Love’s Labor’s Lost, and: Titus Andronicus, and: King Lear (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Love’s Labor’s Lost, and: Titus Andronicus, and: King Lear
Presented by The Public Theater’s PublicLab at the Anspacher Theater, New York, New York. October 18–November 6, 2011. Directed by Karin Coonrod. Scenery design by John Conklin. Costume design by Oana Botez Ban. Lighting design by Brian H. Scott. Music by Tony Geballe. With Hoon Lee (Ferdinand), Nick Westrate (Berowne), Keith Eric Chappelle (Longaville), Jorge Chacon (Dumaine), Renee Elise Goldsberry (Princess of France), Rebecca Brooksher (Rosaline), Samira Wiley (Maria and Moth), Michelle Beck (Katharine). Robert Stanton (Boyet and Dull), Reg E. Cathey (Armado), Mousa Kraish (Costard), Steven Skybell (Holofernes), Stephanie DiMaggio (Jaquenetta), Francis Jue (Sir Nathaniel, Marcade).
Presented by The Public Theater’s PublicLab at the Anspacher Theater, New York, New York, November 29–December 18, 2011. Directed by Michael Sexton. Scenery design by Brett J. Banakis. Costume design by Cait O’Connor. Lighting design by Mark Barton. Music and sound design by Brandon Wolcott. With Jay O. Sanders (Titus), Rob Campbell (Lucius), Patrick Carroll (Chiron), Frank Dolce (Alarbus, Mutius, Young Lucius, boy), Jacob Fishel (Saturninus), William Jackson Harper (Demetrius), Daoud Heidami (Bassianus, Publius, Aemilius, Nurse, Goth), Sherman Howard (Marcus), Jennifer Ikeda (Lavinia), Ron Cephas Jones (Aaron), and Stephanie Roth Haberle (Tamora). [End Page 325]
Presented by The Public Theater at the Newman Theater, New York, New York, October 18–November 20, 2011. Directed by James Macdonald. Scenic design by Miriam Buether. Costume design Gabriel Berry. Lighting design by Christopher Akerlind. Sound design by Darron L. West. With Sam Waterston (Lear), Che Ayende (Burgundy), Craig Bockhorn (Gentleman), Kristen Connolly (Cordelia), Michael Crane (Oswald), Herb Foster (Old Man), Seth Gilliam (Edmund), Enid Graham (Goneril), Bill Irwin (Fool), Michael Izquierdo (France), Michael McKean (Gloucester), Arian Moayed (Edgar), Kelli O’Hara (Regan), John Douglas Thompson (Kent), Richard Topol (Albany), and Frank Wood (Cornwall).
The Public Theater’s Shakespeare Initiative broke new ground in 2011. The ShakespeareLab, its training program in classical theatre, began to stage stripped-down productions, pricing tickets affordably so as to develop new audiences for Shakespeare. Following the Lab’s inaugural production—Timon of Athens directed by Barry Edelstein (the Director of the Shakespeare Initiative)—Love’s Labor’s Lost and Titus Andronicus were staged at the small Anspacher Theater as part of the PublicLab season. In the same season, King Lear was mounted at the larger Newman Theater as part of the Downtown season; Lear was produced under the Initiative’s umbrella and marketed alongside the smaller-scale Lab productions.
All three productions were experimental, playing with and sometimes subverting more traditional interpretations of the text. The experiments were in some cases enlivened by bold design choices and in one case undone by them: all three attempted to marry concept to coherent storytelling, although not all did so successfully. Love’s Labor’s Lost added extra-textual material and cut and re-arranged the text to good effect, allowing the audience to experience the play’s sorrow beneath its exuberance and bringing out elements of the play that are often ignored. Titus Andronicus was if anything plagued by too many ideas, some of which invigorated what is one of Shakespeare’s most fractured plays, some of which rendered it nearly incomprehensible; but the production was well-designed and blessed with a vital performance by Jay O. Sanders as the title character. King Lear had at its center an ill-judged performance by Sam Waterston, and was hindered by design choices that, while derived from the play’s meditation on boundaries and divisions, made the production at times unwatchable.
Coonrod’s production of Love’s Labor’s Lost was both joyous and serious. It hit comic high-notes—some born of Shakespeare’s puniness and [End Page 326] set-pieces (the overhearing scene and the pageant of Nine Worthies were both very fine), some imported into the production (impromptu renditions of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” extended riffs on the Public’s current crop of Shakespeare plays in rep, to name but two)—but was also haunted by the deeper, more complex themes at the play’s heart. And for all its conceptual richness, the...
