Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The Director's View

By Barton Bund, Water Works Theatre 2010 Director of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Working on The Two Gentlemen of Verona is like discovering a new play by your favorite writer. The guy is brilliant, we all know this, and we know some of his plays so well that we have a hard time seeing new productions. We compare it with others we have seen, or as actors, we tend to judge productions based on the different choices we would have made. At least I do.

This is different, because there isn’t some incredibly well-known legendary production starring John Gielgud. Even though I am sure he played all the roles in this show at various points in his life. We get to go in fresh. With young actors. We have so little frame of reference, so little historical whatnot to cling to, that we get to create a whole new world for ourselves.

Our Verona is a small town, a provincial dead end. Moving to Milan means stepping into the world of art, culture, fashion, and women. Very desirable for a young man with nothing to lose. We have set our production in the mid-1960s, a time of change. Think about maybe a few years after Mad Men, but just slightly before the Summer of Love. A world on the brink of change. And I don’t just mean the fashions. The politics, and the politics between men and women, were in flux. A perfect fit for Two Gentlemen.

These women are independent. They travel alone, they choose their mates, they run the entire cycle of life. And by cross-gender casting the role of the Duke, and playing her as a very hip, progressive modern gal, we have established a wonderful dynamic. This is the sexual revolution. But boys mature slower than girls. Men still struggle with women’s lib, just as much now as ever before.

The play is as good as Twelfth Night or Much Ado About Nothing. It gets done a lot less often, and it’s because it’s deceptive and complex. It’s like a screwball comedy with all the slapstick and sex jokes, but with a brain. Think of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. A guy comedy on the surface, with all the Animal House/Trading Places/Soul Man kind of low humor. And now imagine it written by the guy who wrote Antony and Cleopatra. What you get is a comedy with a capital C, but you also get some complicated insights into the nature of love, and why love is so darned complicated.

When two people fall in love, they are tossing a boulder into a still pond. The ripples are felt everywhere. All the odds are stacked against them. It is possible that the real love story here is between our two gentlemen. They try to remain friends, but when they fall in love with two terrific women, they act like fools. They make all the wrong choices, and plunge everyone into peril.

I love the play, and I’m so glad to have young actors with me who are willing to try anything. We have to get pretty silly in order to get a very serious point across. And what is our point? By the end, I’m not really sure. We get our hearts broken, but we had fun, didn’t we? As Marvin Gaye wisely said, “That’s the way love is, baby. Sho nuff how it is.”

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