Stephen McFarland as Kynaston, Ali Hass as Nell Gwyn, Matt Weimer King Charles II, Justin Liszancie as Villiars, Elissa Beth Stebbins as Margaret Hughes Photo by Lois Tema
Compleat Female Stage Beauty: Comedy/Drama by Jeffrey Hatcher. Directed by Ed Decker. New Conservatory TheatreCenter(NCTC)25 Van Ness Avenue@ Market Street, San Francisco, CA. 415-861-8972 or www.nctcsf.org.
May 15 – June 14, 2015
Compleat Female Stage Beauty is a histrionic history of Restoration theatre [rating:3]
To close out their 2014-2015 season the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) has elected to mount a histrionic capsule history of theatre in the 1660s at the beginning of the Restoration Period. The play was suggested and mostly based on entries from Samuel Pepy’s diary about Edward Kynaston (Stephen McFarland) who was the leading male actor of that period performing female parts during the Puritan era when women were not allowed on the stage. All that was about to change when King Charles the II (Matt Weimer) signed an edict allowing females to perform and banning males from playing female roles.
The play is appropriately bookended with an audience address by Pepys (Patrick Ross) while all the characters dressed in period costumes perform a tableau. In the bodice-ripping production of the play Or in 2011 at the Magic theatre the emphasis was on the life and times of women entering upon the stage. Hatcher has elected to dramatize the edict’s effect on the males who were banned from playing women and forced to play males. That transition apparently was traumatic for many but even more so for Hatcher’s protagonist Kynaston whose fall from his elevated stature to one of ridicule was devastating.
The first act sets up Kynaston’s egocentric life before the fall. His performance of Shakespeare’s’ tragic ladies were an apotheosis especially his Desdemona death scene that was the standard by which even the ladies were to be judged. Before female actresses became legal Margaret Hughes (Elissa Beth Stebbins) and Kynaston’s dresser Marie (Sam Jackson) were giving illegal and inferior performances of his famous “death scene” and attracting paying audiences. Amongst those audiences were King Charles II and his mistress/actress Nell Gwynn (Ali Hass) that may have been a stimulus for the edict that changed the stage forever in England.
Kynaston was also the secret “mistress” of powerful George Villiars who visualized him during their sexual dalliances as the women he had portrayed, refusing to recognize him as a man. Thus the loss of fame, finances and “love” was the start of his degradation and the seed for revenge.
Hatcher populates the play with characters that exemplify the 1660s and clothes them in appropriate period dress (costume design by Keri Fitch). However, there is a dramatic shift in the tenure of the show after the intermission of this two hour and 25 minute play. Whereas act one is upbeat, satirical and at times very humorous, after the intermission deadly seriousness kicks in as Kynaston has to drag himself physically and mentally from the depths to which has fallen in order to re-invent himself.
Director Decker has elected to stage the play with minimal props and scenery that reflect the productions of the 1660s. Simple boxes are moved about by the cast and a cloth curtain on rear stage opens revealing a change of place. He deftly moves his characters about the stage keeping the tempo upbeat until a dramatic incident demands a stop action effect.
His cast performs admirably with accolades to Stephen McFarland as Kynaston, Matt Weimer King Charles II, Ali Hass as Nell Gwyn, Elissa Beth Stebbins as Margaret Hughes and Patrick Ross as Samuel Pepys. The minor characters double and triple in multiple roles that are adequate rather than distinctive.
CAST: Colleen Egan, (Lady Meresvale); Ali Haas (Nell Gwynn); Jeffrey Hoffman (Sedley/Ms Revels), Sam Jackson, (Marie); Justin Liszanckie, (Villiars); Stephen McFarland, (Edward Kynaston); Christopher Morrell, (Ms Fayne); Patrick Ross (Pepys/Hyde); Elissa Beth Stebbins, (Margaret Hughes) and Matt Weimer, (King Charles/Betterton).
CREATIVE TEAM: Scenic design by Giulio Cesare Perrone; Lighting design by Christian Mejia; Costume design by Keri Fitch; Sound design by Steve Abts; Prop design by J. Conrad Frank; Fight choreography by Mark Gabriel Kenney; Stage management by Stephanie Desnoyers.
Kedar K. Adour, MD
Courtesy of www.theatreworldinternetmagazine.com.
