Guest Hip Shot: ‘Love & War: with the Bard’s Broads and Dames’
Glen again:
Love & War: with the Bard’s Broads and Dames
Touchstone Gallery
Remaining Performance:
Saturday, July 28 @ 9:00pm
They say: “Two movements inspired by people inspired by Shakespeare’s inspiring women (for better or worse). ‘Women speak two languages – one of which is verbal.’ Movement and language create a delightful, dark duel for the Bard’s ladies entrenched in war. Love prevails as Juliet answers letters with comic and touching effect.”
Glen’s take: Read the above blurb again. Okay? Got it? Notice how the individual sentences more or less make sense, but when you read them together, things go all feathery ’round the edges? That, bound in a Shakespearean nutshell, is Love & War. The first half’s a series of 10 scenes from Shakespeare in which wives, mothers, daughters and Weird Sisters discuss men and war. The second, more successful half imagines an assortment of star-cross’d lovers writing to Juliet Capulet for advice on how to successfully resolve affairs of the heart. (Which seems a bit like asking Lucrezia Borgia for her caponata recipe, but let that go.)
For War/Piece, the Shakespeare-on-shuffle opener, four actresses share the stage, but Hilary Kacser (also the producer) does most of the talking. Kacser declaims with skill, but gives every line near-equal emphasis; the resulting flatness of tone doesn’t help her sell the emotions behind the words she enunciates so crisply. You lose the through-line, the guiding principle that ostensibly links these speeches, and the performance skirts dangerously close to recitation. She does leaven her final monologue (from Taming of the Shrew) with welcome irony — which mostly serves to make you wonder why she waited so long.
The Juliet Project, the Capulet-as-agony-aunt closer, feels undercooked in that familiarly Fringey, pink-in-the-thematic-middle sort of way. But it does allow other actors to step up (especially Jennifer Crooks and Jordan Boughrum, who make the most of the opportunity), and it boasts some dense, clever writing that deserves to get unpacked someday.
See it if: When you read the title War/Piece just now, you chuckled.
Skip it if: When you read the title War/Piece just now, you thought of a really annoying grad student you dated once.
8:38 pm
Love and War is a delightful and very artfully presented piece of theater. I particularly enjoyed the first half, featuring Hilary Kacser. The actors’ movements were enticingly expressive and dance-like, and they added richly to the text, which was seamlessly edited and beautifully spoken. What a graceful interpretation of Shakespeare, truly enjoyable.
The actors worked very well as an ensemble, and it is in a great venue; it even has excellent lighting cues! Top notch. well rehearsed and wonderfully executed!
11:17 pm
You know how I know an artistic work has reached beyond a mere night at the theatre? When it inspires me to go out and create something as equally compelling and beautifully executed. Love and War did just that. Not only was this work thoughtfully crafted but the use of movement, language and the beautiful space that is Touchstone gallery seemed like it was meant to be from the beginning. The Juliet Project was particularly promising and I thought it seemlessly interwove the letters to Juliet with the snippets from Romeo and Juliet. Congrats to Jennifer and her crew for a beautiful production that was as intricately created as it was inspiring.
11:04 am
I’m so sorry I didn’t get to this blog sooner.
I saw Love and War on its opening night (and I usually prefer to avoid opening nights, for all the usual reasons) and found it completely ready for the stage, without any of the “undercooked” quality that does turn up in Fringe events from time to time.
I – and, judging from their response – the rest of the audience, found Love and War to be a unique and compelling experience of intimate theatre. I found myself wishing that this piece – or even SOME of this piece – could be performed in high school or even junior high school English classes. It’d certainly give students a much clearer sense of why the literary world still pays sooooo much attention to this long-dead poet and playwright.
I guess it’s possible that Trey or “Glenn” or whomever may have stumbled upon an “off night.” But from what we were given on opening night, this production was anything but “undercooked.” It was detailed, nuanced, and ready to go.
You may see shows as good this year – but you won’t see shows that are fundamentally better, or that more fully engage you in the theatre experience, or more easily and joyously open you to the possibilities of movement, spoken word and sheer human depth that are present in Shakespeare.
This is one I hope to see again, maybe somewhere nearer the center; it’s paid its dues on the Fringe.