GreenStage’s 28th season of free outdoor theater is off to a terrific start this summer with perfect weather. I watched their production of William Shakespeare’s Cymberline in Volunteer Park this Sunday. Under the skillful direction of Vince Brady, the large company of 15 actors performed in front of the stage platform in the park. This gets a demerit on my score card, as the back wall does help with projecting the actors’ voices. Acting in front of that stage meant their voices drifted out into the air with no supportive architecture to help carry it to the audience of about 250 scattered about the lawn.
Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years, having died in 1616, five years after this play opened and three years after his retirement. The scholarship is all over the place about the authorship of this play and whether it displays Shakespeare’s strengths or is a lesser work altogether—whoever may have written it. Read here that it is a bit of juvenilia written 30 years before and dusted off; and here about this being a mature work with many experimental elements. Of course, George Bernard Shaw weighed in as well. So, relax and love or hate this play as you wish.
King Cymberline (Gianni Truzzi is regal in the few scenes he has), in real life led Celtic Britain for 35 years, till about 40 AD. In the play he has three children, 2 boys, and one girl. His sons are kidnapped as infants by Belarius, an unjustly banished former member of his court. Guiderius and Arviragus are raised as country youth and with no awareness of their royal birth. Imogen, Cymberline’s remaining child grows up only to fall in love with, and secretly marry, Posthumus Leonatus, a member of the court. They exchange tokens of their love: he give her a bracelet, she gives him a ring.
Let’s pause here to comment on what a standout performance Katherine Jett as Imogen turns in. If you can’t get a seat up close take your opera glasses and watch her “close up” during the more emotional scenes. No surprise to learn she has just finished leading roles in other productions around the city.
King Cymberline is not please when he learns of this marriage and annuls it. He need to betroth Imogen to a royal family to secure an heir to his crown. He exiles Posthumus to Italy. Meanwhile, Cymberline’s wife, the Queen and Imogen’s step-mother, both wants to have her son Cloten marry Imogen and she also wants Imogen and Posthumus killed. Shakespeare! Which is it, a marriage and child or death to Imogen? Billy, make up your mind!
Posthumus (played competently by Eric Hampton) while in exile in Italy begins to sing the praises of Imogen’s virtues. Iachimo (John Bergerson handles the role with the appropriate snide swagger) bets Posthumus that Imogen is not as virtuous as he claims and that with a letter of introduction to King Cyberline’s court he can seduce her and return with evidence of his success and Imogen’s fall. Much of the plot that unrolls has to do with the consequences of this bet. Iachimo doesn’t succeed, but by hiding in a chest in Imogen’s bedroom he’s able to get enough details about the room and her body. He’s even filches the bracelet off her arm. Imogen’s a heavy sleeper.
Pisanio (Sam Hagen puts in a solid turn in this role) a goodhearted servant in the middle of it all delivering letters and thwarting orders to kill people, alerts Imogen of Posthumus’s letter ordering him to kill her, help Imogen disguise herself as a man to go meet Posthumus in Wales and explain what happened.
The clownish Cloten (a role embraced with exaggerated glee by Warren Haney), son of the Queen, gets Posthumus’s clothes from Pisanio and leaves in pursuit of Imogen. His run-in with the grown sons of Cymberline does not go well, actually, it costs him his head!
Meanwhile, Posthumus returns to Britain with the invading Roman army, coming to collect a tribute that King Cymberline had refused to pay at the urging of his wife. He fights against the Romans in the ensuing battle but is taken prisoner because he is in Roman clothes.
Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus join King Cymberline’s forces and help him defeat the Romans. Now with all the characters gathered on the field Shakespeare wraps up everything—Iachimo confesses to his deceit; Posthumus steps forward out of the line of Roman prisoners to identify himself and pardon Iachimo; Pisanio explains about the sleeping potion and intercepted letters; Imogen throws off her cap and she and Posthumus lovingly embrace each other.
Belarius, the unjustly banished nobleman, confesses to having kidnapped the King’s sons and introduces them to their true father. The King is overjoyed, of course, to learn he has sons capable of inheriting his crown; this news frees him to bless the union of Imogen and Posthumus. He’s in such merry mood he pardons Belarius and, what the heck, he pardons the Romans too while he’s at it. The king then calls for a feast so he can hear all the details. The End.
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare, directed by Vince Brady. GreenStage Shakespeare in the Park. Runtime: 2 hours, no intermission. Free. Various locations and dates in Seattle, Burien, Fall City, Lynnwood, Maple Valley, & Normandy Park. July 8 – August 13.