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Lazzi Come Home
Sam Hurwitt
Monday, July 9, 2012
The
Idiolect
Truffaldino Says No
isn’t really a commedia dell’arte play, nor an adaptation
of one. It is, however, about commedia stock characters, and what
happens when one of them decides that he doesn’t want to
be a guy who keeps doing the same thing over and over anymore.
Ken Slattery’s comedy
originated as a 10-minute short written on the assigned topic
of “Arlecchino” as part of the PlayGround writers’
pool, which was showcased in the 2009 Best of PlayGround festival.
Then the company commissioned a full-length version, which now
makes its debut as a coproduction of Shotgun Players and PlayGround,
in lieu of Shotgun’s usual outdoor summer show. This one’s
an indoor show at the Ashby Stage that’s not part of Shotgun’s
subscription season.
Arlecchino and his son and
sidekick Truffaldino are doing the typical work of a zanni, or
trickster servant, in a typical commedia. They’re acting
as messengers between the various people trying to arrange the
marriage of the ingénue Isabella—the posturing Capitano,
who needs a wife; her miserly father Pantalone, who wants to marry
her off to the rich and elderly Dottore; and the swooning young
poet Flavio, her true love—and getting everything mixed
up with predictably hilarious results. But Truffaldino is discontented.
He doesn’t want to play the fool anymore. He’s in
love with Isabella, his master’s daughter, and he doesn’t
see why he should have a chance to woo her just because it’s
not his assigned role to do so.
Arlecchino is hurt and confused
by Truffaldino’s desire not to be like him. He also has
no time to indulge it, because there are wacky misunderstandings
to mix up. His mother, the savvy Colombina, encourages the boy
to go out and try new things, confident he’ll come back.
All the other stock characters are shocked at Truffaldino’s
sudden refusal to enable their endless routine, and Isabella certainly
isn’t entertaining the advances of a servant whose name
she’s never bothered to learn. But his departure to seek
a new life in the New World plants a seed that makes them question
whether things have to always play out the way they’ve always
played out.
Stephen Buescher is hilarious
as Arlecchino, inhabiting the physicality of the role masterfully.
A monologue in which he tries to think of some way to kill himself
while idly playing with a rope (not making the connection between
the two) is a comedic tour-de-force.
William Thomas Hodgson keeps
up admirably with the various commedia routines, or lazzi, as
Truffaldino, but he also feelingly portrays the young man’s
malaise, confusion and romantic frustrations. When Truffaldino
rips off his comic mask to reveal the sensitive young man below,
it’s effective precisely because he’s fully both of
these things, the clown and the man.
Having the only two African
Americans in the cast play the old zanni and his son who dreams
of being more than a servant—a doctor, maybe, or a soldier—gives
Truffaldino’s desire to be more than he’s told he
can be a bit of extra resonance, though in a way that’s
more sobering than humorous. It’s a clever touch, however,
that the only other things he can think to be are the other stock
characters he grew up around.
Gwen Loeb makes a delightfully
earthy and sensual Colombina, who in one hysterical sequence brings
herself off just by wiggling her fingers in the air. Michael Phillis
is pricelessly fluttery as the young lover Flavio, who’s
in love with the idea of love but terrified at the idea of actually
getting close to his supposed beloved. Ally Johnson’s squeaky
Isabella is an entertaining flibbertigibbet, all dramatic poses
and outrageous Italian accent.
Andy Alabran is a bundle
of nerves as Il Capitano, the strutting Spanish soldier who fears
that Turkish invaders might lurk behind every bush. Though not
nearly as stooped as one expects the miser Pantalone to be, Brian
Herndon makes the old man’s miserly calculations and lust
for Colombina’s bosoms very amusing, and his squawks of
distress are priceless. Joe Lucas’s Il Dottore is charmingly
befuddled and pedantic, and when the others takeoff to follow
their bliss or to follow each other, he’s delighted to be
left on his own so that he can finally rattle on endlessly about
academic minutiae without anyone telling him to stop.
So Truffaldino travels from
Venice to Venice Beach, California, where the commedia character
Brighella now runs an inn. There are a couple of not very interesting
stops in London and New York along the way, portrayed in darkness
with stereotypical locals haranguing him in voiceover. When he
gets to California he finds that the cast of characters at the
inn are almost exactly like his friends and family back home,
so much so that he mistakes them for their counterparts, despite
their brightly-colored 1980s clothes and lack of masks. The difference
is, instead of commedia dell’arte stock characters, now
they’re American sitcom stock characters, complete with
unfunny but oft-repeated catchphrases.
Brighella, the heart of
the group and solves all their problems, has suddenly died, and
now they need a new innkeeper. (A beloved local solo performer
plays Brighella in the delightfully cheesy sitcom intro that starts
act two in a video by Colin Trevor, complete with a jaunty theme
song by Dave Malloy.)
Buescher’s Arlecchino
is now Hal, a clumsy doofus on the hotel staff who keeps falling
down the stairs and getting into trouble. Loeb’s Colombina
is Kate, the level-headed front desk clerk who views the antics
around her with wry amusement. The young lovers are valley girl
Debbie and the fickle swimming-pool lifeguard Mike, who keeps
breaking up with her and hooking up with other girls, though he
can never keep track of what order he does those in.
Lucas’s Wiseman is
a disheveled, abrasive know-it-all with a padded belly, and Herndon’s
Frank is a penny-pinching, cantankerous long-term guest (and self-described
dick) who keeps trying to get Hal fired. Alabran’s Capitano
has become Colonel Prewitt, a paranoid and overzealous security
guard obsessed with Mexicans sneaking in—and of course when
Italians like Truffaldino or his family come along, he can’t
tell the difference.
Some of the new characters
are pretty amusing (especially Phillis’s petulant Mike),
but in every case, the commedia characters are funnier than their
sitcom doppelgangers. That’s not terribly surprising, because
everyone’s being very faithful to the style of a typical
’80s sitcom, and those things were terrible.
Director M. Graham Smith’s
world premiere staging is high-energy and fast-paced, and for
the most part the physical comedy is executed with excellent timing.
There were a few rough patches on opening night, such as a sluggish
fight between Alabran’s two characters, but there were also
a few gasp-worthy moments of sharply engineered switcheroos. Some
of the sitcom stuff was on the flat side, but that’s at
least partly inherent in the material.
Maggie Whitaker’s
genre-appropriate costumes are perfect for both acts, with bright
commedia garb for the Old World (where the star attraction is
Emilia Sumelius-Buescher’s masks) and gaudy ’80s getups
for California. Martin Flynn’s set of an elegant renaissance
piazza translates surprisingly well to a hotel courtyard with
minimal alterations.
The second act has its ups
and downs, and at two-plus hours the whole thing feels maybe half
an hour too long, but things come to a head beautifully after
all the commedia characters come to town. The actors deftly bounce
back and forth between roles with some deft quick-changes and
clever optical illusions, especially when they have to play both
characters in the same scene. As a celebration of fluffy, formulaic
entertainment old and older still, Slattery’s play cleverly
sends up their conventions at the same time that it happily wallows
in them.
