• Romeo and Juliet, Summer 2012
• Hamlet, Summer 2012

Romeo and Juliet will be directed by Katie Logan, while Hamlet will be directed by Elizabth Nearing. The schedule is subject to change. Specific dates of performances and auditions are yet to be announced.

I had to laugh when Lavinia was obliged to carry her father’s severed hand in her teeth. Why use her teeth and not her hands? Well, Lavinia no longer had any hands at that point. They were lopped off by the two guys who raped her. And they also cut out her tongue. That way she couldn’t reveal their identities.

So there she is, center stage with this fake hand smeared with fake blood dangling out of her mouth. She reminded me of a woebegone bloodhound (oops — a bit of a pun there); anyway a woebegone bloodhound forlornly bearing a saliva-slimed bedroom slipper. And what would be so funny about Lavinia’s situation? I don’t know. Now I’m getting embarrassed. Maybe you’d have to be there and see for yourself to understand. I fear I’m just making things worse ….

In any event, you are perhaps thinking Titus Andronicus, the tragedy in which Lavinia plays such an important part, is a bit much. You’d be wrong there. Titus is not a bit much. It’s a lot much.

To answer any question you may have about this severed hand: the father, the eponymous Titus, had his hand cut off as ransom for two of his sons’ lives. Then, of course, the evil emperor Saturninus reneged on the deal. Upon receiving the bloody hand, he sent it back along with the two sons’ severed heads. By the way, when the emperor’s evil wife’s two sons rape Lavinia, they use her murdered husband’s corpse as a sort of kinky coital accessory.

Believe it or not Titus, Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy, was his most popular play during his lifetime — boffo at the box office, lines around the block. The roof of the Globe Theatre burned up during a mishap midway through the premier of Henry VIII. The company did the obvious thing: they revived Titus to raise money for a replacement roof. Shakespeare, just a beginner in 1590, did some market research. Londoners loved to see dogs tearing bulls or bears to pieces. They loved to see public executioners tearing condemned prisoners to pieces. And they loved their revenge tragedies. Many successful, big name playwrights of the time wrote revenge tragedies, each more ghastly and gory than the one that had opened the preceding week. Shakespeare managed to out-ghastly and out-gory such (largely forgotten) greats as Kyd, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, Marston and Shirley.

At present, Titus vies for the “Shakespeare’s least popular play” title. The mid-20th Century celebrity poet and all-round literary brahmin T.S. Eliot called it “One of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written.” Eliot’s anathema has stuck.

But now and then a group of actors will take the Titus challenge: Let’s see if we can pump some life into this corpse-strewn slasher drama. The current local contender attempting this feat is the Empty Chair Theatre Company of Arlington. The group is young and eager. From the look of them I’d say that no one in the Titus cast comes close to 30. The amazing thing about the ensemble is their diction. Most of them speak Shakespeare’s cantankerous iambic pentameter blank verse with admirable clarity and expression. I saw some Empty Chair work a couple of years ago. Then too the delivery was admirable. Artistic director Elizabeth Nearing has apparently made rigorous training in speaking classical theater language her mission. Titus director Julia Sears has certainly excelled at the task.

Her actors do not ridicule this ridiculous story. They play it with earnest intensity. In the title role Danny Cackley is burdened with a lot of ranting. Returning victoriously to Rome from two decades of fighting the Goths, Titus laments that he has lost 21 (!) of his sons on the battlefields. Then, in a fit of pique, he stabs and kills one of the remaining sons. Throughout the explosions and lulls of rant, Cackley manages a subtle swelling and subsiding rhythm. His words are always clear, and sometimes they are even poignant. Well, a little poignant.

Even more burdened with verbal fury is Shunan Chu as Aaron, the empress’ slave and lover. Let it suffice that Aaron does a lot of bad deeds. The bad deeds he doesn’t do he incites others to carry out for him. As he’s about to die, he speaks of two regrets: 1. that he may have inadvertently done something virtuous at some time of other, and 2. that he didn’t do more villainy. Chu is a fiery actor. He somehow projects limitless turpitude with a tools that range from sneering and wheedling to raving and raging. Motivation? Forget about it. Like Iago in Othello, Aaron just … well, he just worships evil or something and that’s all there is to it. Chu carries the criminal sociopath syndrome off with an oddly authoritative charisma.

Mark Meixell, as the emperor Saturninus, conveys a dangerous paranoid hysteric disposition. He employs an odd staccato manner of speaking, sometimes loud and fast, sometimes quiet and a bit slower, but always sinister and scary. As the empress, Elizabeth Officer does a femme fatale number — not very original but very clearly spoken. As luckless Lavinia, Amalia Camperlengo does the ravaged victim scenes well enough. Earlier, in school-girl miniskirt, she looks kind of desperate, with not much to lose. If costume designer Megan Spatz could have given her something classy to wear, the sense of loss would be sharper.

