Review: Shakespeare in Love

Review: Shakespeare in Love | Colorado Shakespeare Festival | Boulder, CO | Curtain Up! | Gina Robertson

Come, fall in love at the gorgeous, newly re-opened Mary Rippon outdoor stage on the CU campus in Boulder. Fall in love the way the Bard intended: with rhyming couplets, beautiful costumes, outrageous comedy, sweet romance, and with stars and a full moon overhead. Or at least come and flirt a little.

Shakespeare in Love is really a love story for the theater. It’s for people who adore the magic of making art on stage. In this show, from the playwright to the crew, down to the last understudy, all agree that the play is the thing. Dramaturg Amanda Giguere says, “It’s still a mystery how plays come together. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, artisans collaborate to make the impossible possible. Audiences show up. The dog steals the scene. And somehow, it always works out in the end.” And if it doesn’t, there’s always another show.

In this story, based on the 1998 Academy Award-winning film, young Will Shakespeare (Brandon Carter) suffers from writer’s block and relies on his friend Kit Marlowe (Nathaniel Cushing) for ideas. Viola de Lesseps (Meg Rodgers) loves poetry and theater and can’t stay away from the stage, though women are forbidden by law to perform professionally. In the most Shakespearean way, the resolution of these conflicts involves cross-gender disguises, mistaken identity, balcony scenes, sword fights, and bawdy jokes.

One way you can tell this play is more about love of theater than about the love story within is the richly detailed costumes by Meghan Anderson Doyle. Everyone is magnificent. Such a diverse and complex array of men’s facial hair requires an impressive attention to detail. Similar care is taken by props designer Brian Wayne. Director Terri McMahon keeps the chaos manageable with creative staging choices, lots of prop and costume gags, plus one striking love scene delivered in silhouette and even a clever bit performed by a dog (Bernie or Pippin) wearing an Elizabethan ruff collar.

Pascale Tsering and Pippin the Dog; Photo Credit: Jennifer Koskinen

Carter brings a swashbuckling, roguish sort of charm to Will Shakespeare that matches well with Cushing’s cheerful, charismatic Kit Marlowe. These two are the love story in this play, as Marlowe encourages his friend Will and helps him get the girl with his romantic poetry. Rodgers as Viola is warm, intelligent, and sweet, but seems more driven by her love of poetry and the stage than by any real romantic interest in Will.

The entire cast is impressive, each one stealing the scene from the others in rapid succession. Standouts are Savannah Gullet as a tavern whore who stands on a table making indecent propositions to the audience, Tara Falk who swans around gloriously as Queen Elizabeth I making bright, imperious declarations and looking fabulous, Nisi Sturgis as Viola’s nurse who chews on the scenery with bold physical comedy and perfectly timed line delivery, and Cyrus Porter as Sam, an actor you can’t take your eyes off of regardless of which gender he inhabits on stage. It’s not a musical, but the cast do burst into song from time to time, delivering startlingly beautiful harmonies during touching moments.

Meg Rodgers, Tara Falk, and Sam Sandoe; Photo Credit: Jennifer Koskinen

Overall, Shakespeare in Love is a romping good roll in the hay but maybe not really enough to fall in love with. The treatment of Viola by her father (Sam Sandoe) and her intended husband is dreadful. “She will breed,” her father assures Lord Wessex (Matthew Schneck), and she is to be sent off to America with her new husband whether she likes it or not. There’s a distressing bit of comedy tied to a speech defect, and the sword fights are a bit clumsy and out of place. With over-reliance on the comedic value of the name “Ethel” in place of “Juliet,” the name actually begins to sound rather nice, and the fictional play’s title “Romeo and Ethel” stops being funny. One wishes someone really had written a play about Ethel the pirate’s daughter.

Practically all of the romance in the story comes from Shakespeare’s own words, taken from Romeo and Juliet and his Sonnet 18, further driving the intended love story to the back of the stage.

Matthew Schneck, Nisi Sturgis, and Sam Sandoe; Photo Credit: Jennifer Koskinen

But on a beautiful summer night in Boulder, with a breeze and an entertaining play full of zany characters down to show you why you should fall in love with theater itself, well, who could resist?  Just try.  See Shakespeare in Love now during the Colorado Shakespeare Festival on campus at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theater.

For Information and Tickets: https://cupresents.org/ticket-info