The Second Shepherds’ Play by Mary Hall Surface (review)

Offering a rare professional production of a non-Shakespearean early drama, adaptor and director Mary Hall Surface extended the short text of The Second Shepherds’ Play into a robust ninety minutes through a collaboration with the Folger Consort, an early music ensemble. A patchwork of twenty-three musical pieces from late medieval and Renaissance England, including nine pieces sung by the cast, celebrated traditions of storytelling beyond dramatic narrative. Chosen for their tone (sometimes festive, sometimes solemn) and themes (winter, the Annunciation), the songs provided meaningful inter-ludes between otherwise disconnected episodes of shepherds grumbling on the moor, a sheep-stealing couple scheming in the village, and the brief, unexpected nativity in Bethlehem. The texture of the production at the Folger Theatre was not seamless, but that was by design. Surface’s adaptation preserved the medieval tendency to feature multiple modes of performance within a single event, and to juxtapose the ridiculous with the miraculous.

Tonya Beckman (Gill), Matthew R. Wilson (Coll), Ryan Sellers (Mak), and Megan Graves (Daw) in The Second Shepherds’ Play. (Photo: Brittany Diliberto.)

Surface played with size, scale, and theatricality throughout the production, especially in the first part, which depicted a profane version of the Holy Family (Mak, Gill, and the stolen sheep they disguise as a baby and intend to slaughter) and the shepherds (Coll, Gib, and Daw), who eventually figured as inverted Magi. When Mak (Ryan Sel- lers) absconded with the lamb, the distance from the countryside to the village was represented with a series of small poles held horizontally and vertically. Miniature versions of the cast were then manipulated up and down by hand. Thus when the thief was finally caught and sentenced to be “cast . . . in canvas,” it was the puppet Mak that was tossed in a blanket. While the puppet versions of Mak, Coll, Gib, and Daw were rendered as homemade dolls, the lamb was full size and life-like.

Lilian Oben (Mary), Daniel Meyers (musician), Louis E. Davis (Gib), Matthew R. Wilson (Coll), and Megan Graves (Daw) in The Second Shepherds’ Play. (Photo: Brittany Diliberto.)

While the scenes between Mak and Gill (Tonya Beckman) played up the play’s domestic banter, the more common comedy turned to clowning in the production when it came to hiding the sheep. Gill stuffed the giant lamb under her dress and feigned labor pains so as to wail over the incessant baaing. In the text of the play Daw reports that he thinks he sees Mak dressed as a wolf. Onstage, this materialized as a nightmare dumbshow of a wolf mask and giant gray fur towering over the small-statured boy, who was played, through an inversion of Renaissance acting practice, by a woman (Megan Graves). The door to Mak and Gill’s cottage, which was scaled to the puppets, was held in front of the face of the human household dweller. The Star of Bethlehem was about the size of a larger household light fixture, while the gown of the Angel (Emily Noël) unfurled from the balcony to the stage floor. The distortion and lack of congruence was part of a storytelling strategy that understands medieval performance as artisanal—that is, as studied and professional, but also low-fi and DIY.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the production was the way in which Surface connected the two parts of the play: the longer English pastoral-domestic comedy, and the shorter visit to Bethlehem. Critics often emphasize a structural parallel between the profane, funny couple that intends to eat the lamb and their sacred, almost silent counterparts at the nativity, but this production focused our attention on the shepherds by having them offer occasional moments of psychological realism within the otherwise farcical and otherworldly events. The play includes scenes of Coll, Gib, and Daw discussing the cold, their poverty, and anxiety over the missing sheep. Rather...