Tag Archives: Amy Thone

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

See the World Through K.’s Eyes at New Century’s Creepy, Erotic “Trial”

Darragh Kennan and Alexandra Tavares in NCTC’s The Trial (Photo: Chris Bennion)

Once in a while Seattle theatre surprises my jaded, fed-up sensibilities with a production so wonderful and necessary that I can hardly find any fault in it. Unsurprisingly, the newest production to make the list comes from New Century Theatre Company, a theatre company I take as seriously as my southern brethren take communion. The Trial (at INScape through April 28; tickets) is an immersive, magical production with a slew of talented artists on stage and pulling strings; a production that everyone will be talking about come next week, if they’re not already.

In a new adaptation from Kenneth Albers, Kafka’s play technically opens with Joseph K. (Darragh Kennan) seemingly under arrest with no knowledge of what crime he’s committed, who’s accused him, or why he’s being interrogated in his own home. However, the production starts well before that with cast seating audience members in small groups, asking them to line up in boxes, and leading them to seats via a circuitous path, all the while repeating “Don’t touch the red curtain” (that is impossible not to touch because it’s lining the narrow alley way).

There are many other touches to this pre-show ritual including an overhead speaker that talks to you in a pseudo calming voice about what you can and can’t do. But even in that there are contradictions, purposeful and precise, to affirm that you are about to see something very different. Take note: You are being watched. Blow your nose before the curtain pulls back.

Kennan’s Joseph K. is a desperate everyman, without agency or wisdom, striving to learn something he can’t quite grasp. Amy Thone as the ball-breaking, aging attorney Sophie Kleist simultaneously aggravates and delights — especially as she figure-eights around K. in her motorized wheel chair.  And Alexandra Tavares’ Titorelli is so funny, wry, and a little dirty that I long to hear her say “jyes” one more time.

These performances are standouts, but there was no weak link in the cast, or the design. Robertson Witmer’s sound is haunting and terrifying (full disclosure: we chat on Twitter). Witmer’s sound is accompanied by an incredibly creative lighting design by Geoff Korf who utilized flashlights and practicals for ghostly and eerie atmosphere.

Under the direction of John Langs (and thanks to that impeccable adaptation by Albers), The Trial delivers a play of contradictions, metaphor, hyper-realism, and cleavage — lots and lots of cleavage. Unlike other shows where the cleavage would just be an added, “sex sells,” and hardly a plot point worth note, the choice in this production actually works. In Joseph K.’s head we can only view women two ways: 1.) sexy creatures he’d (we’d) like to bone but likely won’t even talk to outside of work, and 2.) matronly women who take charge of his (our) situation for him so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for himself.

The story can be interpreted in a number of ways and while I could invoke several historical figures and moments I thought of during the production (Rasputin is on the list), the joy of The Trial is in seeking your own meaning. There are countless metaphors, allusions, and of course contradictions. Many of these make no sense. Many of them make perfect sense. All of them are a tad pretentious. And all are a little bit brilliant. So make of them what you will.

Let me put it another way. Imagine The Trial is a door. No one is stopping you from going through that door except little nagging feelings of doubt because you’ve been been burnt before going through other doors, bad doors, waste-of-time doors. Ignore those sonsofbitches and open this damn door.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Antony And Cleopatra And An Asp Too Late at Seattle Shakespeare Co.

Amy Thone in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s 2012 production of “Antony and Cleopatra” (Photo: John Ulman)

The center does not hold in the Seattle Shakespeare Company production of Antony and Cleopatra (through November 18th; tickets) at The Playhouse at Seattle Center (the Intiman space). That center, in this case, is the husband-and-wife novelty act of Hans Altwies and Amy Thone, playing the ill-fated title roles of this tragedy. We spend most of the play wishing their characters would hurry up and die.

The production is admirably consistent yet woefully misconceived. Director John Langs has added confusion to poor character choices with some half-hearted stabs at socio-political commentary in costuming and choreography.

An opening dance sequence needlessly establishes the decadence of the Egyptian court with movement that layers the mysticism of Dervish whirling with orgiastic writhing. This makes for a discomfiting association between current spiritual practice and the hedonism of the ancient court. To the production’s credit, other design elements suggest that this conflation is accidental and Langs is pursuing something more simplistic.

Pete Rush’s costumes imply an Egyptian/Roman conflict as surrogate for our current East/West confrontation. At one end of the scale is the soothsayer’s caftan, emblematic of the East as organic and emotional. At the other end the West is all control and intellect as suggested by the 19th-century officers’ garb and 21st-century riot-cop battle gear of the Roman army.

Between them lies the Hollywood-slick rebel-chic of Pompey’s troops. Evidently they have escaped The Matrix films in order to rule the Mediterranean waves, though there isn’t a swatch of the nautical about them. As a whole it feels silly and more ambitious than smart.

As for the acting, the company delivers the verse with an ease that sometimes loses its pulse in the naturalism of their delivery. They are less successful with their characterization. Thone does nothing to mitigate Cleopatra’s cloying capriciousness with any sort of humanity or regal qualities that suggest she is anything more than physically attractive. Altwies’s Antony feels less like a charismatic military leader than an inept politician driven by nothing more than an inflated sense of self-worth.

With lead performances like these, the supporting cast gets a great opportunity to shine, which they do to varying degrees. Charles Leggett’s Enobarbus is serviceable but his death scene achieves no catharsis given Antony’s failure to deserve it.

Darragh Kennan makes for a clownish yet unsympathetic Octavius Caesar. He appears profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin and uncompromising with all. While Kennan is amusing as ever, his Octavius is insufficiently complex to provide an enlightening foil for Antony.

Dan Kremer’s Lepidus and Sydney Andrews’s Octavia are among the few to wholeheartedly win our sympathy. In the midst of the bluster and bravado of the drunk scene on Pompey’s galley (the show’s artistic high point), Lepidus’s vulnerability and honesty shine convincingly.

Andrews inspires both sympathy and pity in the bit role of Octavia. We feel sympathy for her grounded characterization of this political pawn and pity for the attempts to play her pregnancy for laughs. Meanwhile Kennan’s menacing Caesar is all deceitful subtext in welcoming Octavia back to Rome when Antony abandons her, missing another opportunity to give truthful complexity to his character.

Costuming suggest that these questionable choices are director-driven as individual pieces exacerbate the actors’ inclinations. Kennan wears his 19th-century military garb buttoned up and pressed. Leggett does Che Guevera in drab fatigues and a red beret. Antony and Cleopatra’s battle gear exposes the sham of their characterizations. Cleopatra goes to war in an intrusively ludicrous outfit while Antony looks childlike in coveralls and gilded life jacket armor.

The positive side of the design is mostly in the set, and the talented designer, Jennifer Zeyl, produces some clever and effective ideas here. A central sandbox keeps Egypt present in all the locations of the sprawling narrative just as Egypt and Cleopatra are (nearly) ever present in Antony’s heart and mind. In many scenes, the ways this pit divides or draws together characters provides the production’s only nuance.

The floating platform of the final scenes is creative and interesting—if challenging for some sightlines—but the noise that accompanies its entrance and adjustments is distracting. The simple set dressing of the galley scene is far more effective.

In the battle scenes, the choreography mostly takes up time and space. It tells us that a battle is happening without furthering the plot or our understanding of the characters, or conveying the emotional experience of the bloodshed. The single moment that stands apart from this is a stillness in which an individual soldier is shot multiple times in a spotlight. Clearly Langs and choreographer Mollye Maxner recognize their success here as they repeat the moment. Now if only Langs had recognized and excised the weak parts of the production, we’ve have much more fulfilling evening.