Cymbeline

Cymbeline has got a little of everything.  It’s got War, it’s got True Love, it’s got the Girl Disguised as Guy, the Princes Raised as Woodsmen, it’s got the Wicked Stepmother, it’s got the Apparently Dead Person Who is Really Just Asleep (think Romeo and Juliet).  What sets it apart from a lot of Shakespeare’s work is that it doesn’t have the incessant wit, the wild turn of phrase that at once seems impossibly wrong and indubitably right, that forces us to see the world in new light.  No, the dialogue here is rather prosaic in comparison to most of the comedies, or any of the plays with a fool (even Hamlet-as-Fool, as much as Lear-as-Fool—though Lear has his own fool, of course). 

It’s just this prosaic dialogue that Fiasco’s Theater rendition of Cymbeline, which I saw Sunday night (door tickets are $37.50) at Barrow St. Theater, does so much with.  At those moments of mediocrity that creep up throughout this play, the directors have chosen to make their characters a touch on parodic side—which is to say nerdy/geeky side of things (except in the case when they’re more like idiots).  It works remarkably well.  For example, in Act I, Scene I, when two lovers are forced to part, one gives the other a bracelet and calls it a “manacle of love” and puts it on his “sweetest, fairest.”  If this were Romeo, then the lines would be delivered in all earnestness, and the other version of Cymbeline I’ve heard had them delivered such.  The Fiasco Theater’s version makes the line-deliver something like an over-excited nerd.  Because, you know, calling a bracelet a “manacle of love” sans irony ain’t cool.  And they do it like this throughout, hamming it up, both in delivery of dialogue and silent reception of it.

The performance has a lot to recommend it.  The acting was superb.  Six mummers performed about twice as many parts, with minimal costume change and with maximum clarity.  The music, which was worked in during major moments of transition, was simply excellent—the cast can sing.  The space is small and intimate and I can’t imagine a better version of Cymbeline.

I don’t want it to sound like the play itself doesn’t have something to offer.  Of course, it does (just less, I’d argue, than normal for a Shakespeare play).  One of favorite lines in all of Shakespeare is in Act I, Scene IV.  I like it so much because I find it particularly enigmatic.  I’ll end this review with it, spoken by Iachimo:

What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes
To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above and the twinn'd stones
Upon the number'd beach? and can we not
Partition make with spectacles so precious
'Twixt fair and foul?

….

It cannot be i' the eye, for apes and monkeys
'Twixt two such shes would chatter this way and
Contemn with mows the other; nor i' the judgment,
For idiots in this case of favour would
Be wisely definite; nor i' the appetite;
Sluttery to such neat excellence opposed
Should make desire vomit emptiness,
Not so allured to feed.