The Actors’ Shakespeare Project opens its new retail location in the heart of Davis Square with “Cymbeline”

The vacant Davis Square retail space housing the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s doesn’t match up to their usual lush digs in Fort Point, which is probably my favorite theater in Boston. Instead of a trendy brick and beam loft space, we get drop ceilings, harsh fluorescent lighting, and the bass line of whatever the bar next door happens to be blaring. It’s actually a lot like the basement of the Goodwill across the street. I suppose it’s all meant to a) cut overhead and b) bring us theater in the raw. A show that forgoes technical elements like costumes, sets, and lighting cues with the aim to deliver language and performance without “distractions” on an ad-hoc stage and with the energy that established theater spaces are often accused of draining from the form. You’ve heard the line. Cymbeline, the first of three plays in the festival and the only one by Shakespeare, achieves these things and in a way that a full-on production could not.

The Storefront on Elm, as it is called, lacks a backstage space, so when they’re not on stage the actors sit in a row of folding chairs behind a pile of instruments that includes everything from a didgeridoo to one of those wooden frog noisemakers. Sound designer Bill Barclay must have trucked in the bulk of his instrument collection. Stage directions are often spoken and scenes and act numbers are always announced. This arrangement make the show feel like a staged reading…a good one where everyone–particularly Brooke Hardman (Imogen), Marya Lowry (Queen, Balaria), De’Lon Grant (Posthumus, Cloten, 1/3 Cornelius), Ken Baltin (Cymbeline, 1/3 Cornelius, Philario), and Risher Reddick (Pisanio Aviragas)–performs with tangible energy. But this intimate, paired-down spirit goes too far and the production lacks cohesion and direction. As good as they are, all the actors pretty much do their own thing.

Things move along well enough without this consonance, but in Cymbeline‘s explosive ending, where Shakespeare almost seems to be parodying himself, the production gets really confused. Director Doug Lockwood has the cast deeply entrenched in the play’s melodrama one minute and explicitly making fun of it the next. Tight and very comic double and triple casting make certain moments come off like one of those condensed Shakespeare shows, where one actor plays two characters in the same scene. But, perhaps all this fits, as Cymbeline is practically an encyclopedia of Shakespearean themes and characters. It’s a Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Shakespeare.

Cymbeline is a lot to fit into a small scale show and many of Lockwood’s cuts and simplifications work well. The simple platform stage covered in cheap Oriental rugs performs beautifully as an officer’s tent. Drone-like humming from off-stage actors provides wonderfully delicate music for a funeral scene. Double casting not only provides economy, but enhances the polarization of certain pairs of characters that’s present in the text, e.g. De’Lon Grant plays the male lead Posthumus as well as his romantic rival Cloten, whom he softens with enough drag queen sass that we can disregard his intentions to weasel into Imogen’s bedchamber while Posthumus is in exile. A sword fight performed with a single slide flute (a flute fight?) doesn’t work so well. In the end, this Cymbeline has its moments and comic and dramatic triumphs, but they’re just not within the thoughtful, conceptual framework we usually see from ASP.

Cymbeline runs through the 20th. The festival continues with John Kuntz’s The Hotel Nepenthe runs February 25th-March 6th and Jon Lipsky’s Living in Exile runs March 9th-20th. All shows at 213 Elm St., Davis Square. $35-$39, with $15 student rush.

Tagged as: Actors' Shakespeare Project, Shakespeare