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Phaedra Jeffrey R. Smith The Shotgun Players—never ones to fear neither pushing the envelope nor foraying outside the creative box—are currently presenting Adam Bock’s PHAEDRA, an adaptation of Euripides’ HIPPOLYTUS. When a projectile of Eros goes astray, the damage can be equally devastating in urban America as it was in ancient Athens: people get their feelings hurt, people die, people snuff themselves, the apple cart gets capsized and often times divorce lawyers make mega-bucks from the ensuing fray. A prominent judge, Antonio Mason, with foreboding trepidation, welcomes his prodigal son, Paulie back into the bosom of his suburb home. While there is no ring and no fatted calf on the bar-bee, there is a covertly slavering step mother. Mason’s wife, Catherine—a.k.a. Paulie’s stepmother—is not eager to have Paulie back home and, although the audience is unaware, her unwelcoming stance is not as objectively based as it appears to be. Catherine—played to sizzling perfection by Catherine Castellanos—although middle aged, her blood has yet to cool; she has a supercharged endocrine system that is still occupying the driver’s seat and calling the shots like Fast Eddy in the HUSTLER. Catherine Castellanos plays Mason’s wife with a cool inner broil reminiscent of Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. Paulie, like any suburban boy raised in a blissful broth of denial and dysfunctionality lubricated with money, is hostile, self-absorbed and self-indulgent. After Paulie settles in, his step mother makes her hormonally charged move. The story seems to parallel the biblical story of Joseph wherein Joseph is sexually harassed by Potiphar’s wife; since no description of Potiphar’s wife is ever given, we don’t know whether to give Joseph kudos for good moral principles or good taste. As in the Mrs. Potiphar caper, Catherine tries to reverse the tables: she tells Mason that Paulie performed a bodice ripper on her; Mason takes the bait, betraying his son one final time. Stage stalwart Keith Burkland as Mason is over-the-top; he gives us an unsympathetic Mason we can both loath and despise with a clean conscience and without interference from political correctness. Rarely does real life give us such a rich opportunity for a sense of moral high ground and ethical superiority. Burkland’s Mason gives us hope, a reason to go on living knowing that the people who live in those mega-homes, behind wrought iron gates and manicured lawns, have lives that are even more wretched than our own. Burkland’s Mason is Richard Cory, the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Willy Loman and the cuckolded MR Robinson all in one package. To stage this dissection of the America Dream, Award winning set-designer Nina Ball has created a masterpiece. Her set reminds us that PHAEDRA is after all Greek; MS Ball has introduced nuances and elements of Minoan, Mycenaean and Athenian architecture and styling without dragging down the value of the Euro. |
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