"Cymbeline" is a Mess, But Still Merry

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Shakespeare scholars say that Cymbeline is one of the Bard's problem plays. That's in part because it’s perversely named after a secondary character and is classified as a tragedy even though, as in Shakespeare's comedies, all loose ends are happily tied up by the final curtain. So, Cymbeline is rarely performed compared to Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear. Which is why I was looking forward to the production that is playing at the Delacorte Theater through Aug. 23 as the final production in this year’s Shakespeare in the Park series. And I’m glad I got the chance to see it but you shouldn’t feel too badly if you don’t.

The production directed by Daniel Sullivan is entertaining but I’m not sure how true it is to the spirit of the play. Although, to be fair, Shakespeare himself didn’t seem to be sure of what that spirit was. For Cymbeline is the 34th of the 38 plays credited to the Bard and it unspools like one of those highlights reels that get put together for awards shows. The resulting story is a hodgepodge.

Here, in two chunky paragraphs, is the plot: Cymbeline, an English king in rebellion against the Romans, is angry that his daughter Imogen has secretly married a commoner named Posthumus Leonatus because the girl’s twin brothers were kidnapped as infants and she is now her father’s sole heir. So Cymbeline banishes Posthumus from the kingdom and, spurred on by his conniving second wife, tries to marry Imogen to her distasteful stepbrother Cloten, who hatches a plan to win her by raping her.

Meanwhile, Posthumus flees to Italy, where he is tricked into a wager with the unscrupulous nobleman Iachimo who boasts that he can get Imogen to bed him. When Iachimo fakes evidence of the seduction, Posthumus not only disowns his true love but puts a hit out on her. Disguised as a young man, Imogen escapes and finds refuge with a mysterious peasant and his two sons. Eventually, they all end up on the battlefield against the Romans. And in a barrage of last-minute revelations, true identities are disclosed, confusions untangled and comeuppances meted out.

There is some fun to be had in identifying the familiar bits from some of Shakespeare’s other plays: the-foolish-father-wise-daughter dynamic from Lear, the misdirected lovers from Romeo and Juliet, the dastardly villain from Othello, the cross-dressing heroine from Twelfth Night and the missing twins from just about every comedy he wrote. But stitching those motley pieces into a smooth narrative proves messy.

Like others before him (click here for my review of Mark Lamos' 2007 production at Lincoln Center) Sullivan tries to camouflage the rough thread by trimming some of the unwieldy plot (the character of the Roman god Jupiter is entirely cut out in this version) and gussying up what’s left with lots of comedic business, music and other assorted merriment, including participation from some audience members who are seated onstage (click here to read about how he came up with it all).

But there are moments when he tries too hard. When Posthumus and Iachimo make their bet about Imogen’s chastity, they do it over a too on-the-nose casino table. And the costumes are a real grab bag of styles that range from Rat Pack suits for Iachimo to Elizabethan gowns for the queen and contemporary hipster slip dresses for Imogen.

But I’ve no complaints about the wonderful cast. The plummy-voiced Patrick Page, always one of my faves, plays Cymbeline with regal authority. Raúl Esparza, making his first stage appearance in three years, is deliciously malicious as Iachimo and is, of course, terrific when performing a couple of songs. Meanwhile, Kate Burton has tons of fun as the nefarious queen.

But the evening belongs to the show's leads: Lily Rabe as the proud and virtuous Imogen and Hamish Linklater, who plays both Posthumus and, with great relish, Cloten. This is the third time the pair have appeared in one of these summer productions. Both grew up in theatrical families and apparently took in the ability to speak and act Shakespeare with their mothers' milk. They're excellent.

Linklater and Rabe are also a couple in real-life (click here to read more about that) and the connection between them is palpable. You don’t always see the chemistry onstage between real-life couples but you sure do see it here. It would be fun to see what they might do with The Taming of the Shrew.

Discovering "Cymbeline"

The big question for me when I'm getting ready to see a play by Shakespeare is whether I should read the play, or at least a summary of it, beforehand. But I knew right from the moment I heard about Lincoln Center's production of Cymbeline that I wasn't going to read it. I'd never seen Cymbeline or studied it in school and the chance to "discover" a work by Shakespeare for the very first time, almost the way that a groundling at the Old Globe might have done in the Bard's day, seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

As you probably know by now, Cymbeline is kind of like a "Shakespeare's Greatest Hits" album. Characters and themes from other plays pop up so much that if you're familiar with just a little bit of Shakespeare, you feel quite at home. There are young lovers who are kept apart by wrongheaded parents (ala Romeo and Juliet), a scheming queen (just like Lady Macbeth), an unjustly jealous husband and the villain who eggs him on (hello, Othello and Iago), rousing battle scenes (all hail Henry V and Richard III), and spunky cross-dressing heroines and long-lost siblings (pick your favorite of his comedies). I've been trying to imagine what might have possessed Shakespeare to cram so many of his favorite tropes into one play. Was he cash-strapped and threw it all together fast to pay off a debt? Had he developed a case of writer's block and decided to treat it with remedies that had worked in the past? Who cares? What matters is that director Mark Lamos has whipped them all together into a delightfully entertaining evening full of pageantry, romance and liberal dollops of good-naturedly over-the-top humor.