Big professional companies need about 30 actors to do Titus effectively. That, in addition to the play’s slaughter house weirdness, is one reason why Titus is not often revived. Empty Chair, making do with 19 actors, creates some unavoidable confusion when cast members play two or three roles. Also, various women unconvincingly play men. Creating further puzzlement are inexplicable musical bits — a folksong lullaby here, some pop-style ballads there. Irony? Serious attempt to underscore this or that theme? I didn’t get the significance of the spurts of singing. They came across as pointless little riddles. Or maybe they were gratuitous talent show bits, like old-time entr’actes meant to give audiences more than their money’s worth on a something-for-everyone basis. 

I noticed that I was not the only audience member to laugh at one or another of Titus’ preposterous grotesqueries. But the show is not a campy production. Humor is accidental. Though I did notice some intentional humor in the Empty Chair web site promotion of Titus: “Kid friendly — no, dog friendly — no, non smoking — yes!”

A Note From The Director

What draws me to the characters of Titus Andronicus is that they do bad things for good reasons. This play is about people who are trying to love their families but all they know is how to do is kill. They were taught by their society that vengeance will heal their wounds but their tragedy is that they can never find peace through blood or justice through revenge.

One of the sole survivors of the play promises to “teach you how to knit again these broken limbs again into one body.” The promise he makes for Rome, but with death, rape, and mutilation, the body becomes the battleground for a ferocious war between Titus Andronicus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths. However, the deluge of their carnage is not the result of villainy. Their bloodlust is simply rooted in the bond they have for their pack.

Julia Sears

Cast

• Saturninus: Mark Meixell
• Bassianus: Dan DeMarco
• Aemilius: Emily Strong
• Titus Andronicus: Danny Cackley
• Marcus Andronicus: Jay Myers
• Lucius Andronicus: Michael Toperzer
• Young Lucius: Elena Robertson
• Lavinia: Amalia Camperlengo
• Mutius: Emily Strong
• Quintus: Olivia Myers
• Martius: Emily Strong
• Publius: Dan DeMarco
• Sempronius: Emily Strong
• Caius: Olivia Myers
• Tamora: Elizabeth Officer
• Alarbus: Amilia Camperlengo
• Demetrius: Mark Tucker
• Chiron: Jeremy Tuohy
• Aaron: Shunan Chu

Crew

• Director: Julia Sears
• Dramaturg: Isabel Smith-Bernstein
• Production Stage Manager: Devrie Guerrero
• Costume Designer: Megan Spatz
• Scenic Designer: Bryce Cutler
• Prop Master and Scenic Artist: Daniel Dobrosielski
• Lighting Designer: Madison Lane
• House Manager: Rebecca Speas

Disclaimer: Empty Chair Theatre provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

• Much Ado About Nothing, January 2010
• Richard II, Summer 2010
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Summer 2010

Schedule is subject to change due to performance rights conflicts or other issues.

Arlington’s Empty Chair Theatre is offering a full plate. Its two current productions are not a light summer picnic. No, no — the menu offers a pair of Shakespeare’s most difficult-to-digest plays: King Lear and Measure for Measure. The former is the darkest and heaviest of tragedies. The latter is an equivocal and mirthless comedy.

Both productions are absorbing. Measure for Measure, however, is a lumpy puzzle that director Elizabeth Nearing never smooths out and only half solves. But Kate Logan‘s King Lear functions nicely as an intimate chamber version of a vast, cosmic drama.

Complicating the remorseless complexity of Lear is the paradoxical relationship between the play and the Empty Chair company, which consists of theater artists aged 14-24. The play, however, deals with grueling issues of aging and the elderly. The title character in Lear is an old man on the edge of senility. A parallel subplot features the king’s contemporary, a duke who ironically is blind when he has eyes and “sees” (in the sense of understanding) once his eyes have horrifyingly been torn out right in front of us on stage.

Adding further peculiarity to Empty Chair director Logan’s Lear is the casting. The central old man is played by a young woman. And a supposedly irresistible hot hunk bad boy — the foolish duke’s evil son — is played by a sassy female, Julia Sears. When lusty ladies (the king’s two villainous daughters) paw and fight over the hunk’s bod, the point is not out-of-control lesbianism. It is, “Hey, this is acting. Actors act. Women play men. Get used to it. What is theater about, anyway, other than suspension of disbelief?”

OK. So be it. Whatever. Clearly Natasha Solomon, as Lear, is not just a promising young actor. She really is very good, modulating back and forth, in and out of dotage, vehemence, rage, confusion, compassion and sorrow. As the nasty hunk, Sears at least has conviction and commitment. When it comes time for hot kisses on the lips of a female-in-heat, Sears is right there for a torrid clinch.

