Review: Shakespeare's Husbands and Wives by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs

In this diverse fast-food town you can even get tasty Bard bits in a quick drive-by. No carry-outs, other than the program for Shakespeare's Husbands & Wives, but you're assured of comfortable seating and a varied menu at a session only 40 minutes in length. This Wednesday through Friday only, at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale Road, for the modest contribution of $10.

Jill K. Swanson has appeared often on Austin stages over the past dozen years, and she is the guiding spirit at Austin Shakespeare's weekly Sunday afternoon Shakespeareklatches, more properly titled "Shakespeare Aloud."For two hours every Sunday, usually from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., the doors are open to anyone who wants to participate in reading and commenting upon whichever of the Bard's works is on the table. Right now they're reading Henry V. 

Swanson assembled short scenes from seven of the plays and invited eleven actors to play them. She comments in program notes, "Shakespeare dives right in and explores these issues [of matrimonial relations], weaving all kinds of marriages into his plays, while the plays themselves are often on another subject entirely. . . . Each scene reflects a different dynamic, perhaps one you recognize from your own marriage." 

You can slice Shakespeare all sorts of ways, and unless you're doing it with malice aforethought, the text is, in the end, still Shakespeare. She has dug out some of the juicy bits and given them to folks who know how to act them. Of the eleven, I had seen and enjoyed nine onstage in Austin or nearby. 

If you have a passing faire knowledge of the major plays, you'll be entirely comfortable with these selections. It's not a completely random walk, either -- of the sixteen passages, six are successive sequences from The Taming of the Shrew between Petruccio (Michael Amendola) and Kate (Bridget Farias). Two more are from Julius Caesar, with several cinema-style crossfades from the august Garry Peters as Caesar and Kathy Center as concerned Calpurnia to D. Heath Thompson as Brutus and Laura Ray as his wife Portia.

Entirely willing to be beguiled in this way, I could fantasize that I was auditioning these folks for an entirely different production of Shakespeare. Robert Stevens as Benedick in foolish contemplation of marriage from Much Ado and as Iago confiscating the Moor's handkerchief from his wife Emilia (Katie Van Winkle) -- here's my Coriolanus. We'll make Amendola the adversary chieftain of the Volsicans, Tullus Aufidius, and Farias can be Coriolanus' mom Volumnia. Katie Van Winkle as Virgilia his wife; Gary Peters as Senator of Rome Menenius Agrippa; Armendola, Alejandro McDonald-Villarreal and our Romeo, Robert Moncrieff, can be generals and lieutenants. We'll put in that passionate Shauna Danos, who did Queen Margaret from Henry VI, as Valeria the Roman lady. And Heath Thompson can play both arrogant people's consul and conspirator, as required. . . . he has lots of experience playing rogues! Okay, take a look at the cast list: how can we best use the sly gravity of Kathy Center and the pluck of Laura Ray?

At a scant 40 minutes, Shakespeare's Husbands & Wives was all too short. With the talent on display and the directorial finesse, with some time and concentration and a venue and support, we could do something really extraordinary with these folks. . . .

 

EXTRA

Click to view program for Shakespeare's Husbands and Wives, directed by Jill K. Swanson

 

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Shakespeare's Husbands and Wives
by William Shakespeare, adapted by Jill K. Swanson
Austin Shakespeare