Playwright: William Shakespeare. At: Oak Park Festival Theatre at Austin Gardens, 167 Forest Ave., Oak Park. Tickets: 708-445-4440 or www.oakparkfestival.com; $22-$27. Runs through Aug. 22
Lavina Jadhwani makes a great case in her director's notes for re-envisioning Shakespeare's comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona as a 1980s teenage film drama. But in actual performance, Jadhwani's Oak Park Festival Theatre staging often finds itself at odds with the Elizabethan worldviews and situations within Shakespeare's text.
Written early in Shakespeare's career, Two Gentlemen of Verona focuses on the upper-class friends of Valentine ( Michael Pogue ) and Proteus ( David Keohone ) as they both try to make their names in Milan. Both romantically pursue Silvia ( Sigrid Sutter ), the daughter of the Duke ( Scot West ) who wants her to marry the wealthy Thurio ( Tim Martin portraying a preppy nerd ). Much of the drama is driven by Proteus' deviousness, making him more of an antiheroespecially in the way that he toys with the affections of Julia ( Vahishta Vafadari ) who dons male drag in order to spy on him.
Jadhwani's approach to remake most the characters as spoilt California teenagers is initially fun as you watch them muddle with love and social standing. Yet the text's class distinctions becomes problematic because Jadhwani recasts the servants either as wacky sidekicks ( in the case of Noah Laufer as a skateboarding Launce and Dan cobbler as a cool cat Speed ) or close friends ( in the case of Erika Miranda as Julia's valley girl waiting woman ). Since the servants are presented on largely equal standing with their masters, it often goes against the text when they're commanded to follow orders.
Jadhwani also sets her production in 1983, which is immediately problematic for those who can spot how many of the pop songs used in the show came afterwards. In particular, Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" is used for a balcony serenading sequence with a boom box in a shout-out to the 1989 film Say Anything. But the song is from 1987 and the boom box was clearly manufactured at least a decade after the 1980s.
Incorrect details like these ( and modern references to things like urinals and Madonna pop songs ) take you out of the drama as you think about the changes made to the text and what the original situations would have been like if Two Gentleman of Verona was presented in a traditionally straightforward staging.
Nonetheless, what does work about the production are the very able performances by the cast as they commit to Jadhwani's concept. Costume designer Emily McConnell also does a great job of taking you back to the 1980s in terms of the characters' tragically hip fashion sense.
Updating Shakespeare isn't a crime, but you have to get the little details right. Otherwise you're taken out of the drama, which happens far too often in Jadhwani's take on Two Gentleman of Verona.