Review: The Spanish Tragedie by Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs

Villainy was afoot and revenge was hot at the tidy Elizabethan-style Curtain Theatre on opening weekend, but Karen insisted that I bundle up as if I was going hiking in the winter mountains.  And she was right;  the temp must have sunk to around 50 F. by the time C. Robert Stevens as Hieronimo had coaxed the malefactors at the Spanish court into the play-within-a-play that's the climax of The Spanish Tragedie.

 

This costume drama by Thomas Kyd leaves almost as many dead and dying littered about the stage as Shakespeare did, between ten and twenty years later, at the conclusion of Hamlet .  Kyd's work established the fashion for the revenge tragedy and endured on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages until the Puritans shut the theatres in 1642.

 

 

 

 

Kyd was certainly playing to his public when he situated these elaborate deceits and plots at the Spanish court.  Londoners feared and hated the Spanish, who sought to attack England with their glorious armada in 1588  (within five years, plus or minus, of the play's first staging).  The playwright presents a triumphant Spanish king (Michael Saenger) who has just defeated the Portuguese, taking prisoner Crown Prince Balthazar.  With Spain's dominion reasserted, the court is eager to unite the two kingdoms with an arranged marriage between the Portuguese Prince and Bel-Impera, Spain's lovely royal niece.

 

 But the lady's not for trifling with.  Her former suitor don Andrea fell mortal victim to the Portuguese prince; he literally haunts the scenes, introducing the plot to us while accompanied by Revenge, her face painted with flames.  Don Andrea (Casey Jones) has some trouble with his admission to the afterlife, and the spirits send him back to Castile to witness the punishing both of those who killed him and of those who plot against his true love. Now this gets to be complicated, as in best it is; the young noble Horatio (Ben McLemore) has won Bel-Imperia's affections, a development that's inconvenient for the Portuguese prince (Ameer Mobarak) and his supporters, including especially the diabolical Lorenzo (Gabriel Diehl), the lady's brother. The bad guys murder and string up young Horatio in the garden, where his father Hieronimo (Robert Stevens) discovers him.

 

This is only the principal plot line.  Other plots, murders and counter-murders keep things hopping, all the while apparently escaping the attention of  the jolly Spanish king and his counterpart the comically neurotic Portuguese viceroy. Kyd writes in thumping iambs, little decorated with imagery, and he moves the various intrigues smartly forward.

 

Gabriel Diehl is Lorenzo, the black-hearted villain of this piece.  With his somber demeanor,  long face, commanding voice and acid tongue he's bad to the bone and a great satisfaction to watch.  Lorenzo disputes with young hero Horatio over credit for capturing the Portuguese prince, he sets the foolish prince on to murder Horatio, and he generally pulls the strings.  He puts on a false face to the wronged Hieronimo, pretends to reconcile, and in a fine comic moment agrees with aggrieved patience to take a role in the play at the court.  Diehl would make a fine Iago.

 

The traditional alternative title to The Spanish Tragedie is Hieronimo's Mad Again. The calamity of discovering a murdered son could render any man insane, but Robert Stevens does not turn this noble judge into a lunatic or fool.  Hieronimo's derangement is intellectual, a passionate decision to exact justice and revenge directly in spite of all the duties he owes to the King and the court.  Hieronimo hides the murder of his son, providing the playwright the cover needed to prosecute the revenge tragedy -- if the old man had howled of murder and treachery at the moment of discovery, he'd have had no opportunity to set up the gory dénouement.

 

Rachel Steed-Redig as the much-wronged Bel-Imperia has a steely air to her, sufficient to make you believe the playwright's contention that despite imprisonment she alerted Hieronimo to the murderous plots via a letter written in her own blood.  She does a slow burn throughout the Portuguese prince's courtship of her, communicating to the audience although not to other players the danger of crossing this outwardly mild and obedient young noblewoman.

 

Director Weed has fun with the underdog Portuguese.  The Viceroy (Julio) is maudlin and foolish; his ambassador (Joe Falocco) is an energetic clown; and Prince Balthazar is big, pompous and gullible, clad in a witty outfit that suggests he's really a sort of renaissance Baby Huey.  He's spoiled, perhaps, but not a complete fool.  Ameer Mobarak has the stage presence and acting sense to make the prince believable even as he's being manipulated; one senses that he could indeed have risen to assume the responsibility of his royal station if Lorenzo had not intervened.

 

 

 

Fine actors appear even in the bit parts and again in the ensemble -- including notably Robert L. Berry as the minor Portugese schemer Viluppo, Mario Silva in a walk-on as a page/messenger, and Mick D'Arcy as an ancient petitioner.  Elocution and projection were uniformly good. This is a large cast, and they all appeared to be enjoying the party.

 

The company takes great advantage of the Curtain Theatre, reinforcing this vigorous but obscure play with lively action, convincing costume, stage picture and -- as usual -- period music, supplied by an eight-member group of recorder players, vocalists and percussionists.  This staging gives the audience the Baron's Men at their best, as well as a notion of why The Spanish Tragedie kept thundering for nearly fifty years on the London stages.

 

EXTRAS

Thoughts on the Spanish Tragedie by Joseph Falocco (who plays the ambassador of Portugal)

Why the Spanish Tragedie Matters by Michael Saenger, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Southwestern University (who plays the King of Spain)

The Importance of the Spanish Tragedie by Joe Stephenson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Language and Literature, Abilene Christian University

Click to view the program broadsheet for The Spanish Tragedie

 

 

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The Spanish Tragedie
by Thomas Kyd
The Baron's Men