Monday, September 30, 2013

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Pilot

And it’s out. The much-anticipated Joss Whedon project that gives us weekly doses of live-action Marvel adventure. And, I have to say, I’m underwhelmed. Pilots are not necessarily an indication of a good or bad season, but this one felt clichéd and uninspired. I came to it with high hopes – I’m a big fan of Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity and Much Ado About Nothing, and I can’t ever seem to get enough superhero action. The opening sequences were exciting. They combined a made-for-television superhero world like Alphas with the espionage panache of Covert Affairs. But as the episode progressed, the spy genre was dropped in favor of developing the superhero-y world. And that might have been a good choice, if Whedon had anything interesting or new to say about the genre. Instead, he siphons off The Avengers’ mythos in an attempt that feels like trying to channel that film’s success into a TV format. And it doesn’t work. The Avengers’ main appeal, to me at least, was the eye-candy. It had exciting fight sequences that spanned the front wall of a movie theater, not to mention gorgeous people in form-fitting costumes. But even nerd auteur Whedon can’t reproduce that very cinematic experience on TV. What I think he can do, based on his previous projects, is develop an interesting narrative arc. And when he finishes off-loading exposition and allows himself to create an artistic boundary between Agents and Avengers, I think that this could become a compelling new show.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Cymbeline

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for as long as I can remember, has had hits and misses just like any other theater. Sometimes they even happen in the same show, and sometimes they’re distinct enough that they can be attributed to specific jobs within the production. Cymbeline is just such a show. 

Image from the Eureka Times-Standard
OSF has always attracted the cream of the crop in terms of actors. This cast is mostly superb, with stand-out performances by Dawn-Lyen Gardner as (the play’s real lead) Imogen, Daniel José Molina as the impetuously fatalistic Posthumus, Kenajuan Bentley as the ever-suave creep Iachimo, and Donovan Mitchell as the adorable little brother Arviragus aka Cadwal. These four actors ground Shakespeare’s ridiculously involved soap-opera of a plot with honest and often playful interactions with the convoluted world in which they find themselves.

Cymbeline loses its grounding in its direction. Director Bill Rauch and costume designer David C. Woolard chose to add “a few mythical creatures to populate a landscape in which miraculous surprise lies beyond every bend in the story” (from Rauch’s program note). The goat-men and pig-men and people with pointy ears confused an already confusing story. That’s not to say it was a bad choice – in fact, I feel it was a good choice used sloppily. Kate McConnell writes in OSF’s Illuminations: A Guide to the 2013 Plays about Shakespeare’s “green worlds”:

“This ‘green world’ (a term coined by literary critic Northrop Frye), separated from the rules and organization of urbanity, gives the characters space to transform (sometimes literally), fall in and out of love, and discover who they truly are. In Cymbeline, the wilds of Wales perform this function….For the characters who travel to this place, transformation and revelation await.”

Rauch could have used his mythological creatures to emphasize Wales as a place of transformation and lent clarity to the story. Instead, this choice read as superfluous at best, and at worst, confusing.

Rauch’s casting Howie Seago as the titular king was also ill-advised. Seago is deaf and communicates via ASL. The way this plays on stage is that he delivers his lines in ASL and another actor interprets for those of us not schooled enough to understand sign-language. The effect is that Cymbeline’s tempestuousity is scattered across the stage, diluting its power and weakening the impact of the play’s main power-broker. Not that Seago is a bad actor – in fact, from what I can see, he is very accomplished in his craft. It’s just that, unfortunately, his lack of hearing is very much a handicap when it comes to acting Shakespeare.

Cymbeline is a play in which Shakespeare revels in his accomplishments as a storyteller by creating a labyrinthine plot that ranges from the improbable to the confusing. With such a play, it’s the artistic team’s job to clarify and ground the plot. OSF’s actors for the most part are successful in this. Unfortunately, they receive no help from their director, whose choices add further layers to an already excessively layered play.