'Shakespeare in Hollywood': Lost in the Wrong Wood

One day, Oberon and Puck walk into a movie studio.

If you're giggling already, there's a chance you may find Ken Ludwig's manic and overstuffed play, Shakespeare in Hollywood, amusing. Though given a first-rate production by the Wilma Theater, directed by Jiri Zizka, the script proves to be too scattershot for the fun parts to add up.

The play is undeniably high-concept: on the way back to the forest, the King of the Fairies, Oberon, and his sidekick, Puck, of the Bard's Midsummer Night's Dream fame, lose their way and somehow end up in Hollywood in 1935. Director Max Reinhardt (Bernard Burak Sheredy, whose accent wanders around Central Europe) has just pitched his movie version of Midsummer to studio chief Jack Warner (John O'Creagh), and, guess what, he is in need of an Oberon and a Puck. The fairies get cast as themselves, and are swept into a new world.

Much of the humor of the first act depends on the juxtaposition of Oberon and Puck's language, much of it drawn from Shakespeare plays, and the insipid chatter that surrounds them. Michael Sharon as Oberon finds appropriate gravitas in the face of extreme silliness, but Caroline Tamas as Puck fails to make her irritating character ingratiating.

Sadly, most of the other humor is not very fresh. Hollywood in the 1930s was apparently pretty much the same as it is today, or at least Ludwig makes fun of the same things. The leading blonde (Polly Lee) is insipid and promiscuous? How shocking! Most of the characters are similarly stereotypical, and, despite the actors' efforts, stay that way. Lanie MacEwan is charming and spunky as Olivia, a love interest for Oberon, but, like the other characters, never has a chance for any depth or complexity.

In a somewhat forced plot intervention, Will Hays (James Judy) of the Hays Production Code has problems with the script. And so Oberon and Puck must bring in the old flower of the Shakespeare play and to make him fall in love with someone and like the film. Or something like that.

This is where the play falls apart. The love potion of the flower is spread thinly around almost all of the large cast, and the second act is a long series of chases and meet cutes that never realize the comic potential of any of the myriad relationships. There are two many characters for any real development, and the action never pauses long enough for any good jokes.

The production is stellar, and always interesting to look at even in the most manic sections of the play. Robert Pyzochna's stunning black and white set comprised of concentric circles suggests both a camera lens and a maze. Janus Stefanowicz's costumes are impressively lavish, and Jerold Forsyth's lighting as a few starring moments.

Though it mixes real people like Reinhardt and Dick Powell (the very funny Kevin Bergen) and real events (Reinhardt's Midsummer indeed did have problems with Hays) with fanciful fiction, the play lacks the graceful integration of bawdy puns and intellectual firepower found in the somewhat similar work of Tom Stoppard (such as Travesties), nor is it a perfectly balanced farce like Noises Off. Though good for an occasional guffaw, Shakespeare in Hollywood fails to be more than a complicated premise.

Shakespeare in Hollywood

Directed by Jiri Zizka. Set Designer: Robert Pyzocha. Costume Designer: Janus Stefanowicz. Lighting Designer: Jerold R. Forsyth. Projection Designer: Jiri Zizka. Sound Designer: Bill Moriarty. Fight Director; J. Alex Cordaro.

At the Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., Philadelphia.

For tickets and information: http://www.wilmatheater.org or 215-546-7834. Tickets $35-$49, student tickets available.

Photos by Jim Roese.

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