On Saturday the 12th I headed out to Marylhurst University to watch the Portland Actors Ensemble 2014 Twilight Tragedie production of Antony & Cleopatra.
I had heard about the production from Meg Roland, the head of the English department at Marylhurst and the teacher and organizer for the study abroad trip to London and Rome that I am going on in September. Part of that trip is seeing Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” at The Globe in London, and reading “Julius Caesar” while in Rome. So it naturally made sense to see another of Shakespeare’s Rome themed plays be performed, especially for free.
The play was performed near the Shell, apparently the name for the half-shell performance stage on the green behind the arts building at Marylhurst. The play began at 6pm, and Saturday evening was still pretty hot, so everyone who attended was setting up their blankets or chairs in the shade of a large tree.
I dragged Shawna along with me, for a few reasons: because she loves Shakespeare, because it made for a fun date to go see a play on the lawn, because I wanted to show some of Marylhurst off to her as she hopes to come here starting in Fall 2015, and so she could get a chance to meet Meg (not a bad way to make a first impression, however fleeting the meeting might have been). We brought a large towel to sit upon but next time I am going to bring some short little chairs for us to sit upon, my ass was hurting by the time of the intermission from sitting atop the hardpacked ground.
The entire study abroad class had been invited, but it looked like only myself and Jonathan were present. A couple of people from last years trip were there, though they had friends of their own with them so I didn’t get much of a chance to talk with them. Shawna and I had brought a picnic dinner with us, bagels and meat and cheese and some snacks, which was good as the play runs for a little more than three hours.
I won’t go into the story of the play, you can read it online yourself if you want, but the performance was an interesting one. For a stage they had marked out a strip in the grass between two raised archways, the one on the left being where the Egyptian actors entered and on the right for the Roman actors. By just having those two arches, and consistently using them, they establish a sense of place for each scene without needing any other props or stage backdrops.
In fact, the only real props that showed up in the entire play was a standing globe, a few wooden boxes that alternated between seating and noisemakers, a dagger, and the basket for the asp.
The costumes were oddly uneven. Cleopatra, and the Egyptian cast, had ethnic outfits that looked either African or Arabic. The Roman outfits, however, were relatively minimalist and consisted mostly of a plain shirt and a jacket overtop (which I think was supposed to symbolize their armor).
The acting was also somewhat uneven. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t necessarily great either. I wonder if some of it was the stage setup. From hearing people talk before the play began, I suspect that they often are setup with people seated on either side of the stage area. Some of what makes me think this was the number of scenes where actors had their backs to the audience, and would have faced an audience on the other side of the stage. As it was that night, with the heat and us all sitting in the shade on one side, it meant that there were a number of lines of dialogue that didn’t come across well as the actor’s (or actresses’) voice didn’t carry to us behind them.
There was some difference in the skill level of the actors. For example, I thought that Enobarbus’s actor stole pretty much every scene that he was a part of with how well he conveyed the multiple meanings of some of Shakespeare’s lines so well with both his voice and his body language.
While I nitpick a little, since it was a free performance of a Shakespearean play, I really have no right to complain. I got far more than I paid for (though I did put $20 into Boxy for rather nice t-shirt celebrating the performance) and I enjoyed it enough that I plan to come back on August 2nd for the Portland Actors Ensemble presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Marylhurst, this years 45th Annual Shakespeare in the Parks play.