THE ARTS ETC
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SPECIAL APPEARANCE AT THE DRAMA STUDIO
The Emerging Artists of
Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble
Of Turleygods & Time:
The Tale of King Lear
Adapted from William Shakespeare’s
The Tragedy of King Lear
Directed by Toby Vera Bercovici
REVIEWED BY DONNA BAILEY-THOMPSON
RIVETING!
Eleven bodies, the full cast, lie on the floor, strewn about in positions that suggest their deaths were violent. Suddenly the silence is shattered by a raspy sucking of air that bespeaks emotional pain of unfathomable depth. Realty has pierced Lear’s soul. As he inhales, the bodies attempt to stand, pulling up only a few inches, as if an invisible puppeteer’s strings were loose. On rubbery legs, the dead collapse – always into different positions. It’s as if Lear is willing the dead to life. His suffering at the enormity of his anger’s power suffuses him with guilt and the loss of all he held dear. At times, animated dead are catapulted across the floor. Eventually, this intricate, hypnotic agony escalates into a whirring circle.
This master class in movement is choreographed to the millisecond. The audience is primed for King Lear.
At the Drama Studio, on a bare stage, 11 barefoot actors immerse themselves in the madness let loose by King Lear when his favorite daughter, Cordelia, balks at her father’s command to describe the love she feels for him. Her sisters, Goneril and Regan’s effusive declarations seemed to come trippingly off their tongues, perhaps because they know their responses will determine how much of Lear’s estate they will inherit. Such greed is foreign to Cordelia but her father’s obsessive need for reassurance of her affection literally drives him mad.
Towards the end of the play when there is a brief scene of recognition and affection between Cordelia and her father, knowing this respite is doomed makes its failure more poignant. Later, when King Lear carries his dead daughter onto the stage, she in yards of white intensified by a brilliant white spotlight, there’s a moment when the cradling is reminiscent of The Pieta. Based upon the meticulous attention to details, I doubt the moment of beauty was accidental.
This mesmerizing production relies upon a good script, good direction, and good acting. There are minimal props – swords, a fool’s cap, masks; the deciptively casual costuming could have come from the cast’s closets. The incidental music and sound effects, and the lighting, demonstrate purposeful selection. The cues are delivered on cue.
The Tale of King Lear is appearing this Friday and Saturday, September 2 & 3, 2011, at 7:30, at The Drama Studio.
THE CAST
KING LEAR - DAN MORBYRNE
GONERIL, LEAR’S ELDEST DAUGHTER - ELLEN MORBYME
REGAN, LEAR’S SECOND DAUGHTER - MONICA GIORDANO
CORDELIA, LEAR’S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER- KYLE KATE DUDLEY
EARL OF KENT - LINDA TARDIF
EARL OF GLOUCESTER - ARNALDO ANDRE RIVERA
EDGAR, SON OF GLOUCESTER - SAM PERRY
EDMUND, BASTARD SON TO GLOUCESTER - ALYSSA BREGUET
UKE OF ALBANY, HUSBAND TO GONERIL - MAT BUSSER
DUKE OF CORNWALL, HUSBAND TO REGAN - MICHAEL PRAY
OSWALD, STEWARD TO GONERIL - BRITTANY COSTA
PRODUCTION STAFF
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - SHERYL STOODLEY
STAGE MANAGER - ADRIANA PIANTEDOSI
COSTUME DESIGN - FRANK P. BORRELLI
LIGHTING DESIGN - AMBER TANUDJAJA
SOUND DESIGN - DANIEL M. KENT
CHOREOGRAPHY - MADELYNE CAMERA
FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY - DAN MORBYRNE
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER - LUCY GOUVIN
BOARD OPERATORS - ADRIANA PIANTEDOSI, LUCY GOUVIN
PHOTOGRAPHY & GRAPHIC DESIGN - ELLEN AUGARTEN
ROBIN DOTY
PRODUCTION ASSOCIAT - ELAINE HOFFMAN
Director Toby Vera Bercovici, who recently completed her MFA in Directing at UMass-Amhershas been associated with Serious Play! since she was in high school. At UMass, Bercovici directed House of Bernarda Alba, Night on the Galactic Railroad, and Spring Awakening: A Sin of Omission, for which she also adapted the script.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S NOTE
After a discussion with Serious Play! Alumni Dan (Morbyrne) and Toby (Bercovici) this past spring, while we three were leading the SPITT ensemble training, I recognized their strong passion for working with this play at this time in their lives. The wonderful thing about staging a version of Shakespeare’s LEAR is that there is always more to understand. We can only begin to grasp what the play has to say about parents and children, power and human compassion in nine weeks of rehearsal. Serious Play! was able to provide the time and space needed for these artists to shape their vision. The act of performing and witnessing LEAR brings us all more closely to ourselves, to the choices we make, and to what gives meaning to our lives. I want to thank all of these actors, the designers, the staff and especially the director for their commitment to the ensemble process of creative collaboration – the root of all Serious Play! productions – and for their belief in, and dedication to, theatre as an art form.
-- Sheryl Stoodley, Artistic Director of Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble (since 1995)DIRECTOR'S NOTE
The director Anne Bogart has a quote, “I can choose to approach a play either with the attitude that it is a small controllable canvas or a huge canvas, brimming with untapped potential. If I choose to possess a superior attitude to the material, it will conform, remain safe and unthreatening. It will stay smaller than me. If I adopt the attitude that the project is an adventure larger than anything I might imagine, an entity that will challenge me to find an instinctual path through it, the project will be allowed its proper magnitude.” KING LEAR is an adventure larger than anything I could ever imagine, and it is one of those plays that makes everyone who works on it better – better artists, better people. We, as a group of 20 to 32 year olds, cannot hope to understand everything in this extraordinary script (probably Shakespeare himself did not have a total grasp of it), but why should that stop us from exploring it? We’ll do it now, we’ll do it in ten years, in twenty, in fifty. I am grateful to this brave and talented group of actors and collaborators for diving in with me headfirst, and to Sheryl and Serious Play! for giving us this opportunity.
– Toby Bercovici
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