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* (out of *****)
Tom Stoppard is well known for his fondness of words and the Bard. His famed, loquacious "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is considered a modern masterpiece. He is a champion of language and freedom of speech, and his childhood under an oppressive Communist regime joined with his fascination with the English languages' greatest dramatist prompted the creation of his two, interlinked one acts, "Dogg's Hamlet" and "Cahoot's Macbeth". In these plays, the presence of an English-based gibberish language, Dogg, is the subversive language through which performances of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" are linked. The performances are not done in Dogg, but the actors are infected by this lyrically nonsensical language, and it is this language which eventually topples the system.
As with most Stoppard plays, the text is dense, the themes are at once subtle and obvious, and there is something off-kilter in the world he creates. Done well, these plays are a sluggish intellectual treatise loosely in the form of drama. Done badly, as is the case with Planet Earth's production, it is an indecipherable, unfunny farce that is in turns repetitious and long-winded.
Christopher Haines has directed these two plays, as well as the comedic play "The Congresswomen" by Aristophanes, which Stoppard translated, with the subtlety of a Louisville Slugger. The cast, which runs from the acceptable to the downright horrible, buffonishly rushes through these plays in an attempt to find a meaning. Interspliced throughout these other plays is "The Congresswomen", which is a base, vulgar political satire concerning the taking-over of the Athenian democracy by those wild-notioned Athenian women. Between the unfunny references to bowel movements and sex, the women set up an equitable system that nationalizes everything, including sex. What isn't already pounded into the audiences heads through the text is blatantly repeated through Mr. Haine's uninspired and uncreative direction. While the plays all contain farcical elements, there are moments of true drama which Mr. Haines runs roughshod over. While it's true that the texts of the play are themselves difficult to direct well, Mr. Haines has done nothing to deal with these difficulties, and in fact creates many more for himself.
The only bright spots to this dreadful evening come from the portrayals of Peter James Cirino as the banana-republic-styled Inspector, a government stooge who is intimidated by dramatic presentations and proceeds to intimidate the actors and audience to stop such unhealthy pursuits, and Mollie Kellogg Cirino in her various roles, including the over-the-top presentation of the town hag in "The Congresswomen". While so many other of the performances were somewhere between undistinguished and awful, it was fun watching her go overboard as her character celebrates the equalization of sex for beautiful and ugly alike.
Ellen Devine, who plays the part of Praxagora in "The Congresswomen", Gertrude in "Dogg's Hamlet" and the Hostess in "Cahoot's Macbeth", is wasted in these one-note performances, and seemed genuinely uncomfortable during the base and silly proceedings. C.S. Martinez, in his recurring role as Easy, a character who keeps stumbling onto the various theatrical performances, is solid and at times enjoyable. After these performances, none other bears mentioning.
Mr. Haines' set and lighting design were minimal and did nothing to enhance an already unspectacular evening. His sound design was even detrimental to the show, and made the presentation even more amateurish than it already seemed.
It seems a lot of the blame for the failures of this production rest securely on the shoulders of Mr. Haines, though it is truly questionable in the first place if these three pieces, even with the editing to their scripts that always occursin a Stoppard play, could have been much better done by a professional. The plays, though, seemed awkward, under-rehearsed, and sloppily handled, and is unexpected, even by Planet Earth Theatre's hit-and-miss standards.
Production Details:
"Dogg's Hamlet", "Cahoot's Macbeth" by Tom Stoppard
and "The
Congresswomen"
by Aristophanes and translated by Tom Stoppard
Planet Earth Multi-cultural Theatre, Phoenix,
241-1828
October 18-20 & November 1-23, 1996
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