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Strange Eventful History
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Independent Shakespeare Company at Atwater Crossing Arts + Innovation Complex
Through November 22
RECOMMENDED:
Few Americans have a detailed understanding of the history behind Shakespeare’s history plays. We may grasp the themes of his work – the struggle for power and/or the Bard’s reflections on what makes or breaks a king – but many of us are less familiar with the actual historical events, or the familial relationship between one warring monarch and the next.
Writer-adapter-performer David Melville sets out to fill these gaps in our knowledge in this entertaining play, which juxtaposes his original scenario – set in a theater or rehearsal hall – with comic and unconventionally staged selections from Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
The play pivots around the efforts of a temperamental Shakespearean actor (Melville) to educate and inform a younger colleague (Erika Soto) about Richard III, the play in which they’ve both been cast..
Too young for the role, the “ingénue” arrives on a day when the director has mysteriously gone AWOL. The rehearsal has been left in the hands of the stage manager (Sam Breen), a Frenchman who loves taking potshots at the actor’s ballooning ego.
When the ingénue – a person with TV aspirations, natch — protests that she hasn’t a clue what her lines are about, the actor commences to draw, step by step, a British royal family tree, starting with Edward II in the early 14th century and spanning 160 years to the reign of his disabled and much maligned descendant (Richard).
His chart, chalked on the wall, accompanies some very funny sequences in which Melville assumes the roles of various kings – the Henrys, the Edwards, the Richards – while Soto depicts an array of ladies, some more nefarious than the men who wear the crown.
Melville is especially entertaining when portraying those sovereigns who prefer their books to their battles, and their courtiers to their queens. Soto is lithe, lovely and immensely watchable whatever she does, while Breen plays the requisite conspirators with smart sardonic skill.
Independent Shakespeare Company at the Independent Studio/ Atwater Crossing Arts + Innovation Complex, 3191 Casitas Ave., Atawater Village; Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through November 22. (818) 720-6306 or www.iscla.org;. Running time approximately 2 hours with one fifteen-minute intermission.
