"...a joy ride all the way"

June 2, 2007 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall.

Elizabeth Aspenlieder as Natasha Navratalova
Malcolm Ingram as Ivor Fish.
Photo by Kevin Sprague.

Tom Stoppard’s "Rough Crossing" now playing at Shakespeare and Company’s Founders’ Theatre is very rough transit for the talented cast of six (five men and a woman) aboard the S.S. Italian Castle sailing for Manhattan. But for the audience it is a joy ride all the way.

The play is not only a farce with, as Dr. Johnson would put it, "gay remarks with unexpected answers" (Oscar Wilde being for this a good example.) It is a farce that spoofs farce itself, or as Kant put it, "A transformation of a strained expectation into nothing."

The play, adapted by Stoppard from a couple of earlier works, (Molnar’s "Play at the Castle" and P.G. Wodehouse’s "The Play’s the Thing" is topped by a creamy froth of ridiculous ralery and witty sallies that are pure Stoppard, replete with puns and double entendres.

Rough Crossing
By Tom Stoppard
Music by Andre Previn
Lyrics by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Kevin Coleman
Founders' Theatre Reserved Seating
May 25 - September 2

Shakespeare & Company
shakespeare.org
70 Kemble Street
Lenox, MA 01240
phone: 413-637-1199
fax: 413-637-4274

The comedy is also slapstick, physical, and at times musical, when the score by Andre Previn deliberately parodies with "bad" vocals that poke fun at musicals.

For a two hour escape from the worries of our present world, the shenanigans going on at the Founders' Theatre are highly recommended

And don’t be discouraged by the hilarious opening in which there is no exposition, and you don’t know who’s who or why. Suddenly one of the two resident playwrights on board the crazy ship sailing across the Atlantic without an ending for their play due momentarily on Broadway, will notice and announce the need for an opening, and invent on the spot "Murphy" in the person of the hapless steward who seems to be the all around personnel of the boat. And Murphy sets us as straight as we shall ever get on this hilarious voyage where every aspect of plot (in the play we are seeing and the one the two traveling playwrights are trying to finish) will go astray.

All seems to be sorting itself out as the characters reel about a boat that is tipping, capsizing? (or is it just a drill and do we need boat jackets?). Meanwhile, suddenly everyone is a playwright with puns on the double, along with the occasional song and dancing to spoof every musical ever written including the one we are watching, stealing lines from Oscar Wilde and Jane Austin, and, especially, from Shakespeare.

The play is so awash in Stoppard’s wit and jokes, jibing at every aspect of theatre and theatrical production, that it would take a second viewing not to miss one now and then. But none of that matters.

All you need to do is go with the flow. The six talented actors will take you there. They are all wellcast, fantastically funny, hamming merrily to the hilt, wildly physical, undaunted.

As heroine, the feisty Natasha Navratalova, Elizabeth Aspenlieder runs the gamut from accent to bosom baring to prat falls. She is a sheer delight from her first sensuous appearance outside the door of her luxurious stateroom, baring not one but both breasts to her miscast, (for the play within this play) aging lover. She can do the most hilarious things with her blond hair, is capable of a smile that can make a man swoon or freeze him on the spot, and magically changing that pair of peachy breasts into ear-rings, and by that magic, free into speech a catatonic young lover.

That young lover, Adam Adam, (played by Bill Barclay) is the play’s musician, ardently in love with the aging heroine but so awed by her that he can scarcely move or speak. It takes an overboard plunge into the sea, and a bit of script writing by Natasha, to cure him into vocalization. Until that happy moment, seated at the piano playing the banal notes, with a sudden Beethoven chord of doom, he is delightfully hopeless and helpless.

Malcolm Ingram, the miscast leading man Ivor Fish, is marvelously cast in the over-all Stoppard play. He can finagle a way into the heroine’s cabin, but squirm dexterously in admitting "all" when the event becomes, in its deft playing, another plot variation, leaving the heroine "pure as the driven snow," despite that peachy bosom. He is every moment the character and throws himself into it with abandon.

Jonathan Croy and Jason Asprey, the two "real" playwrights in Stoppard’s play, (Turia and Gal) are a strange team, Croy stoically attempting to get just one cognac to keep his balance and get his script rewritten before they reach port, and Asprey eating his calm way through celery sticks, carrots and the lavish meals no one else ever gets around to even nibbling. Never calm, but as in control as anyone on the crazy boat gets, they struggle with their inept and over-confident cast and their tongue-tied musical genius, hindered (or helped) all the way by "Murphy."

And Murphy? He seems to be unusually prone to the ship’s lurching as he careens off the imaginary gunwales, consuming drink after drink of cognac he never manages to get delivered to the awaiting Turai. He weaves through the whole play, obviously one of those characters "who are more than they seem to be." And he is, and isn’t. LeRoy McClain in the role is a delightful character who even plunges overboard when necessary, and he sports a wild swimsuit (one of the splendid bits of costuming by Govane Lohbauer). Carl Sprague has created three ship locales that work well on the three-sided stage and managed the seemingly perilous moments of the near ship wreck to almost tilt the playing area.

Kevin G. Coleman, director of this wildly creative cast and crew has had thirty years of Shakespeare theatre in Lenox giving him the experience (and grace) to spoof theatre on all levels. The self-parody of the entire production is delightful. Enjoy. I did.