Cardenio
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
City Garage Theatre
Through March 26
RECOMMENDED
For more than 30 years, theatrical gadflies Frédérique Michel and Charles A. Duncombe have defied theatrical trends, presenting some of the most worthy alternative theater on the Los Angeles scene.
That doesn’t mean they don’t know how to whip up a slam-bang crowd pleaser on occasion. Under the sure-handed direction of Michel (Duncombe designed the sets and lighting), their current production of Cardenio at City Garage is certainly that, a lighter-than-air romp that is nonetheless surprisingly thought-provoking.
Considering the heavyweight credits of co-authors Stephen Greenblatt and Charles L. Mee, that’s hardly surprising. Greenblatt, a Shakespearean scholar, among other far-ranging accomplishments, has won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards, while Mee is not only a notable historian but an award-winning playwright whose Greek cycle, Three by Mee, was so memorably mounted by City Garage in 2006.
Mee and Greenblatt use Cardenio – a “lost” Shakespearean play whose arcane antecedents take a lot of parsing — as the jumping off point for a contemporary comedy. Penned by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, heavily borrowing from Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the play was produced in 1613 but then disappeared, only to be subsequently unearthed by 18th century Shakespearean scholar Lewis Theobald, who (dubiously) adapted it anew. That questionable version later burned in a playhouse fire – and so on and so forth.
Suffice to say that Mee and Greenblatt have patched together the surviving snippets in a painstaking exegesis, and, judging from the final product, had a whale of a good time doing it.
The action opens as Anselmo (Anthony Sannazzaro), newly married to Camila (Devin Davis-Lorton) hosts his wedding party at his parents’ Umbria estate. Neurotic in the extreme, Anselmo wheedles his best friend Will (Gifford Irvine) to attempt to seduce his new bride in order to prove her constancy.
Anselmo’s parents (Martha Duncan and Bo Roberts), traveling players both, arrive unexpectedly on the scene with the script of Cardenio in hand, insisting that the wedding guests and household staff mount the play for one performance only. They are accompanied by Susana (Natasha St. Clair-Johnson), Anselmo’s adored college classmate – a complication that sets the stage nicely for a comedy of errors.
The passages from Cardenio itself are intermittent, possibly because the surviving text is scant. The real meat of this play-within-a-play are the present day scenes, Mee and Greenblatt’s flights of fancy, which abound with familiar Shakespearean archetypes, most notably handyman Rudi (Troy Dunn), a wise fool with a philosophical bent and a temperamental streak.
In Michel’s propulsive and imaginative staging, the actors, including Jason Pereira, Angela Beyer, Kat Johnston, Loosema Hakverdian, and Andy Kallok, pitch their performances just shy of slapstick. Scene-stealer Dunn, in particular, chews the scenery with brio, but the entire cast is engaging and well-matched. It all makes for a delightful entertainment, to be sure. But dig a bit deeper and you might discover a heartfelt Valentine to the transformative power of the theater, a fitting message not only for this play, but for City Garage’s enduring mandate.
City Garage Theatre, Bergamot Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1, Santa Monica. Thur.-Sat., 8 pm.; Sun., 4 pm.; through March 26. (310) 453-9939. www.citygarage.org Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes with intermission.
