You wouldn't normally think of Richard III in terms
of what it says about the place of women in Yorkist England. But then,
an odd idea or two is bound to crop up when you see seven hours of Shakesperare
in a 24-hour span.
It helps, of course, if that murderously charming Plantagenet
is played by a woman. And if, in three-show reperatory like the SSE's "over the Hump" tour, the same actress is cast as Kate, the titular
termagent in The Taming of the Shrew, and as Juliet, the all-but-invisible
pregnancy "victim in Measure for Measure.
Not that Ralph Cohen, the Shenandoah troupe's executive
director and proselytizer of it's stripped down style, has come up with
an agressively reimagined Richard like the one I proposed only
half- jokingly, to a friend when I heard the part was to be cross-cast:
a sleek-stylish politico, possibly a lesbian, litterally backstabbing
her way to the top- not out of bitterness over a physical deformity,
but because as a smart sexual out sider in a man's world, she'd be even
less likely than a hunchback to get her do.
…(I'll spare you)…The cast, for some reason, strains to
find comedy in the more serious scenes, when there are plenty of low
jokes written in. And those jokes certainly don't go unexploited: Norris
(yes, again) sports sheriff's stars on elbow pads as Elbow Measure's
version of the language-mangling constable from Much Ado About Nothing,
while Tim Gore(an archbishop in Richard) is a wry scream in saphire-satin
as the pimp Elbow arrests; and Scott Nath (a subtle Luccentio
in Shrew) makes the trash-talking Lucio appealingly smarmy"
With than unexceptional Shrew, Measure for Measure
makes two not especially inspired productions out of three meant to
mark SSE's 10th aniversary. But all the shows are energetic
and enjoyably as audiences have come to expect from th troupe, and Richard,
lesbians or no, is a solid success.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington City Paper
