Monday, June 11, 2012

Goldoni's 'A Servant of Two Masters'

'The Shakespeare Theatre Company revives a grand Tradition.'


The extraordinary production of “Servant” by Christopher Bayes at the Shakespeare Theatre is a fresher-upper for that august institution in Washington. It is full of stylized acting, the great dance of real commedia performances. It mixes this so-called classic text with perfect modern references – which was the spirit of Commedia when it was played in town plazas – fast and perfect physical timing, extreme dynamics, from yelling and sung lines to whispers which are, absurdly, barely audible to the audience. It has mock opera, popular dances, rap performances (in mask and renaissance costume). It is full of slapstick – the term in comedy we inherit from Commedia itself – as Harlequin (or Arlecchino) hit others with his “slapping stick” or was himself beaten with one. Arlecchino’s close cousin is the star of this play: Truffaldino. He is, as usual, played exactly as Arlecchino. Traditionally he had one clear objective: he was eternally hungry. That simple character “objective,” in Goldoni's text, works here to uproarious effect.


The design for most of the play brings across the feel of the “poor theatre” which Commedia really was. There is the reproduction of bare floorboards, and a touring company’s back curtain on a cheap wood frame where characters make their exits. Live musicians are seated at the side so recorded really is superfluous. This is a bit of a relief at STC, which has the “big guns” speakers systems that rival Cinemax 3D.

In the end a great deal had to be poured into this “poor theatre” appearance. Not only in the astonishing costumes and masks, but in stage elements that both rise up and fall apart – there is even one great disaster that occurs to the set. Katherine Akiko Day’s scenography is astonishing in the ways it can be used to mimic the tradition as it provokes jaded moderns in the audience. The adaptation is both loyal and flexible in the spirit of the tradition. Adapter Constance Congdon has herself written some breathless frantic comedies in her time (“Tales of the Lost Formicans”) and has served Goldoni with panache.

But it is the acting – the acting – I mean the acting – which holds us in thrall. It is akin to circus and dance. The actors have such a heightened awareness of each others' moves that the lifting of a mere finder or he scratching of a crotch will get an instant reaction overblown reaction from either one or eight other actors on stage.

Clarice (Danielle Brooks) is to be married to Federigo, but on the report he is dead her father Pantalone (another great stock character of Commedia, performed by Allen Gilmore) has now been promised to infantile Silvio (Andy Grotelueschen), and the engagement is celebrated with a vivid company dance. Alas, Federigo appears in town and the wedding is off. But all is not what it seems, since Federigo is dead, and is being impersonated by his cross-dressed sister Beatrice. She has come to find her lover Florindo, who is responsible for her brother’s death and has fled to Venice. Brooks as Clarice seems to channel characters from three different eras and cultures, each distinct, and adds her operatic voice to her delivery.

Our real protagonist, however, is Truffaldino, played with acrobatic dexterity by Steven Epp –who is costumed in the time honored patched ”Harlequin” duds and mask. Due to his immense hunger he agrees swiftly to serve this young master “Federigo.” But when this master leaves him for too long without a meal, another traveler shows up near Brighella’s tavern who has means to hire a servant. This is the flamboyant Florindo, who is in fact Beatrice’s lover. He is, in this version, quick with his sword, and and absorbed by his ego. Jesse J. Perez’s version of this character is very much akin to the infamous Commedia figure Il Capitano. Actors who specialized in this character were present in all Commedia companies—he is a descendent of the swaggering soldier (Miles Gloriosus) in the Roman comic tradition. In fact this is not really evident in Goldoni’s text. Still, between director Bayes extraordinary understanding of Commedia style, and Perez's own acting choices, this Florindo is endowed with the boastful soldier's affected machismo. In Goldoni's script he can be seen as one of “los inamoratos” – the two “innocents” or lovers who do not have masks as they are not buffoons normally. But what is "normal" in Commedia? In this version they have an extra dose of foolishness and buoyancy. Beatrice has her own moments bravado and ego. In short, on stage, we really see the human beings as they often are, looking out for number one.

Truffaldino proceeds to pick up mail for one master and deliver it to the other. Unfortunately, he can’t read. He takes Federigo’s (that is, again, Beatrice's) letter of credit—the forerunner of a check – for a great sum of money and tears it into 8 pieces to demonstrate to Brighella, just where each dish should be placed on the tavern table when a feast is to be served. And that meal – well, what a meal. This is one of the greatest and most remembered scenes in the history of comedy, due to the almost impossible demands placed on the Truffaldino. He must rush about to get servings to two impatient masters like he is two people, scampering and whirling between their two rooms and the frantic kitchen staff. You will remember this hyper-theatrcial sequence possibly all your life, as it is done here. And you will understand at that moment the direct line that runs from Commedia, to Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers.

