Tavern Shakespeare - The reviews
Rough-edged fun at uptown pub
`Tavern Shakespeare' serves up hearty laughs, flashes of brilliance
by JULIE YORK COPPENS
Tavern, yes. Shakespeare -- sort of.
We had enough fun Thursday night upstairs at RiRa, home to a boisterous production by an inventive new company, that we hardly minded when the actors' roughhousing did the material more harm than good. Which was about half the time. But there are surprising moments in "Tavern Shakespeare" when all the drinking, shouting and slapstick work with Shakespeare's poetry rather than against it. In these flashes of brilliance, we see the mostly familiar characters and their romantic troubles anew -- and we hear echoes of the plays' early, unamplified performances for the rude groundlings of the Globe theater.
Mostly, though, we just laugh.
For this free floor show, actor/writer Jocelyn Rose and Collaborative Arts founder Elise Wilkinson have strung together 10 or so Shakespearean scenes with love, or lust, as a common thread. Rose's framing device transports the "Macbeth" witches to the present day, and assigns the youngest (talented seventh-grader Chloe Aktas) a difficult task: To become a full-fledged witch, she must conjure passion between two of the pub's patrons. Since actors mingle with audience -- and servers, and passers-through -- in this freewheeling presentation, there's a danger our own hearts might get caught in the crossfire of the witches' wands.
The results of the hags' matchmaking are never pretty. Sometimes they're hilarious, as when Helena and Hermia (Rose and Beth Yost) tussle over the mixed-up affections of Demetrius and Lysander (Jonavan Adams and Robby Lutfy) in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" episode. Rose's script casts the scene as a bizarre outtake from "Temptation Island," but Yost's sassy Hermia could hold her own in any smackdown on "The Jerry Springer Show."
Andrea King -- another standout in this fine, courageous cast -- rocks the house with a soulful rendition of Emilia's speech from "Othello," in which she tells Desdemona that cheating husbands have no right to faithful wives: "Then let them use us well: else let them know/The ills we do, their ills instruct us so."
Amen, sister!
We also liked Rose's boozy Katharina and Lutfy's slacker Romeo -- Juliet's all about "marriage" and he's like, "whoa!" But the overall staging of the "Shrew" and "R&J" scenes is less than inspired. In the playbill, director Joanna Gerdy reveals her "new mantra: Stop getting Shakespeare right. Just get it Alive!"
The two shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Shakespeare's lines "live" when they're fully comprehended -- by the actors and us. A noisy bar doesn't always help. Still, "Tavern Shakespeare" is an appealing brew.
The Charlotte Observer, March 14, 2006
Excavating For A Bard
by PERRY TANNENBAUM
Bellying up to the Bard seems to be an inspiration. If you can pick up beers and casual sex at a bar, why not a smattering of culture? Collaborative Arts is bringing its first production ever, Tavern Shakespeare, to RiRa Irish Pub on Thursday nights.
This freewheeling revue of canonical scenes -- from Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream and others -- serves as a nice launching pad for a planned outdoor Collaborative exploit this summer. But if beer-and-the-Bard is an idea whose time has come, RiRa doesn't always prove to be the right place.
The upstairs, where the able Collaborative company performs, has obviously been laid out as an entertainment venue. There's a makeshift stage at the rear with a sound system neatly tucked in alongside it. Two aisles traverse the floor, nicely marking out booths on one wall, intimate tables on the opposite wall and an island of tables in the middle.
As the actors and actresses move up and down these aisles, they can shift thoroughfares without seriously impeding the wait staff. That continuing traffic flow is both the blessing and the curse of Tavern Shakespeare. Business and dining continue throughout the show, creating a buzz that an amped-up music combo could rise above more easily.
So it's a good idea to think of Tavern Shakespeare as a throwback to the Elizabethan Age, when the Bard's newly hatched masterworks played before a mix of well-heeled nobles and rowdy groundlings. The first Romeo and Juliet probably had to project much more loudly than a whisper for their fledgling balcony flirtations to be heard.
At RiRa, we can detect that Romeo has issues with this marriage thing. Scenes from Shrew and Midsummer have a roughhouse patina that will ring truer to died-in-the-wool bardolators.
I felt rather fortunate to be tending to the necessities of dinner as the rambunctious company unfurled the flimsy skein that holds all these disparate vignettes together. The Dating Game and speed dating? Socialization skills taught by the Witches Three?
Some of what you'll see is lame, but nothing is overlong. Dave Holland, Joanna Gerdy, Andrea King, Beth Yost, Robby Lutfy and Jocelyn Rose all prove to be deft Shakespeareans in a presentation that's high on hijinx. Clowning and salacious innuendo are provided at no extra charge. Tips are solicited, however, at this free show.
Creative Loafing, March 15, 2006
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