Playwright: William Shakespeare. At: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre at Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand. Phone 312-595-5600; $44-$75. Runs through: March 6
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Franco Zeffirelli is currently engaged elsewhere, so nowadays if you want a director who can pump energy and urgency into a dangerously-fossilized repertoire, you get Gary Griffin. From his earliest storefront-circuit days, what has distinguished Griffin's approach to his task is the priority he places on rendering his audience's experience coherent—i.e. we know who's who and what's going on at every moment—and unhurried, the latter accomplished by a narrative tempo appropriate to the dramatic mood, but devoid of the water-treading that slows its progress.
Of course, it's not just the age of Shakespeare's romantic comedy that renders it so cumbersome, but its cast: a roster encompassing two pairs of courtly lovers, two pairs of humble lovers, two fathers (one bad, one good), three conflicted sons (one of whom thankfully stays offstage for most of the story) and sundry oddballs, including a misanthropic philosopher and a waggish jokester—all of whom will have their say before we are done. But romance thrives on impulse—the giant ticking clock that dominates Kevin Depinet's scenic design serving as a constant reminder that "time is yet a-flying". And to facilitate this theme in action, Griffin has transported our weary citizens to the giddy Regency period, when the fashion (for those who could afford it) was to be guided by emotions rather than reason.
Georgette Heyer fans will recognize this universe immediately, orderly neo-classical decor belying repressed social turmoil resolved only by flight to the "natural" world of Arden Forest—a lush pastoral landscape whose willowy boughs and arboreal glider echo the sway of the clock's pendulum. But Griffin is not about to let us be lulled by pretty stage pictures. In addition to ordering up a score of trotting-pace incidental music from Jenny Giering, he takes every opportunity to place his actors far downstage where they can speak with vaudeville swiftness while never compromising verbal clarity.
Kate Fry, who has played these kinds of roles many times before, delivers a trouper's turn as the transvestite Rosalind, but Chaon Cross's Celia emerges the more alert, and thus commanding, damsel. Matt Schwader likewise makes a hunky Orlando—at one point, chinning himself on a spotlight rail—but Phillip James Brannon's Touchstone instills fresh humor into centuries-old quips, interpretation matched for its originality only by Ross Lehman's Jacques, here played more irascible than melancholy. The tone of the production may be uneven, but whoever thought that such excitement and efficiency could spring from simply understanding the words?
