It’s just not worth trying to kill
some people.
Such is the lesson of The
Lamentable and True Tragedie of Master Arden of
Faversham in its current state of re-animation at
the Metropolitan Playhouse. What Arden lacks in
morality it attempts to make up in hilarity, as director
Alex Roe plays up the “comical tragedy” of this
sixteenth-century true-crime drama.
The story
begins with Alice Arden’s decision to dispose of her
husband, and reels from one incompetent assassination
attempt to another as she enlists nearly the entire town
of Faversham in her Italianate schemes. But poison,
ambushes, and snipers all fail to dispose of the hapless
Master Arden, who, like a sixteenth century Clouseau,
manages to blunder through (almost) all unscathed.
As second-string renaissance potboilers go, the
text of Arden is really rather good. In the depth of the
characters’ inner life can be seen the seeds of later,
more sophisticated, criminal dramas like Middleton’s
The Changeling, Webster’s Duchess of
Malfi, and Macbeth. The identity of
Arden’s author is long lost, but the vibrant
imagery he (or she? Or they?) used is striking enough to
have set many scholars wondering whether the play might
be an early work of Shakespeare himself.
But
it’s easy to see why Roe is aiming for comedy. Based
almost blow-for-blow upon the account of the 1551 murder
of Master Arden in Holinshed’s 1587 history of England,
the play has a Surreal-Life aura to it, and the
characters, while short on dramatic grandeur, are as
bumbling, shortsighted, and unversed in the subtleties
of proper corpse disposal as actual people might be.
However, despite above-average performances and
strong production values, this Arden never quite
achieves the hilarity it aspires to. Roe’s staging is
clear, and the actors play their villainous roles with
gusto, but the show doesn't develop the kind of comic
sensibility that could make an audience laugh out loud
at the play’s hijinks, hijackings and twists of fate
into. They’re shooting for Jerry Springer, but only
manage to come up with Oprah.
Many of the
moments most pregnant with potential are played
dissapointingly straight. In one scene, Arden’s servant
cowers in fear behind an inopportunely locked door,
while outside his erstwhile partner-in-crime shouts
threats and implications through the transom as he tries
to break in: the audience is primed for a moment of
cartoonish hide-and-go-seek that never happens. But some
of the bits that are added feel labored, or just plain
strange. At one point, a character illustrates another
failed murder attempt using... animal crackers?
The overall effect is the feeling that someone
ought to turn the volume up a notch. Only Chris Glenn,
as the notorious rascal Black Will, and Tod Mason, as
Arden himself, come close to getting as far over the
edge as the show really could go.
But while the
show is never quite riotous it is often amusing, and at
its best moments serves up some actual pathos for its
array of fairly pathetic bunglers. Jim DiBasio, as the
much-wronged Master Greene, and Andrew Firda, as the
most would-be of the would-be killers, deserve notice
for strong presence and creative use of the language.
Teresa Kelsey’s Alice, an aspiring Lady Macbeth who
really needs to take her lithium, is right on the ball,
though her scenes with her lover Mosby don’t quite
crackle the way they could.
Leigh Henderson’s
set is also lovely, and provides a great, flexible space
for a comedy of locked doors, missed cues, and hidden
entrances. It too, sadly, is never quite used to its
full potential.
In the end the play is still a
tragedy, and nearly everyone ends up hanged or burned
alive, which could lead one to question the wisdom of
trying to play this grim fable of human stupidity for
laughs -- but it’s so tantalizingly close to working.
At the moment, Arden is a strong show,
and a definite go-to for any Elizabethan stage
enthusiast who wishes to see a rare bit of history. If
the cast and director can turn their amps up to eleven,
it could be brilliant fun for any audience.
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Metropolitan
Playhouse |
Category:
Drama
Written by:
uncredited
Directed by: Alex
Roe
Produced by: Metropolitan
Playhouse
Opens: April
15
Closes: May 15
Running
Time: 2 hrs, 20
mins.
Address: 220 East 4th
Street
New York, NY 10009
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets: $19.00
$15 -
Students/Seniors, $10 - Children under 12. $12 for
groups of 10 or more
Phone:
212-995-5302
Hours: reservations
only
Online Ticketing: None
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Creative TeamWritten
by: Author Unknown
Directed
by: Alex Roe
Produced by: The
Metropolitan Playhouse
Light Designer:
Douglas Filomena
Sound
Designer:
Set Designer: Leigh
Henderson
Costume Designer: Melissa
Estro
Choreographer:
(Other artistic
personnel)
CastJohn Blaylock as An
Angel
Tod Mason as Arden
Jason Alan Griffin as
Franklin
Teresa Kelsey as Alice
Andrew Firda as
Michael
Carter Jackson as Mosby
Jim DiBasion as
Greene
Chris Glenn as Black Will
CrewProduction
Manager:
Stage Manager:
Phillip Bettencourt
(other crew)
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