FringeNYC 2013: Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Swashbuckling Comedy!

Review by David Fuller · August 11, 2013

A recipe for fun: take one of Shakespeare’s lesser comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, pare it to its essentials, add a heaping helping of stage combat, and pepper throughout with Buccaneer madness. The resulting summer fare is Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Swashbuckling Comedy!, adapted and directed by Michael Hagins, who also choreographed the fights. His cast of ten happily embraces this concept, inhabiting characters as adept at fighting with quarterstaffs and rapiers as retorts and repartee.

Shakespeare’s play is often a target of adaptation and re-imagining: its thin plot barely holds the bounds of credulity. In sum, two friends, natives of Verona and the “gents” of the title, are in love: Proteus with Julia of Verona and Valentine with Sylvia, the daughter of the Duke of Milan. Valentine travels to Milan to be with his love, but is rebuked by her father who prefers Sylvia to be betrothed to a Milanese noble, Thurio, a man of much bravura with a milquetoast spleen. Of course, Sylvia adores Valentine and abhors Thurio. Meantime, Proteus misses his friend and travels to Milan for a visit, despite Julia’s protestations.

True to the Bard’s unsubtle appellations, Valentine remains steadfast in his love, while Proteus, uh, changes. At first sight, he falls head over heels in love with Sylvia, though he keeps it to himself. But, his desire trumps friendship and when he finds out about Valentine’s intention to elope with Sylvia he promptly tells the Duke, who banishes Valentine to the forest. What follows involves, among other things, a disguised Julia, wise-cracking servants, a gang of bandits (pirates in this case) and a wild elongated chase. In the end, and this would be a spoiler alert if it weren’t so preordained, everyone goes back where they belong and all is forgiven.

Hagins’ staging and fight choreography work well on the CSV Flamboyan Theater thrust stage. The fights are particularly well done and the actors’ action throughout moves fluidly with nice pace. The acting by the ensemble is a bit uneven, though much of that could be ascribed to first performance uncertainty (when I saw it). Particular standouts are Sonia Hebe as Silvia and Sean Ward as The Duke. Hebe is a natural Shakespearean and Ward fully embraces the pirate theme, getting in lots of “aarghs” in his words. He also sports a golden hook in lieu of a left hand, one of costume designer Sarah Penchaff’s nice nods to buccaneerdom. Her costumes as a whole evoke the style well, under what one assumes are limited FringeNYC funds, though the medieval sleeves on the leading women seemed out of place. Kudos, by the way, to composer Donna Stearns who supplied a nice paean to the object of several loves: “Who is Silvia?” Also, worthy of note are the fine lights and sound design by Melissa Farinelli, who is also the stage manager.

At the top of the show, we are greeted by one of the ensemble men, Mark Levy, who piratically proffers programs. Upon seating, after a bit, Laura Mae Baker and Ambar Aranaga (I want to say her name with a pirate accent) enter as overly imbibing pirate wenches, interacting with the audience and leading us through some verses of “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest…” (lyrics being in the program). Then the play proper starts with our “two gents” discoursing on love while engaging in swordplay. These all make a nice swashbuckling setup for the play. There are, however, portions (especially in the first half) where the concept seems to disappear. Still, overall, this is a fun interpretation and a worthy way to spend some FringeNYC doubloons – even if doesn’t quite achieve “Two Gentlemen of the Caribbean.”