Lots of directors these days seem to think that the best way to get a Broadway audience to sit through a Shakespeare play is simply to cast it with a big name star or two, or as many as they can get. Lamos didn't do that. Instead his large, color-blind cast (black Phylicia Rashad plays mom to white Adam Dannheisser) is filled with accomplished stage actors and they return the favor by turning in nicely polished performances, particularly Martha Plimpton as the courageous heroine Imogen, Michael Cerveris as her secret-husband Posthumus and John Pankow as their loyal servant Pisanio. The always-dependable John Cullum makes a regal king and Dannheisser, as a totally hissable villain, provides comic relief and wins big laughs. Lamos doesn’t try to impose any overarching concept on the play either; he just lets it tell its story. And he's ably assisted by Michael Yeargan's simple but elegant set, which evokes the fairy tale that Cymbeline ultimately is, and Jess Goldstein's lavish costumes, which are a little more all over the map but fitting since the play is too.

I squeezed the show in during the pre-Christmas rush and its message of forgiveness and reconciliation fits right into the spirit of the season. Maybe too many other theatergoers had longer shopping lists than mine because there were lots of empty seats at the Vivian Beaumont, where the show is playing through Jan. 6. And that's too bad because although Cymbeline is too much of a grab-bag to be a great play, there’s enough in this production to make a theater-loving groundling like me grateful to have seen it. Plus, there's that extra treat of discovering a work by Shakespeare that hasn't been done to death.

True Genius in "The Piano Teacher"

In the weeks before the writers' strike shut down TV production, television execs were patting themselves on the back and boasting that, unlike the movies where a woman over 30 is considered long in the tooth, several TV series were giving older actresses a place to show off their talent. But, out of the women they were talking about—Glenn Close (a ball-busting lawyer on FX's "Damages"), Mary Louise Parker (a middle-class drug dealer on Showtime's "Weeds") Holly Hunter (a dysfunctional cop on TNT's "Saving Grace"), Kyra Sedgwick (a quixotic cop on TNT's "The Closer"), and Vanessa Williams (a narcissistic fashion editor on ABC's "Ugly Betty")—only Close is currently eligible for an AARP card.

Theater is different. One of the reasons I love it is that women of all ages (and sizes, shapes and ethnicities) can—and do—strut their stuff on its stages. Right now, Debra Monk and Karen Ziemba are kicking up their heels in Curtains. Sinéad Cusack is giving two kick-ass performances in Rock 'n' Roll. Phylicia Rashad, who has only come into her own in the past decade even winning the Tony in 2004, is in previews in Cymbeline. And, of course, the whole premise of Mamma Mia! pivots around a boomer-age mom and her pals.

I thought about all of this after watching the hands-down best performance I've seen this year: Elizabeth Franz in Julia Cho's The Piano Teacher. Although some theatergoers will remember her as the original unctuous nun in Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and Franz first knocked me out in her Tony-winning performance as Linda Loman in the 1999 revival of Death of a Salesman, she isn't a big name. But she is a big talent. She's also 66.

And that's fitting because Cho's play tells the story of a retired and widowed piano teacher who, out of loneliness, tries to reconnect with some of her old students to find out why in one particular year so many of them stopped taking lessons. The two who show up—the very good Carmen M. Herlihy and the young and very promising John Boyd—bring with them unsettling answers that force the teacher to confront truths she has spent a lifetime trying to avoid.

Director Kate Whoriskey hits every chord of tension in the piece, which runs just under 90 minutes. She is ably assisted by Derek McLane's cozy, yet slightly creepy, set; and Obadiah Eaves' subtlety unnerving sound design. But it is Franz who makes the show worth a trip down to the Vineyard Theatre on 15th Street, where the run has been extended until Dec. 23. Her Mrs. K, as the piano teacher is called, is a complete person and Franz makes you feel every emotion she experiences.

Many of those feelings are disturbing because the play is intentionally ambiguous, allowing the viewer to bring her or his own nightmares to its mysteries. Cho totters at times on this ambitious tightrope she has set for herself but she is a playwright to be watched and supported. A Korean-American, she includes Asian characters in all of her works and yet race and politics seldom take center stage but, rather, add undertones that accentuate the commonality of human experience. And at just 32, Cho has created a master role that older actresses will treasure for years to come (click here to read an interview in which she discusses the genesis of The Piano Teacher).

Cho isn't the only playwright who has recognized the inherent drama that can be mined from centering plays around such characters. Contemporary writers from Horton Foote to Tom Stoppard have created big, juicy roles for actresses who are mature enough to bring a lifetime’s worth of experience and skill to those parts.The jobs don't pay as well as playing cops and robbers or comic foils on TV but the pay off—for the actors and their audiences—is richer.