Robert Hawkes was excellent as Creon, but one might question why the role had overtones of comedy in both costume and tone.

In fact, the whole presence of farcical shticks, whether during the scene changes, the song selections, the constant primping by Natalie Green, as the newscaster, or the shenanigans of Jean Cummins as the drunk neighbor, is open to debate.  These actions often upstaged, drew attention away, from important speeches and characters.  Inciting audience laughter during high dramas scenes seemed inappropriate.  Was this done to relieve the angst or was this attempts at humor.  If the latter, why was this done in a tragedy?  Only the director knows.

Jason Kaufman, though displaying the sensual presence of Jason, seemed divorced from performance involvement.  Even in the wrenching scene in which the dead bloodied bodies of his children were brought on stage for his viewing and touching, there appeared to be only surface level reaction.  (Why the bodies were brought out at all is another of those directorial decisions that begs for explanation, especially with the audience only a few feet from their overwhelming presence.)

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  MEDEA, a masterpiece example of classical tragedy, is one of the Western world’s greatest plays. It is a daunting undertaking.  Some directorial decisions and story interpretation in this staging seem questionable, but the production is blessed with a brilliant performance by Tracee Patterson.  It’s worth going just to see this amazing actress spin her maniacal magic.

Mamaí’s MEDEA runs through June 30 at the Ensemble Theatre, housed in Coventry School, 2843 Washington Blvd, Cleveland Heights.  For tickets go to:  http://www.mamaitheatreco.org