Review: 2nd Story Theatre’s School for Wives
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
There is only one regrettable moment in 2nd Story Theatre's School for Wives.
When Ed Shea's Arnolphe leaves the stage and love conquers all.
So mindfully, physically, emotionally, and fascinatingly funnily, has Shea created this character, that when he is chased away near play's end so the earnest lovers he has labored to keep apart, unite, it's tempting to hope for a reversal of fates. Anything to bring back this brilliantly realized character.
If this sounds like a rave, a theater-goer's bouquet at the feet of an actor, it is.
Ed Shea, back on stage
Shea began his career in Providence crafting finely edged, memorable characters, and he's done much to help other actors in Rhode Island strive to match his bulls-eye intensity. In other words, he's directed (and exacted fine performances all along the way) at 2nd Story Theatre, which he co-founded and steers with Pat Hegnauer.
But now, as is much publicized (and wisely so), by 2nd Story, Shea is back on stage, directed by Pat (and by himself as well), at the center of the well-known Moliere farce that lampoons the vanity of man's attempt to control woman. (Forward-thinking for 1662, no doubt, and given a modern turbo-charge by poet Richard Wilbur's robust translation nearly 300 years later.)
Playing beyond wit
The play itself is full of wit, but is often tossed off in breakneck fashion, galloping on meter and betting on the charm of dramatic velocity. But watch Shea enter, with his Sancho Panza-like companion Chrysalde (Rendueles Villalba), while ingenue Agnes (played sweetly by Gabby Sherba) sings from her moonlit balcony, and everything slows to Shea's rapt face. Amid dark punctuation of mustache, bowler hat, and arched eyebrows, he beams like Charlie Chaplin, creating a poignant mime show of adoration. It's gorgeous, absorbing, and lays the foundation for a remarkable vulnerability that takes Shea's Arnolphe far beyond the easily-sketched, satirical schemer he's often portrayed as.
From here, and for two wonderful hours, it's all Arnolphe - a virtuoso portrayal fueled by exhilarating physicality - movement specific and so acrobatic, yet never out of character. Shea makes every gesture just large enough, his body taut as a spring, his face pliant as a vaudeville clown's.
George Costanza on speed
And his voice. It's gutsy to do Moliere in a modern-day Five Points accent, something akin to George Costanza on speed, but it works. It takes this Arnolphe away from drawing room preciousness and gives him street smarts and street humor. The flat vowels and dropped endings give Shea something more to chew on, adding facets to catch the light and play of the playwright's insights into men, women, love, and loss.
Freed up by his aural Americanization of the role, Shea plays with the language like Brazilian footballers play with a soccer ball. Never once, in long monologues and rapid exchanges, does he lapse into predictable meter, and yet the rhymes arrive and land, and with his excellent comedic timing (more credit to music hall and vaudevillians who've no doubt inspired), the storytelling feels richer, Arnolphe's comedic hubris all the more real and therefore touching.
A cast to complement
This is bravura stuff, and the entire cast has been directed to complement the attack. It's tough to compare to Shea on this one, but Jeff Church, who as Horace ignorantly confesses his wooing of Arnolphe's intended to Arnolphe himself, adds an endearingly goofy, giraffe-like physicality that beautifully contrasts the watch-spring that is Arnolphe. They're the winning pair on stage, buttressed by the Punch-and-Judy pugilism of servants Alain and Georgette (Tom Roberts and Paula Faber).
There's some excellent stagecraft as well. Set designer Trevor Elliot's period-style revolving door allows rapid scene changes (and provides the perfect metaphor for a woman's open-door policy to a secret lover). Secondly, a set of flicker-style silent movie pantomimes move the plot forward between certain scenes, and take full advantage of Church's natural gifts for Gumby-like grace. He's even funnier in strobe.
But for all the fun, the fantastic bits, the rhymes and rhythms fresh within Ed Shea's jazz-like mastery of timing and syncopation, this School for Wives triumphs in that moment when Arnolphe loses his charge. Shea's confessions of love, his physical display of vulnerability in the very cuckoldry he's schemed to avoid, and that memory of our first vision of him - his face shining, naively, up at his songbird - make for a real hero we want to triumph. His loss is ours, his departure our loss as well.
Screw love. And that's no farce.
Do not miss: School for Wives through Dec 12th, 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St, Warren, 247-4200, or on the Web site, here.
Photo: Ed Shea and Gabby Sherba as Arnolphe and Agnes
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