Cymbeline

[ellen_datlow]

I went with two friends to see Shakespeare's Cymbeline last night. What a lousy play. The first half's good, but the second is silly and way tooooo long (we didn't get out till 11pm). I can see why it's not performed very often. The last twenty minutes are taken up with increasingly ridiculous explanations of things we've already seen throughout the play--half the subplots could have been cut. Boy, did S need an editor for this particular work.

Luckily, the sets were striking and the acting usually very good, with Martha Plimpton, Michael Cerveris, Phylicia Rashad, and John Cullum. Now I've seen it I don't have to see it again. The three of us agreed on this.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

In the Sondheim/Shevelove adaptation of Aristophanes "The Frogs" it is "Fear No More" from "Cymberline" that Shakespeare uses to defeat Shaw in the contest of playwrights. It's a wonderful setting of one of Shakespeare's most famous lyrics and I'm sorry that (or one of the many settings of that song done over the years) couldn't have been used. Instead, oddly, the words are chanted.

All productions involve a series of choices. Lamos, the director made some good ones early on but the second half of the show seemed to get the better of him. I've recently been listening to the Arkangel CD of the
"Winter's Tale" also a late "problem play" which, like "Cymbeline" combines a serious first half with a pastoral and seemingly unrelated middle portion but pulls off a successful surprise ending with its "living statue" revelation.

Maybe in the works of much produced and discussed artists like Shakespeare people have a tendency to gravitate to the marginal works. These tend to be the plays one discovers later on, ones that defy successful production, that are interesting as much for their flaws as their strengths.

The late romances are called "problem plays" as much for interpretive problems as for production difficulties. Motivation is often difficult to fathom. I did have a feeling that somewhere along the way Shakespeare lost interest in this work.

Rick Bowes