I don’t know if it’s the fact that this year is his 450th birthday, or if some “enforced obedience of planetary influence,” as one of his villains says, caused this constellation, but this weekend and next, four of the Five Colleges are staging plays by Shakespeare. (The odd campus out is Mount Holyoke, which opened its season this month with a trio of Tennessee Williams one-acts.)
The (probably coincidental) tetralogy opened last weekend at Hampshire College, where Mike Lion’s Elsinore: The Carnival, a circusy riff on Hamlet, was performed in the woods. The other campuses are staging three “problem” plays: the controversially anti-Semitic Merchant of Venice, the outrageously misogynistic Taming of the Shrew and the… um, which one?
That’s the “problem” with Cymbeline—it’s one of the least known and rarely performed plays in the canon. It’s one of the “late romances,” with a fairytale plot of danger, betrayal, seeming death and miraculous outcomes. Director Ron Bashford says he chose this play for some of its universally persistent themes—“misogyny, classism, lost parents, war, and the perseverance of marginalized characters”—and as a fitting challenge for senior thesis candidate Morgan Brown, who plays Imogen, the play’s “tender, smart, and strong” heroine who takes “a wonderful journey from innocence to knowledge.” Bashford and costumer Nikki Delhomme have moved the piece, which Shakespeare set in a make-believe pre-Christian Britain, into an equally unreal 20th/21st century where clothing styles progress with the action, from the Edwardian era to the 1930s to today.
Cymbeline: Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 8 p.m., Holden Theater, Amherst College, free, reservations recommended, (413) 542-2277.
The Merchant of Venice is notorious for the blistering anti-Semitism of its plot, as a Jewish moneylender demands a literal “pound of flesh” in repayment of a Christian’s debt. Productions these days take various conceptual approaches to make the play speak to a modern audience, from treating it as a slapstick satire to setting it in Nazi Germany. But guest director Tony Simotes, on leave from Shakespeare & Company, says he wants “to let the play ‘speak for itself’ rather than try to conceptualize it into a specific message.” He’s set it in the 1600s “with modern elements” and hopes that audiences will “find the play in its simplicity… as a way to see the play fresh and leave with more questions [than answers.]” UMass alumnus Stephen Driscoll returns to play Shylock.
The Merchant of Venice: Oct. 23-Nov. 1, Rand Theater, UMass, $8-$16, umass.edu/theater, (413) 545-2511.
Portia Krieger returns to her own alma mater, Smith College, to direct The Taming of the Shrew, another dicey play for modern audiences’ tastes—this one about the swaggering fortune hunter who marries a volatile and headstrong heiress and bullies her into being a submissive wife. While Shrew was originally performed by Shakespeare’s all-male company, Krieger says she welcomes the opportunity to turn the gender tables with an all-female production. Where many “gender-neutral” productions cast women in “neutered or feminized” versions of male roles, she finds it “a really liberating, enjoyable challenge for a group of college-aged actresses to actually play men.” Her staging promises to honor both what is “thorny and uncomfortable” in the play, as well as “a lot that is perversely witty, sexy, and hilarious … while bringing our own special brand of Smithie swagger.”•
The Taming of the Shrew: Oct. 24-25 and Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m., Theatre 14, Smith College, Northampton, $5-$10, www.smith.edu/smitharts.
Chris Rohmann is at StageStruck@crocker.com and his StageStruck blog is at valleyadvocate.com/blogs/stagestruck.
