Palm Beach Dramaworks has often been challenged by what to program in the summer. It wants to keep its doors open with a production or two, but is wary of spending too much for minimal return from a reduced audience pool.
Its answer this summer is a couple of musicals in concert form, semi-staged readings of fairly well known shows from Broadway’s golden age that would be difficult — and much more expensive — to produce fully. It did not sound like an approach worth getting excited about, but that would be a drastic underestimation of what director Clive Cholerton and a rich-voiced cast could do with Man of La Mancha.
Cholerton, late of the late Caldwell Theatre Company, had brought the concert format to Boca Raton and, earlier this season, to Dramaworks with Camelot. As enjoyable as they were, none of the previous efforts prepared us for the staging ingenuity and impact of his musical concert of Don Quixote and the plight of its idealistic author, Miguel de Cervantes.
The show is actually well suited to concertization (note to editor: Yeah, I know that’s not a word, but go with it anyway), since the original New York production took place on a bare stage and Cervantes’ improvised account of his novel to the prisoners of a Spanish jail always drew on the audience’s imagination rather than employing elaborate production values.
Still, Cholerton goes far beyond the standard static lineup of music stands, with an impressive staging built around a central revolving platform, turned manually by Cervantes’ manservant-cum-stage-manager. Chances are that by the end of the opening number, after found objects in the prison have become horses and a windmill, you will be drawn in and won over by this low-budget La Mancha.
Helping considerably is Broadway veteran William Michals, who has vocal power to spare as Cervantes/Quixote. His big baritone booms out The Big Number (The Impossible Dream), but he also invests it with character. And he delineates well his multiple roles, leading up to a moving death scene finale.
West Palm native Alix Paige returns home to play scullery maid Aldonza, a demanding role both vocally and dramatically. She slips smoothly between her chest and head voices as required and comes on strong with a feisty rendering of her 11th-hour eponymous aria.
The rest of the cast hails from South Florida, notably Oscar Cheda, whose Sancho Panza provides the comic relief without the Borscht Belt spin the character is often given. Ken Clement underplays effectively as the innkeeper and Barry Tarallo’s Padre delivers the score’s loveliest number, To Each His Dulcinea.
In a couple of offbeat but successful casting strokes, Nick Duckart handles the female role of the housekeeper and the traveling barber also gets a gender change, performed with flair by Leah Sessa. The cut-down cast size meant that the muleteer chorus got shortchanged, but you can’t have everything.
Perhaps the budget for muleteers went instead to beef up the musical accompaniment, with Caryl Ginsburg Fantel conducting and playing keyboard, heading a three-piece combo of guitar (Greg Chance) and percussion (Roy Fantel).
In all, Cholerton sets the bar high for Dramaworks’ so-called Musical Theatre Masters Series, increasing our anticipation for next month’s concert of Stephen Sondheim’s Company.
MAN OF LA MANCHA in concert, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Extended through Sunday, July 28. Tickets: $35. Call: (561) 514-4042.
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The news is less upbeat from Jupiter, where Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival — now in its 23rd season — struggles with Coriolanus, one of the later, less frequently produced tragedies of its namesake playwright.
The play is frankly second-tier Shakespeare, with a distinct lack of memorable poetry or narrative complexity, but it is far more stageworthy than it seems from director Kevin Crawford’s uninspired rendering. As an actor, he remains the company’s most valuable asset, but his staging demonstrates little affinity for this tale of the Roman warrior drawn into the realm of politics with tragic results.
Perhaps the problem is that the Shakespeare Festival has accustomed us to its different-for-the-sake-of-being-different production concepts, setting the plays in unusual times and locales with knee-jerk regularity. Here the program suggests that Coriolanus has been moved to deep outer space, in “a place calling itself ‘Rome’ ” — a line cribbed from Ralph Fiennes’ 2011 film version. In practice, though, there is little evidence of otherworldly adaptation, save for a superfluous soundscape at the beginning of each act.
Otherwise, Crawford seems very hands-off with the production. While he usually crafts careful stage pictures, he apparently is content to let his actors wander aimlessly across the wide Seabreeze Amphitheatre stage. It is an approach which leaves the play’s success dependent on the skills of the 18-member cast which are — true to Festival form — uneven to say the least.
Bald-pated Crawford is imposing as Caius Martius, the arrogant killing machine who is elevated — however briefly — to the title of consul and given the honorary title of Coriolanus. His trademark verbal dexterity with Shakespearean prose helps convey the plot with clarity and propel it forward.
Still, the character does not seem to have a tragic flaw, as much as he is a victim of The Peter Principle. Having returned victorious from war, he is propelled into the political arena, but finds that he hasn’t the patience to placate the common people.
More interesting is his mother, Volumnia, who groomed Coriolanus from a young age to be a soldier. Making her Festival debut, Karen Chandler is a bold stage presence, particularly in her second act soliloquy trying to persuade her son to compromise his values. I could have used more Freudian undertones from her, but Chandler is a promising addition to the company.
Other standouts include company mainstay Krys Parker as Coriolanus’s long-suffering wife Virgilia and Zach Myers as brawny Aufidius, the war rival who becomes an unexpected ally. Otherwise, the rest of the ensemble seems at sea — or perhaps lost in space? — as various citizens and soldiers who never project the needed sense of community.
With its cautionary message about the difficulties of politics and a fickle electorate, Coriolanus does seem to be a timely play. Even with Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival‘s uneven effort, that theme comes through.
CORIOLANUS, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival, Seabreeze Amphitheatre, Carlin Park, A1A and Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday, July 21. Free, $5 donation suggested. Call: (561) 966-7099.