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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2001)
90*7 FM Portland • 91*7 Co!oi*Ma Gorge AV £ ^ *^ 5 commissioned by Eliza beth I, who hadn’t had enough of the Fat Man in Henry IV, Parts I and 2. Here, Falstaff is that most sympathetic of con men: the one who’s beaten at his own game. Hoping to access their husbands’ purses, he woos Kith Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. They revenge them selves on his duplicity by arranging a ren dezvous at which he is threatened with discov ery, reveals his cow ardice and is punished for a pleasure he never got close to enjoying. Thus slight scenario, which the Bard Kirrowed from commedia dell’arte, needs a lot of comic invention to , keep things interesting. In Lillian Garrett- Groag’s production, the comedy starts with the costumes by Deborah Dryden, which manage to be at once faithful to the period, over-the- top, beautiful and ridiculous. Thus lavishly dressed, a large cast of eccentrics indulges in every comic trick in the book. The most fey is Slender (Jeff Cummings), a rich young man who has no idea what to do when left alone with his wife-to-be. Having seen Cummings as the romantic Bas- sanio in Merchant and the eroticized Paris in Troilus, one marvels not only at his versatility but at the commitment of stage actors to resist typecasting. But the standout in a crowd of whimsical characters is Richard Howard as the jealous Mr. Ford. This exquisite actor instills his slap stick with a nuanced paranoia on the theme of cuckoldry. The play ends with an explosion of fairies, real and imagined, that pays tribute to Victorian children’s Nx>ks. hose three Shakespeare plays are performed on the open-air Elizabethan stage, the orig inal of the festival’s three houses. The Tem pest is performed in the 600-seat Bowmer The atre, named for the company’s founder, Angus Bowmer. This means more scenery. Set designer William Bloodgood and lighting designer Robert Peterson make the most of their oppor tunity, creating undulating fields of pastels and giving Prospero’s island an otherworldly feel. The inspiration to cast a woman as Pros- pero— the role generally regarded as Shake speare’s farewell self-portrait— is clearly an idea whose time has come. (Vanessa Redgrave recently played the part in London.) Unfortunately, director Penny Metropoulos has con ceived of the all-power ful magician along Zen lines without any Hong Kong action influence to spice things up. This Prospero is in touch with her own and everyone else’s feelings, given to earth tones and benign beyond belief. What does work are her scenes with Ariel (Christopher Jean), who’s the per fect willowy comple ment to her earth mother groundedness. Prospero’s evil brother is here an evil sister (Linda Alper), who shares the family trait of being overly earnest. L ast but not least, Fuddy Meets is one of the final plays that will grace the 140-seat Black Swan, the most intimate of the festival’s three venues. (In March 2002, a brand-new, 300-seat theater will replace it.) This surreal comedy by David Lindsay-Abaire about a family of criminals and lunatics is staged by James Edmondson as a breakneck series of blackout sketches. Protagonist Claire (Judith-Marie Bergan) wakes each day unable to remember anything about her life; each day, husband Richard (John Pribyl) tells her only what he wants her to know. Teen-age son Kenny (Gregory Lining- ton) is a dope-smoking slacker; poststroke mother Gertie (Catherine Coulson) has trouble talking. ( Fuddy Meers is her version of “fun house mirrors.’’) The so-called Limping Man (Richard Elmore), who dis turbs their daily routine by kidnapping Claire, is a muti lated man: One ear melted in a fire, he’s got an equally mean lisp, limp and temper. Although there’s noth ing explicitly gay about Lindsay-Aba ire’s script, everything aKiut this two- husband family is decidedly queer. On second viewing, this technically flawless production of a brilliant text revealed surprising lev els of meaning. Fuddy Meers is a metaphor for those particu lar filters (or blinders) we all go through life trying to see through (or past). The play is about con sciousness: the denial we’re forced to live in and the pandemonium and chaos that can accompany the healing process. Sound familiar? Most people will recog nize the bizarre levels of secrecy and miscom prehension inherent to family life. JH y y p 1 0 0 . 7 W lU a to e r te V a lie v Q oeer , Q ueer E rin B lackw ell , editor of Girlfriends magazine, also writes theater reviews for San Francisco Frontiers. 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