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A New World for Truffaldino
Rachel Swan
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
The
East Bay Express
The first line of Truffaldino
Says No, Ken Slatterly's new commedia dell'arte produced
under the auspices of Shotgun Players, recurs several times in
the production, always in the same anguished howl: "Fuck
my life!" And, granted, title character Truffaldino (played
by William Thomas Hodgson) has plenty to grumble about. He's footloose
and foolhardy, but doomed to spend his entire life in Venice,
serving as a court harlequin. He's infatuated with a routinely
dismissive young debutante, Isabella (Ally Johnson), who has her
eyes on another man. His father, Arlecchino (Stephen Buescher),
is a ham; his mother, Colombina (Gwen Loeb), is an adulteress.
Clowning runs in his patrilineal line, but Truffaldino has no
desire to pursue it. He's a seeker and a striver, trapped in a
world that doesn't tolerate such things.
It's a fitting premise for
a play that loosely touches on the immigration debate, albeit
through the lens of a classical fable. Slatterly wrote a skeletal
version of the play back in 2009, as part of PlayGround's Monday
Night Series at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. (PlayGround is an
incubator for Bay Area playwrights, mostly known for producing
polished ten-minute works, though it's also created the blueprints
for full-length productions, like this one.) PlayGround had structured
that particular installment around the theme "Arlecchino,"
meaning the clown archetype from commedia dell'arte, so Slatterly
had to revisit his college studies on the old 16th-century Italian
form. He developed the first version of Truffaldino around
the idea of a son rebelling against his father. In this case,
dad is the arlecchino, or harlequin, and Truffaldino, the son,
is fated to follow his footsteps — until he decides to resist
the winds of destiny. Thus, Slatterly imposed contemporary psychology
onto an ancient form, making it accessible to modern audiences.
His first sketch showed
enough promise for PlayGround's directors Jim Kleinmann and Annie
Stuart to take interest, and they ultimately commissioned him
to write a full-length play, at which point Slatterly decided
to delve into the immigration debate as well. He fit it in craftily
by having Truffaldino — and later, the rest of his family
— travel from the "Old World" of Venice to the
"New World" of Venice Beach, Los Angeles, which turns
out to be a mirror universe. In fact, every stock character from
the Old World has his own proper analogue in the New World. There's
a pinchpenny businessman to represent the miser Pantalone; a pair
of rather vapid innamorati in beach clothes; a harlequin and his
mistress; a veteran to signify the Iberic conquistador Il Capitano;
and a wise man to match Il Dottore. To complete the gimmick, Slatterly
and director M. Graham Smith had each cast member play two roles
— one from the Old World, one from the New.
That's a tall order even
for a nimble group of actors, and in some parts of Truffaldino
the cast members have to switch roles merely by putting on a mask
or a pair of sunglasses, or switching accents, or adding some
sort of bodily tic — Arlecchino struts around stage like
a rubbery-limbed grasshopper, while Colombina swivels her hips
and thrusts her chest out, invitingly. You'd think it'd be taxing
but they make it look effortless.
PlayGround took a risk in
commissioning Truffaldino given that a contemporized,
socially relevant, magical realist take on commedia dell'arte
certainly sounds like a dicey proposition. But many great works
of art require a little leap of faith at their inception, and
in this case, the payoff was tremendous. In fact, every element
of Truffaldino conspires to make the final product dazzle.
The script is put together in a perfectly symmetrical way, though
it still manages to have several big reveals — even the
resolution comes as a surprise, albeit a well-earned one. Martin
Flynn's set is low-tech and transposable, and light designer Heather
Basarab manages to transform a Venetian village into modern beachfront
development just by brightening the room. The script folds in
on itself like one of those origami fortune-tellers, with lines
that repeat over and over to enhance the doubling motif. One of
Truffaldino's first lines, when he enters the New World, is "Fuck
my life!" in Italian: "Scopare la mia vita!"
But the main selling point
is the acting. Not only are Smith's cast members burdened with
being onstage for the entire two-hour performance — Truffaldino
is an ensemble play in the purest sense — they also have
to flit between characters while hitting every comic beat of each
scene. The dialogue flies so quickly, as the play draws to a climax,
that it starts to resemble an Abbott and Costello routine. And
through all that, Truffaldino manages to transmit a rather
sweet, traditional homily about how one person's sense of rootedness
can be another's ball and chain. But even a rugged individual
will eventually long for the Old World.
