I’ve always thought martial arts have a great place in live theater. I’m hoping this thread will document an upcoming trend. Some productions, like KA and Jump are worthy of their own independent thread, and I’m looking more at shows that are more than just a martial arts demo like the Shaolin shows and Kung Fu Femmes. Here’s example number one:
Shakespeare, martial-arts style
It doesn’t always work but actors stand out
By TRAVIS NICHOLS
There is a crackpot wing of Shakespeare studies that says the Bard never meant for his plays to be staged. The language is too rich and the allusions too manifold for anything but close textual study. Anything else – live action, sets, costumes, etc. – would simply be a distraction from the masterful language.
I first heard this theory from a University of Georgia professor, Charles Doyle, who delivered it nearly with a straight face. It’s a preposterous idea, but its extreme point of view throws into relief the near impossibility of staging Shakespeare in a way that allows the man’s brilliance on the page to come through with a minimum of interference from the stage.
For the Seattle Shakespeare Company, this is the perennial challenge, and the company regularly and admirably meets it. Through Jan. 27 at Center House Theatre, it has taken on Shakespeare’s grand political drama of the Roman Empire’s fall, “Julius Caesar.” For anyone who can’t get enough chicanery from presidential primary season, or who feels unfulfilled by HBO’s decadence-by-the-numbers series, “Rome,” this seems like just the thing.
Adapted and directed by Gregg Loughridge, the company’s “Caesar” in this “chamber” production doesn’t lord over the togas and sandals of ancient Rome. Instead he stalks a kind of dojo removed from any specific time or place.
Most of the action takes place on an elevated center stage, entry to which requires the pious removal of slippers. Antony and Caesar both have shaved heads, while Cassius has a vaguely Eastern braid, and all the characters wear quasi-samurai uniforms, carry swords and bow to one another in greeting. Brutus performs some early-morning tai chi and slaps his pants out of the way before squatting samurai style. The idea, according to the director’s note, is to show Caesar imposing not a historical tyranny but “a garden variety tyranny: a boss, a minister or priest, martial arts instructor, editor, chef or theater director who, basking under the trust and willingness of their respective congregations, took advantage and went awry.”
It’s a fascinating concept – Caesar as leader of the Moonies – but it doesn’t quite come through. A hippy-dippy cult aura is hinted at by chambered nautiluses projected onto the stage’s screens, “Voodoo Chile” blaring between scenes, and Calpurnia employing tarot cards to interpret her dream of Caesar’s demise.
However, such hints aren’t enough to override the text’s continual reference to Rome, Romans, the Tiber, etc. Instead of being a fresh take on a fusty classic, the staging seems a muddle, a problem exacerbated by the occasionally stale recitations of the Bard’s words by some of the cast. How David Quicksall’s Brutus can muster the courage to kill Caesar is a miracle since he seems mostly to have just gotten out of bed.
Still, Hana Lass shines as Cassius, projecting the fervency of a true believer willing to kill for her cause, and Kelly Kitchens’ muffled hysteria makes Portia into a contemporary and wholly sympathetic wife. She steals nearly as many scenes as Brandon Simmons does as Casca, a role to which he brings a joyful and hammy flamboyance. These actors pull off a delicate trick: They make time-tested characters their own on the stage, without diluting the beauty of what’s on the page.
