Review: THE AARON PLAY at Independent Shakespeare Company

“You ever seen a Moor this dark before?”

The question is posed by one Roman guard to another. The person being referred to is their prisoner - a man buried up to his chest underneath a blazing hot sun, a man afforded no food, no water and certainly no pity.  The two guards are there basically to supervise his execution, to watch him die. This prisoner is deemed responsible for a bloodbath involving the deaths of more than six people including the last emperor of Rome. The guards may not know the prisoner’s name (yet!), but we do. He is Aaron, the “execrable wretch” and one of the few survivors of Shakespeare’s blood-drenched tragedy TITUS ANDRONICUS. And here this man is again, front, center and doomed at the heart of Zachary Bones’s THE AARON PLAY in its world premiere at the Indie Shakes Studio.

Has anybody seen a Moor this dark before? Perhaps not, but we’ve seen circumstances that are blacker, even recently. In this charged political ADRONICUS sequel of sorts, Bones, director Carly DW Bones and their four-person cast peel back the atrocities of one of Shakespeare’s most despicable characters to give us a hard look at our nature – both as individuals and as a society. While not a pretty picture, it makes for a lightning bolt of a play. Co-produced by Independent Shakespeare Company and Coin & Ghost, THE AARON PLAY will engage theater-goers and Bard-hounds as well as those who embrace stories with ideas.

It is no easy ask to humanize a man like Aaron…unless the people surrounding him are revealed to be measurably worse. So it goes that Rome under the newly-minted emperor, Lucius Andronicus (Titus’s son) is evolving into something resembling a fascist state. Amidst still simmering social unrest, the two guards (played by Brian Monahan and William Gray) are expected to be obedient soldiers, carry out orders and see that Aaron – a traitor to the realm - dies. In so doing, they realize they’ll need to keep their heads down if they want to keep their heads on their shoulders. This should be simpler for Guard #2 (Gray) himself the son of a soldier who eschews politics and knows better than to ask questions. “If every soldier quibbled with himself every time he received an order that went against his political ideologies, the whole system would break down and we’d be living in chaos and anarchy,” he says. “It’s our job to hold the line, not argue over where to place it.”

More apt to stir the pot, Guard #1 (Monahan) is lazy, corrupt, a conspiracy monger as well as a cruel and venal bastard. These two men – stuck together carrying out the world’s crappiest assignment - are destined to clash, particularly if one of them proves to possess something resembling a conscience. Playing two grunts of very different principles, Monahan and Gray skillfully bounce off each other. We’re never sure if they’ll end up as friends, lovers, comrades or each other’s assassins.

And then there’s Aaron himself, who spends the entire action of the play stuck in a hole without the use of his hands, using every bit of information and cunning he possesses to keep himself alive. As he tries to work the guards and is visited by an assortment of spirits (played Camila Rozo), the character’s backstory unfolds. Not surprisingly, the roots of Aaron’s villainy trace back to injuries beyond the play. It’s no picnic to be a slave even to those who themselves end up enslaved.

Now facing his eleventh hour, Aaron is not trying to save his own skin, but the infant son whose existence he learned about barely four days ago. Actor Bruce Lemon Jr. tunnels deeply into this antihero’s skin and allows us to see what’s driving him. Lemon’s Aaron is cunning and intelligent, every inch a political creature. Amidst the bloodbath that was TITUS ANDRONICUS, Shakespeare left Aaron alive. With every sneer, bargain or struggle with madness, Lemon demonstrates why that proved to be a good idea.

Rounding out the cast, the shape-shifting Rozzo is splendid as an officious messenger, a bloodthirsty child and the spirits of two characters from TITUS who have unfinished business with Aaron.

The months are, alas, lengthy between the conclusion of every summer of Independent Shakespeare Company’s free Shakespeare in Griffith Park and the festival’s return the following year. Happily, ISC comes up with dynamic content within its studio space in Atwater Village. THE AARON PLAY was inspired by the Bones seeing ISC’s 2018 production of TITUS ANDRONICUS. The partnership between ISC and Coin & Ghost  has proven to be a winner. Next up in December: a remount of A CHRISTMAS CAROL WITH Charles Dickens featuring the company’s Managing Director and Co-Founder David Melville.

THE AARON PLAY plays through November 23 at 3191 Casitas Ave. #130, Los Angeles

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