BWW Reviews: Crown Offers a Stellar COMPLEAT FEMALE STAGE BEAUTY

By: Don Grigware Jun. 05, 2012

The Compleat Female Stage Beauty/by Jeffrey Hatcher/directed by William A. Reilly/Crown City Theatre/through July 1

The time: 1661. The place: London, England. It was illegal for women to perform onstage in any capacity. Women's roles were played by male actors, and there was no one more illustrious than Edward Kynaston (Ben Rovner), whose atypical livelihood came to an abrupt standstill. This is told via a splendid theatrical style of the period in Jeffrey Hatcher's superbly written Compleat Female Stage Beauty, currently receiving an outstanding production at Crown City Theatre.

According to Hatcher's account an actress Margaret Hughes with no prior stage experience (Natalie Hope MacMillan) takes to a rival stage as Desdemona in Othello and piques King Charles' II interest (Dennis Gersten). The king had been imploring new changes, surprises in the theatre, and as a result Kynaston not only gets competition, but when the actress requests an audition with his theatre company, because of royal interference, loses his job. He does drag in a seedy bar, and, with no other alternatives - he cannot seem to muster up the necessary luster to play a male role with equal intensity onstage - loses all sense of self-worth and optimism for any kind of future career. He also loses sexual favors from both the Duke of Buckingham (Josef Bette) and from the many women who had been infatuated with his so-called masculinity offstage. Hatcher's writing has a delicious sense of humor, poking fun at the king, his court, the stage companies and the very essence of gender-bending, causing food for thought as well as laughter. Why couldn't a woman play a woman naturally, without affectation? Why did it take a man to better interpret femininity in such a beautiful idyllic manner? Of special interest in the script is Kynaston's supposed 'homosexuality'. Did he sleep with a man because he truly wanted to as a man or was it his fierce identification with his feminine side that brought about said attraction? Also of interest and at the very core of the play is how one must adapt to surrounding societal change in order to survive. Kynaston finally finds his niche as a male actor onstage without ever losing touch with his knowledge of how to play a woman. Hatcher's ideas of role reversal are consistently fascinating. "We're never suited for the roles we most desire" and "We are not always what we do" remain with me long after the curtain came down.

William A. Reilly has smoothly and keenly directed an outstanding cast. Rovner is astounding as Kynaston. He makes a pretty woman in makeup and really gets in touch with his feminine feelings. His finest hour is in his audition for the king as Othello. He stumbles, trips and falls in humiliating fashion, showing the disintegration of his male psyche and overall human spirit. Brilliant work! Joanne McGee is wondrous as Maria, the servant who tries to make a man of Kynaston. Her sincere love of him is heartbreaking. Michelle Page is hilarious as Nell, never missing a comic beat and MacMillan succeeds amazingly as Hughes. It takes as truly fine actress to play a bad acting style so well! Gersten is superb as Charles II as is Richard Sabine as the foppish Sir Charles Sedley. Kudos as well to George Alvarez, Cameron Daxon et al.

There is no finer example of what a truly good Acting Company can do on a low budget than Crown City Theatre. They take a sow's ear and turn it into pure gold. With a limited space, functional set pieces and small budget, they make Compleat Female Stage Beauty a tremendously engaging work of art. But alas, the play's the thing!

http://www.crowncitytheatre.com/

Photo credit: Daniel G. Lamm

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