Theater is by nature a collaborative art, mysterious and difficult even when the roles of each collaborator are clearly defined. Usually the script comes first, but the director, the actors, the designer -- even the audience -- influence the final product. Composers collaborate with lyricists. But when the script itself is a collaboration, how are the responsibilities divided? Is the product richer because of the input of two artistic sensibilities? Or is the product merely product, proof that concoction by committee can never be art? Which words are whose, and why does it matter? When one of the authors is William Shakespeare, it matters, especially to scholars. Some spend their careers on the dubious quest of proving who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Imagine the field day for scholars with "The Two Noble Kinsmen", where Shakespeare (or at least his publisher) admits to his sharing the stage with another wordsmith. Or, some may ask, was it the other way around? Was Shakespeare lured out of retirement to work with the new resident playwright of his old company to add depth or the cachet of his name? Or was the younger man brought in to add audience-pleasing pizzazz to liven up the old fogey's wordy poetry? It's fun to speculate. Thanks to the Public Theater, we have a chance to see this rarely produced collaboration and speculate ourselves.
Shakespeare's co-author, John Fletcher, is best known in theatrical history as part of the playwriting team "Beaumont & Fletcher" (obviously collaboration agreed with him), a prolific and popular duo of the post-Shakespearean era whose work is rarely (if ever) produced today. As theater moved indoors, lighting and stage effects became possible and popular, and plotting took precedence over character. (Does this sound familiar to film audiences?) "Two Noble Kinsmen" suffers less from the mix of styles -- John Fletcher was a proponent of tragicomedy, but Shakespeare himself was a practitioner -- than from the shallow, and often inconsistent, characters. The "noble" kinsmen of the title are noble both in birth and conduct early in the play, but the central plot point (taken from Chaucer's "Knight's Tale"), their behavior after falling in love with the same woman, is far from noble and hardly believable. This is fine in the comic moments, and the scene in which they first spot their amour is from their prison window is wonderful comedy, delightfully staged in Darko Tresnjak's production. But as the play veers away from comedy, it becomes hard to care which of these ignoble jerks wins the lass. Perhaps that was the authors' intent. Or at least the intent of one of the authors. Approached as an allegory, as a masque, as part of a different theatrical tradition from that generally associated with Shakespeare, it is still a captivating work of theater.
The triangle so important to the plot is echoed in David P. Gordon's set design, which makes masterful use of the small Martinson Hall space, seeming to grow directly out of the theater's very different architecture. Budgets for such small theaters being what they are, the "special effects" of the play's era are here limited to the moving set piece that becomes the jail, and a trio of gods and goddesses imaginatively costumed by designer Linda Cho. Unfortunately, economy also seems to be the inspiration for casting two-thirds of three grieving widows with men. But this versatile chorus of three (Candy Buckley, Jonathan Fried and Liam Craig) is responsible for much of the best, or at least most interesting, acting in the evening, and the pan-sexual casting is less jarring when the trio play Commedia-masked "countrymen." Craig and Fried are perfect as the Jailer and his protegee, not letting the period language intimidate them from making sense and trusting their innate comic timing. David Harbour and Graham Hamilton work well together as Arcite and Palamon, the title cousins, Hamilton a classic handsome juvenile and Harbour perhaps more quirky and engaging. Sam Tsoutsouvas and Opal Alladin are noble enough in the not-particularly-compelling roles of Theseus and Hippolyta, but I wish Doan Ly had worked as hard on the meaning as on the words of her long monologues as Emilia, the center of the romantic triangle. She is certainly beautiful enough, and her beauty is all our noble kinsmen need to hear to change their lives (and nobility) forever. Jennifer Ikeda has the flashier role of the jailer's daughter, but I found myself distracted by comparing her mad scenes with those of the better known Shakespearean ingenue-driven-mad-by-unrequited love.
But don't waste your time comparing "Kinsmen" to "Hamlet." Enjoy it on its own terms.
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