PREVIEW:
'Measure for Measure'
Presented Thursday through Sunday by Sunsets with Shakespeare in the Sun Bowl at the Lou Adado River Front Park, Lansing, through Aug. 13. Free admission/suggested donation $2. For information: 517-290-9125 or http://www.sunsetswithshakespeare.com.
One might think that Shakespeare was a little out of sorts when he wrote a comedy about rape, execution, corruption and propositioning a nun. (Perhaps that explains why "Measure for Measure" isn't one of his most oft-produced plays.) But that didn't stop former Okemos resident Caleb Probst from returning home this summer to stage what some experts call "Shakespeare's first problem comedy."
"This is a play about extremes," the young, Chicago-based director recently told Curtain Calls. "You've got a duke who is so far to the left that he'll pardon even the most heinous serial killer. And then you have Angelo who's so far to the right that he's going to execute someone for premarital sex. Both of these are means to try to solve a problem that really lies somewhere in the middle. It's so poignant to what's happening today in this land of extremes."
A dark comedy that searches for clarity amidst much moral ambiguity, Probst discovered the play while taking a dialect class at Syracuse University in New York where, in 2004, he earned a degree in theater. "We had to perform a new dialect each week, and it had to be a soliloquy from a Shakespeare play. I had come across a monologue where Angelo [the Duke's deputy] tells Isabella [a novice nun], 'Let me have sex with you or I'm going to kill your brother [for getting his girlfriend pregnant].' I wondered what it would sound like in a southern dialect. It became even creepier that way."
Fascinated with the scene, Probst began using it for his "bad guy auditions." And when Sunsets for Shakespeare's Artistic Director Todd A. Heywood called this past January and asked if he was interested in directing a show this summer, he couldn't resist suggesting it.
Nor could he turn down returning to the theater company that first turned him on to Shakespeare. "The summer before I left for Syracuse I saw this notice for Sunsets," Probst recalled. "I had never done any Shakespeare, and I thought that Shakespeare is like vegetables – it's something that is good for an actor, and I should just go and do it."
So he auditioned, and landed a role. "I really fell in love with the language. And then as I was studying acting in school, I really focused on classical acting and Shakespeare."
Now he's back directing it. What's more, he's also directing Heywood in a role that's quite a stretch for the well-known LGBT activist. "He was actually the person that I envisioned from the beginning," Probst said of Heywood in the role of the ultra-conservative Angelo. "And I had, I will admit, some slight reservations as any young director would to direct one's boss and mentor. But it's been great. Todd is very professional. When we're in rehearsal, he's an actor who takes direction very well."
Probst describes his production as "Quentin Tarantino and Alice Cooper do Shakespeare." It's still set in Vienna, the director said, "but it's a very twisted version of what America looks like today."
Because it's a dark comedy, the question that begs an answer is this: Will people get it? The director believes they will. "I think we've struck the balance between the dark and the funny."
At least the audience on opening night seemed to appreciate it, Probst said. "So bring a lawn chair and a picnic dinner and come on out!"
