By Bridgette M. Redman
Actors Katherine Mayberry, Scott Wright and Kathleen Bode in "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Photo: Joel L. Schindlbeck.
In the hands of the indifferent, Shakespeare's comedies can be dreadfully dull.
In the hands of the passionate, however, they shine with a magnificence beyond compare.
The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company falls firmly in the category of the passionate. A professional touring ensemble, they are taking "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to several performance venues on the west side of the state from now through the end of February.
Their opening night in Grand Rapids Thursday celebrated all the raucous joy that a Shakespearean comedy can engender. The ensemble arrived prepared and fully committed. The cast's unity created an on-stage chemistry where every particle synthesized according to plan, adapting instantly to the inevitable variations found in live performances.
While there may be an infinite number of stories and interpretations in each of Shakespeare's plays, throwing too many variations into the alchemical mix corrupts the lead and veils the gold. Pigeon Creek elected instead to perform in accord, harmonizing brilliantly so that each actor was committed to telling the same story. Even in those few spots where there were line bobbles, all on stage worked together to rescue each other and keep the story barreling along at the pre-determined madcap pace.
Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company performs under the philosophy of "original practices." In their hands, "original practices" represented an authentic philosophy, not merely an attempt to do Shakespeare on the cheap. Rather they challenged each of the practices and found ways to make it work so that the practices enlightened the story rather than forcing the story to mold to the philosophy.
The original practices worked especially well in the intimate space of Dog Story Theater, where the audience is never more than two rows away from the performers. Out of necessity the actors and audience shared lighting and made frequent eye contact.
The company made effective use of doubling. Scott Lange was Master Ford and Simple, giving diametrically opposite energy levels and physicalities to each character. Katherine Mayberry alternated between Mistress Ford and Jack Rugby while Heather Folkvord made some incredibly fast costume changes to double as Mistress Quickly and Bardolph. Brooke Heintz clearly reveled in her role as Host of the Garter, making broad, masculine choices while her Anne Page was demure and quiet, the young lass getting pulled in different directions by too many suitors.
Under Lange's direction, the cast performed musical numbers at intermission and after the show. They borrowed songs from the '50s that underlined the story with Mistress Ford singing "My Boyfriend's Back" and Master Ford lamenting musically with "Runaround Sue."
While set pieces were minimal, there was no skimping on either costumes or props, and the cast maximized the use of each set piece they had, moving each one on and off with such speed that the play galloped through the entire performance. Occasionally the speed ran roughshod over the text's humor. The verbal sparring that upstages the duel between Doctor Caius and Sir Hugh Evans was fought with machine guns, the mispronunciations lost in an earsplitting staccato splattering the language in a bloody spray across the audience.
Even here, the loss of language specificity was covered with everyone's broad physical and vocal choices that dragged the audience by the hand, leaving no one behind. With nearly all the choices being so broad and strong, a single note of mediocrity rang with particular discord. Surrounded by comedic archetypes, Michael Opatick's Fenton fell flat, the straight man surrounded by clowns. So too was his spaced-out Johnny Depp-inspired Nym too dreary to blend with the colorful characters he interacts with.
Scott Wright's Falstaff and Kathleen Bode's Mistress Page were two such strong characters, wearing their roles like silk gloves snug to each digit. Their voices rang clear and their comedic timing was a thing of beauty. Bode's loving repartee with Dustin Mason's Master Page was particularly sweet, their relationship that of a middle-aged couple who has grown in love and affection as their family undergoes the changes of a child leaving the nest.
Individual performances aside, what makes the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" such a success is the ensemble's dedication to a high-energy comedy that stays faithful to the text and to each other.
REVIEW:
'The Merry Wives of Windsor'
Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company at Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson Ave. SE, Grand Rapids. Thursday-Sunday through Jan. 16. $12. http://www.dogstorytheater.com