Actors in Commedia were freed up to perform "lazzi," or comic pieces of business, which they refined and brought to a peak of perfection. In this case these are often quite contemporary moments done with a wink to the audience. Here Epp as Truffaldino, when confronting an impossible set of choices, stopped the “text” to say, “Select all. Copy. Delete all.” Then he goes into a terrible panic. “”No! History! Retrieve.” (Well, at least he did so the night I was there.)

As Truffaldino gets himself into deep stress serving both masters in the hostel and tavern of Brighella, he meets Pantalone’s servant girl Smeraldina (one of the best known Commedia fantescas, or female clowns.) She is brought to life by Liz Wisan who captures all of Smeraldina’s insecurities as she tres to show she is deeply enamored of Truffaldino. He must get permission from his master to marry her. But which one? This question becomes even more complicated as the plot progresses. Trufaldino also has increasing trouble blaming all his mistakes (to each if his bosses) on the fictional servant Pascual he created for that purpose.

There are great moments of self-conscious theatricality. Truffaldino spends the first half continually asking when the play will start. He finds a steel switch on stage and experiments with it, turning out every single light in the theatre for two minutes of total darkness. In a moment of self-referential theatre Clarice’s hapless wooer Silvio, with sword drawn and ready for combat is poked in the rear end by the percussionist (was it a drum stick?)

Gilmore, as Pantalone has one of the best lazzi of the evening after a recognition scene when he realizes Federigo is a woman. On the words “She was dressed as a man,” he starts a slow build, beginning with several obscene gestures, to a series of he most absurd conniption fits one can hope to see on stage. With legs in the air and back end bouncing on the floor boards, he gets to the point that he claims has ironed out his sphincter, and makes hopeless efforts to stand up despite his broken bum. It culminates with the comment: “I’ve done a lot of things up here I am not proud of.” You get the idea.

His confidant, Il Dottore (the Doctor), costumed by the consistently fanciful Valérie Thérèse Bart so that he comes close to a character out of Alice in Wonderland or even Yellow Submarine, plays the “pedant” doctor like a beer-bellied puppet. He shrinks down and springs up in implausible ways.

Will Florindo get his Federigo (Beatrice?) And will Truffaldino get his Smeraldina despite his lies and deceit? How? You must go and see. By the end even the set at the Lansburgh Theatre, that Truffaldino has wrecked, helps to show us what love is.

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The Shakespeare Theatre Company, at the Lansburgh. Directed by Christopher Bayes. Set by Catherine Akiko Day. Costumes by Valérie Thérèse Bart. Live music by Chris Curtis and Charles Coes. Running through June 24. Tickets 202-547-1122 or Shakesppearetheatre.org

See more theatre and book reviews by Joe Martin at


Shamans on the road: 'Round Earth, Open Sky' by Kirpal Gordon

'Round Earth, Open Sky'
'Round Earth, Open Sky'
Photo credit:
Kirpal Gordon URLn
 There are not so many authors with minds immersed in shamanistic worlds that can summon up a raucous and outrageous sense of humor. It is equally difficult to find one with the ability to write “road novels” (think Kerouac) Southwest Gothic (think Sam Shepard) and mix these together in a chile pepper and tequila mélange with those other ingredients.

The enthusiastic narrative language and wild thought patterns of the characters in the prolific author Kirpal Gordon’s new novel "Round Earth, Open Sky," also call forth memories of Leonard Cohen’s "Beautiful Losers" – another frantic guru novel imbued with a the spirit of an Indian holy person, Catherine Tetakwitha. Round Earth too presents a driven and frantic spiritual quest that culminates in Canada.

In this case the Native American holy man is not Native American at all. He is a “sky man” who has fallen through an opening in the heavens, and in his Earthly body behaves in a manner similar to the shamanic teacher in the works of Carlos Castaneda.
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This is a tale that may lead one to ponder the notion of native shamans – and to wonder if they are what we think they are. The shamans and sorcerers, this book suggests, may just be intangible beings that fall through the sky and take on human form, which then insert themselves among the native population as either guides or troublemakers.
Befriended by an American Sephardic Jewish photographer, Moses, on his “hunt” for material—the Sky Man indicates Moses’ totem is the wolf. Sky Man is making his way across the American Southwest to find his way back to the point where he can find the opening in the sky to return to his “people.”

