Thursday , March 28 2024
Cymbeline is one of those seldom-produced Shakespeare plays we English majors read in college but rarely get the opportunity to see.

Theater Review (NYC): Cymbeline

Cymbeline is one of those seldom-produced Shakespeare plays we English-major types read in college but rarely if ever get the opportunity to see. Frog and Peach offers New York audiences a remedy with their new production at the West End Theatre. I saw an early preview that was retroactively downgraded to an open dress, so I’ll pass over the rough edges and simply report that it is a strong, straight-ahead piece of theater.

  

The very talented and notably attractive duo of Ross Beshear and Rosa Valenze Gilmore do excellent work as the hero (Posthumous) and heroine (Imogen), whose star-crossed love is beset with obstacles too strange and numerous to go into. The story features potions, disguises, swordplay, a decapitation, a supernatural visitation, and politics aplenty—pretty much the whole Shakespearean bag of tricks—and it boasts one of Shakespeare’s most entertaining servant characters, Pisanio, played with delightfully engaging squirminess by Kevin G. Shinnick, as well as one of the Bard’s most entertainingly arrogant pigs, Cloten, embodied with hilarious mock-gravity by Jonathan Marballi.

Aside from one major but cleverly managed gender change (which gives a plum role to one of the company’s founding members, Karen Lynn Gorney of Saturday Night Fever fame), this Cymbeline appears essentially as you will read it in your Complete Works, and while the play was popular in its time, it’s somewhat problematic for modern audiences. It reads and plays like a tragedy through much of its length, but ends like a romance, leaving us a little unsure of what we’re meant to feel along the way. And viewers unfamiliar with the play might have some trouble following the connections among some of the characters, at least until the rather painfully long wrap-up scene. But the Frog and Peach players make it a lively and entertaining ride. Well directed by Lynnea Benson, it runs through Oct. 31 at the West End Theatre in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on the Upper West Side.

About Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Publisher and Executive Editor of Blogcritics as well as lead editor of the Culture & Society section. As a writer he contributes most often to Music, where he covers classical music (old and new) and other genres, and Culture, where he reviews NYC theater. Through Oren Hope Marketing and Copywriting at http://www.orenhope.com/ you can hire him to write or edit whatever marketing or journalistic materials your heart desires. Jon also writes the blog Park Odyssey at http://parkodyssey.blogspot.com/ where he is on a mission to visit every park in New York City. He has also been a part-time working musician, including as lead singer, songwriter, and bass player for Whisperado.

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