In general, Logan’s young cast punches up issues of parents and children, sisters and brothers. They handle the ornate poetry of Shakespeare’s dialogue fairly well, and what they lack in polished articulation they make up in forceful emotion.

A nice directorial touch: the show begins with a lovely folk/pop anthem, with actors singing and playing guitars, violins and a ukulele. The song expresses a yearning for candor and understanding. All is harmony and solidarity; an excellent dramatic foil for two hours of almost unalloyed antagonism, violence and greed.

As for Measure for Measure, it quite rightly takes its place (along with Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well that Ends Well) among what scholars refer to as Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” The problem is that these plays don’t readily make sense. Characters have either no motivation at all or only scant reasons for their bizarre actions. Plot twists are absurd. Situations are implausible. Audience dissatisfaction is almost inevitable.

In Measure for Measure the duke of Vienna abandons his duties and goes incognito here and there throughout his city. Acting as his substitute ruler is a vicious schizophrenic. Which is appropriate in a way. The duke himself is schizoid, but not altogether vicious.

And so a (fairly) innocent man is condemned to death for having sex with his fiancee. The condemned man’s sister, who aspires to be a nun, begs the Duke’s surrogate for mercy. The surrogate offers the seriously virginal sister a deal: her brother’s life in exchange for her maidenhead. Oh! The horror! — that is the prissy sister’s reaction.

Meanwhile…well, suffice it to say the sequence of bizarre actions, absurd plot twists, unmotivated behavior and and implausible situations goes on and on, finally petering out only after two hours have gone by.

Director Nearing partially resolves this problem play’s problems by emphasizing the duke’s insanity. Kelley Van Dilla, in that role, takes erratic personality traits to the limit, He twitches, he chuckles, he halts, he stares, he wrings his hands, he walks about like a precariously balanced windup toy. Mark Tucker, as the psychotic surrogate duke, is a schizophrenic who coolly rationalizes lunacy and proceeds as a slick and amoral sociopath.

The rest of Nearing’s cast struggle along in the wake of these two, striving to make sense of a largely senseless situation.

Nearing tosses in some attractive song-and-dance sequences that build to orgiastic frenzies. While these moments are welcome as distractions from an unfunny comedy, they only add to the Empty Chair production’s quality of incoherence and indigestion.

Measure for Measure is truly troublesome. I’ve seen productions that have worked fairly well, however. One of these was set in fascist Italy, a time and a place when and where insanity, hypocrisy and corruption really did have the force of law. Another successful production presented the characters as technology-saturated automatons who had the emotional intelligence of a laptop. Measure for Measure can work on stage. The Empty Chair show, however, works only haltingly.

At the risk of sounding patronizing or condescending, I feel compelled to add a modifying observation: Whatever the merits or faults of its shows, it is genuinely thrilling to see young people devoting themselves with tremendous discipline to old theater. Add to that the throng of under 30 groupies who fill the Empty Chair audience and you add a new and optimistic twist to the gloomy refrain, “Kids today, I just don’t know…”

Note: Empty Chair performs in a small room called “The Black Box.” The place might also be called “The Hot Box.” If you go to see these shows, dress lightly. Once the 200-degree stage lights and the 100-degree cast and audience bodies combine their forces, the space really heats up.

Cast for King Lear

• Kent: Caroline Brent
• Albany: Mark Guthrie
• Goneril: Lee Havlicek
• Gloucester: Matthew Minnicino
• Oswald/Burgundy: Amalia Oswald
• Edmund: Julia Sears
• Regan/Knight 1: Samantha Sheahan
• King Lear: Natasha Solomon
• Cordelia/Knight 4/Servant 1/Old Man: Rebecca Speas
• Cornwall/Knight 2/Doctor: Mark Tucker
• Edgar: Kelley Van Dilla
• Fool/France/Servant 3/Captain: Nico Zevallos

Cast for Measure for Measure

• Abhorson/Juliet/Servant/Francisca: Caroline Brent
• Lucio/Justice: Mark Guthrie
• Marina/Attendants: Lee Havlicek
• Claudio/Elbow: Matthew Minnicino
• Mistress Overdone/Froth/Friar Peter: Amalia Oswald
• Isabella: Julia Sears
• Escalus/Friar Thomas: Samantha Sheahan
• Messengers/Servants/Gentlemen: Natasha Solomon
• Provost: Rebecca Speas
• Angelo: Mark Tucker
• Duke Vincentio: Kelley Van Dilla
• Pompey: Nico Zevallos

Measure for Measure (Mark Tucker as Angelo and Julia Sears as Isabella)	King Lear (Natasha Soloman as King Lear and Kelley Van Dilla as Edgar)

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