Skip to main contentIt's too easy to dismiss Cymbeline, though the play is worthy of harsh criticism. It possesses some of the worst lines in Shakespeare (though there are some honeyed words amid the hackery), it's packed with maundering soliloquies, and it occasionally suffers from what Harley Granville-Barker called "dramatic impotence." But the play's detractors, most famously Shaw and Dr. Johnson, tend to a man to be anti-Romantic, and Cymbeline is nothing if not Romantic.
Frequently labeled a "problem play," Cymbeline defies the strict departmentalizing of the Bard's work into tragedy, comedy and history. So it's long been shelved in that dark mezzanine to which other such hybrids are consigned: Euripides' Helen and Ion, Beaumont and Fletcher's Pilaster, the work of Marston, and Shakespeare's own Measure for Measure. But there's much to Cymbeline its maligners ignore, such as its acknowledgement of the court masque, its Jacobean allegories and its playful obviousness.
Cymbeline is a Romantic fable of love and goodness lost and found. There are even stirrings of the Snow White story here: a pure maiden lost in the woods and taken in by men of the forest, a wicked queen (whom Shakespeare never baptizes), a poison draught, and the maiden's slump into a deathlike sleep. For the practical-minded it is nothing short of nonsense, and is thus often rendered so by directors who play it as tragedy (as it was billed in the First Folio) or as camp comedy. This theatrical soufflé can withstand neither approach.
One of the successes of Connor Kern's production is that he has honored Cymbeline's blatant theatricality with an imaginative staging. Kern's actors are always actors, donning different
costumes and characters before our eyes. Benches serve as beds and brambles, colored silk squares are flowers and an overstuffed pillow makes a respectable headless corpse. It's a play as play, as the play seems intended, though Kern's simplicity would have been anathema to James I's
banqueting hall.
The other delight here is the language, doggerel though it frequently is. Kern's cast is fully immersed in the text's words in a way that is almost foreign to sloth-tongued Portland. But, though well-spoken, the lines are often rushed as the actors clock out from one character and race to another. There's also some cumbersome "choreography," especially in the opening scene where the cast bounds on to the stage to form a ring, the resulting tableau representing what, I don't know.
There are strong performances, primarily Rafael Untalan's Iachimo, Sally Eames-Harlan's "Belaria" (a needless transgendering), and Todd Van Voris' schizophrenic Guiderius/Arviragus, though the hiring of another actor for one of the roles might have been wiser. Though she gives Imogen a lovely vivaciousness, Debbie Hunter drifts too closely to harshness at times, while Paul Susi's Cloten is woefully overplayed.
Kern sets up this tale ingeniously at the beginning by giving the first monologue a choral aspect. Also, except for a purposeless clapping of hands, his final scene is wonderfully realized as the characters all reach a state of "Peace": a condition seldom enjoyed by this flawed but intriguing play.
Quintessence at the Mago Hunt Theatre, University of Portland, 5000 N Willamette Blvd., 943-7287. 8 pm Thursdays- Saturdays. Closes Aug. 2. $8 (students)- $10.
"It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him."
Cymbeline
WWeek 2015