In the process he conducts what we beings of limited consciousness consider to be antiquated healing practices, while speaking to those he befriends in telepathic “picture language.” Sky Man sees into the energies and sometimes the destinies of people around him. He enters into dreams to get at the past and map out future plans: his own and everyone else’s.

When early on, Sky Man brings Moses in his car to a screeching halt, as he carries a partly dismembered wolf over his shoulder on the side of the road, he tells Moses exactly why he was destined to find him and why Moses himself stopped to pick him up. Of course he is not believed. That said, it is not long before Sky Man’s driver will cease dismissing outrageous prophecies from his travel companion, no matter how implausible they may be.

Moses is somehow remarkable himself—neurotic, in big trouble with love, and desperate for subjects as a photographer. He amiably takes the “Luftmensch” on board, and the man with powerful “medicine” from the other side becomes his technical assistant and gofer, setting up the photographic equipment at every important stop they make in their quest. Their trail takes them ever farther North to Native territory in Canada.

This may sound complex, but in fact Sky Man’s back-story is blessedly simple. He simply fell through the sky from the other side, takes on a human body and set off to find his way home. The really puzzling back-story is actually that of the body he lives in. “Maurice,” a suicide, who leapt from a boat in desperation, has a history so immensely complicated—in terms of his love affairs, his engagements with violence, his middle class Detroit family, his strange abilities at native “healing” apparently at the age of 11, plus his encounters with a strange shamanic figure when he was a child – that the reader and Moses and Sky Man himself, whom everyone takes to be Maurice, for the obvious reasons, are almost completely stumped.

For much of the novel it is impossible to grasp who this man is--who is still a kid to those who remember him—this former owner of this body, a healer and a suicide, can possibly be. (Moses too lives under a pseudonym due to past infractions of the law.)

So with Maurice, or at least his body, accompanying the pair all the way, they enlist the help of Maurice’s former flame, Tot, and Rainie, an attorney who is Moses’ own abandoned lover. Add to that a crew of characters steeped in native shamanic couture deep in Ontario, all of them trying to clarify the confounding past of the man whose body Sky Man inhabits.

Resurrection tales go back well beyond that of Osiris, and aptly, Sky Man also goes by the name Heysus Kristay – which is what a Latina woman calls him when he heals her son. In a sly way this modern myth seems to suggest that somehow we are following a Jesus and Moses on the road.
At no time does Sky Man try to hide his identity. It is quite acceptable to everyone in the story, which gives it a flavor of the absurd. He speaks of his origins and visions quite matter-of-factly to everyone they meet, uttering the refrain—“Nothing to it.”

The inevitable humor of his unabashed discussions of his easy reading of people’s thoughts can be found in exchanges such as the following, in which Sky Man, picking up on Moses’ ancestral vibrations asks: “What does it mean, crying alone in the desert to a strange god?” His driver responds: “That’s what I am, a Jew dude.”

Sky Man reaches the logical conclusion: “Then I am a Jew too, Moses Dude.”
The scenes leading to the climax see characters taking part in grand spiritual rites and dream events that seem to have little or nothing to do with their characters.

In terms of character—many of them pass through altered states quite abruptly. What successful attorney, to investigate a situation, throws off her clothes and follows a mass of slithering snakes down into a cave knowing they are in fact a supernatural being which she has never seen? (She brings back a shedded snakeskin as proof of where she has been.)

This clash of worldly types with the mystical realities they must investigate may indeed pose a challenge for some readers to “suspend disbelief.” Nevertheless there is plenty of farce and a lot of the grotesque for those with a taste for either. None of the characters in this novel have trouble suspending disbelief and there is a great pleasure in joining them.

Such novels of the imagination emerge from a tremendous act of will. They are even further from the mainstream now than they were in the '50s, '60s and '70s. It is for fans of the outrageous, who reject our simple notion of reality, and who like to laugh at the absurdity spiritual beings making contact with us mundane humans. It is also for those who appreciate deconstructions of the idioms of modern English. Sky Man applies them as soon as he picks them up.

Though the byzantine back-story of Maurice’s corpse, (that is, Sky Man’s body) is a challenge, it works as it does in Noir novels. What we have here is supernatural detective work. Gordon’s novel gives one the sense of being back in Ixtlan, with a more disoriented version of Yaqi guide Don Juan, but just as full of insight—cracking jokes in hip idioms he learns from his Jewish-American companion all the way to the mountaintop.

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See also reviews on http://www.examiner.com/review/shamans-on-the-road-round-earth-open-sky-by-kirpal-gordon