Cymbeline will never be Shakespeare for beginners, but this busy, bizarre story can be great fun for experienced theatergoers likely to appreciate its echoes of The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Othello and several other among his works.
One of his final plays, Cymbeline is Shakespeare’s romance set mostly in ancient Britain, but don’t expect to read here a detailed synopsis of its screwy storyline involving Imogen, a runaway princess in disguise as a boy; Posthumus, her absent husband who stupidly disbelieves her shining virtue; Iachimo, a sexy Iago-type intriguer; Cymbeline, a foolish king manipulated by his wicked Queen; two long-lost sons and some two dozen other plot complications – including an invasion by the Roman Empire – that get resolved in a great comical scene of revelations which happily concludes the play. If you have read this far into a review of Cymbeline likely you sufficiently know about the play and its people, so enough about that.
Premiering last Thursday, the National Asian American Theatre Company’s Off Broadway staging of Cymbeline offers a neatly freshened text of the play devised by playwright Andrea Thome. This “modern verse translation” was commissioned by Play On Shakespeare, an initiative to render the Bard of Avon’s 39 works into modern-day English for easier appreciation. Sticking to the story and respecting its particulars – the two-act show runs nearly three hours, including intermission – Thome has crafted a pleasant rephrasing of Cymbeline that sounds easy enough to contemporary ears. Surely Colley Cibber did worse to Shakespeare some 325-odd years ago. Ultimately it is Thome’s new Shakespeare Lite script, rather than the curiously pointless playing of it, that proves to be the most significant thing about this revival, in spite of a trendy performance concept.
Well, is the notion of an all-female company performing Shakespeare considered so trendy these days? Major all-women productions of The Tempest, Julius Caesar and Richard III have been seen in these metropolitan parts, to say nothing of female incarnations of 1776 and I Remember Mama, among newer works. Perhaps NAATCO ups the ante a bit by engaging an all-female, all Asian American 11-member cast and design team for Cymbeline. One might then wonder why a man was chosen to direct such a sororal crew, but let’s note that Stephen Brown-Fried has long specialized in staging classical works and previously has directed several NAATCO productions.
The results are patchy for Cymbeline at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, where set designer Ant Ma variously reconfigures long sheets of green and white fabric to suggest the story’s far-flung locations in a three-quarter acting space; fabric, too, is used for the fleeting battle scenes enacted as tug-of-war combat. Such modest, airy, abstract décor matches nicely with Mariko Ohigashi’s costume design that cleverly merges today and Tudor styles mostly in dark leathers and pleathers.
While these visuals complement each other, unfortunately the acting scarcely is so consistent. Beyond that shortfall, Cymbeline is being simply performed rather than thoughtfully interpreted by the director and his ensemble in a meaningful way angled to point out or question or satirize the issues of gender, misogyny and general macho idiocy that drive this weird comedy. Here, its characters are more or less portrayed as the men and (few) women as usual in Shakespeare’s dramatis personae. So what is the point of NAATCO in providing an all-female company to enact the play in a traditional mindset?
Meanwhile back at the actual performance, the delightful artist to savor is Maria-Christina Oliveras, who boldly depicts contrasting individuals. First sporting a spiky crown and crimson lips in a fab get-up and an imperious attitude as a poisonously evil Queen straight out of a Disney classic, Oliveras later adeptly changes soul, sex and vocal register to believably turn into old Belarius, a hearty laird of the woods. (She sure had me fooled for a few minutes!) Equally yet differently remarkable in her typically quiet and true blue portrayal of the faithful family retainer Pisanio is the invaluable Julyana Soelistyo. Injecting these proceedings with some much needed energy as the villain of the tale is Jeena Yi, whose cartoon depiction of vainglorious, stupid Cloten puts the grunt into disgruntled. Too bad the heart of the romance does not beat in the oddly muted performances by Jennifer Lim as Imogen and KK Moggie as Posthumus, while Anna Ishida’s watchful, seductive Iachimo prowls through a time zone neither here nor there. A wishy-washy Amy Hill is a clueless Cymbeline who demonstrates how nobody in this production appears to be acting on the same page, regardless of how easy this new nowadays version happens to be.
Cymbeline opened January 23, 2025, at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater and runs through February 15. Tickets and information: naatco.org
