“As You Like It” at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey through September 29.

Ben Jacoby & S K Harris

To give its writer William Shakespeare his due: The title of Shakespeare’s comedy takes a lot for granted. With the ageless displays of invention and high spiritedness in what is commonly known as one of the Bard’s “joyous” comedies, it isn’t surprising to see  director Paul Mullins uproot it to the mid 20th century. 

In this instance, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey production, its first “As You Like It” in more than a dozen years, appears to be taking place somewhere in the north western American territory. Here, a winter-attired band of rugged-looking exiles have made it a home away from home.

I can’t imagine purists or the Bard himself objecting to the pastoral romances taking place among the barren wooden posts that presumably pass for foliage-free trees courtesy of the functional bi-level set designed by Brittany Vasta. Whether or not it conjures up the Midlands Forest of Arden is a moot point. 

After all, the dirty political doings are only an excuse for Rosalind masquerading as a man to win over the easily fooled Orlando; her cousin the devoted Celia to beguile the wicked Oliver; Touchstone to seduce the provocative Audrey; the disdainful Phoebe to settle for the lovesick Silvius; and for them all to be united in wedded bliss.

In this play, the characters willfully embrace life with  a mixture of silliness and sophistication. The plot takes off interestingly enough as Orlando, under threat of death, flees the court of Duke Frederick (Earl Baker, Jr.) and his cow-towing courtiers to find himself safe among a resourceful band of political outsiders. 

Among them is the dramatically over-the-top and self-servingly melancholy Jaques (Anthony Marble) who delivers the famously cynical speech about “the seven ages of man.” He has the job of upholding the play’s philosophy in the light of all the hanky-panky going on around him. Marble adds a refreshingly volatile aspect to Jaques giving the play its most recognizably human center. Marble is remembered for his terrific performance in the title role in “The Rainmaker” earlier this season.  

A very charming and convincing Safiya Kaija Harris mixed Rosalind’s ingrained wit and calculating adventurousness with a temperament that compliments this gal’s  upper-crust breeding. Winning the heart of the fair Rosalind after his impressive match with Charles (Jonathan Higginbotham), the Duke’s wrestling champ is the besotted Orlando, as commendably played by Ben Jacoby. He defines Orlando as an unconventionally vigorous boy-next-door-ish hero-at-large....even in suspender-supported jeans and a shoulder bag. 

Especially exciting is the kick-boxing that gives an added wallop to the fight scene as staged by Rick Sordelet. Nick Corley’s Touchstone brims to overflowing with innuendo. As the country wench, Elizabeth Colwell behaved as one might expect a Shakespearean slut to behave.

Devin Conway left no doubt the disdain she held for the impervious Silvius (Ryan Woods). Finding fault with Sarah Nicole Deaver’s unpersuasive interventions as Celia added nominally to my acquired tolerance for this rather long evening of “country copulations.” The popularity of  “As You Like It” through the years may baffle some, as it does me. But it nevertheless delivers a healthy, often comical, dose of the many facets of love...take it or leave it.

“Memoirs of a Forgotten Man” Just concluded a run on September 15 at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, N.J.

Amie Bermowitz and Steve Brady star in “Memoirs of a Forgotten Man” at New Jersey Repertory Company now through Sept. 15. Photo courtesy Andrea Phox

I have only once ever before written a few lines about a play that has already closed. In the previous instance it was to change my opinion on a musical (“The Bridges of Madison County”,) a better production than presented on Broadway. Basically having a richer understanding of the piece. Now I am writing a few lines on a terrific play that has just closed that, if not exactly haunting me, keeps me thinking about its implications. 

The play is “Memoirs of a Forgotten Man” by D.W. Gregory. It just closed a month’s engagement at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, N.J. I was out of the country when the play opened and only caught up with it during one of its final performances. Being familiar with a few of Gregory’s plays I didn’t want to miss seeing it. I was right.

    

Have you ever wondered whether what we see and hear and read with regard to a government’s political agendas and its social policies might very well be creatively controlled for distribution. Of course, you have. Especially as it might possibly relate to, enhance or even muddy our own personal recollections. What if the past, as it can be best defined by testimony, documents, and archives is not considered sacrosanct but rather malleable to suit the tenor of the times and/or the present needs of whatever authority or regime is in power? Apparently this is not science fiction but the useful methodology for some governments when certain facts as they are commonly known and defined are considered subject to interpretation and even intervention. 

This is one of the recurring themes in Gregory’s compelling play “Memoirs of a Forgotten Man” set in Russia in 1957 as well as in 1937. A research paper on the nature of memory by psychologist Natalya (Amie Bermowtiz) has been submitted for review for publication. It has been read by Kreplow (Steve Brady), a government bureaucrat who seems to have more than a scholarly interest in it.

The subject of Natalya’s paper is Alexei (Benjamin Satchel), a man she has interviewed at length for a case study involving his own remarkable memory. Apparently Alexei was born with a mind capable of instant and impeccable recall - a repository - of every word and event even since he was born. He forgets nothing. His memory is additionally enhanced by a total sensory experience that includes seeing colors and identifying smells, a known phenomenon.

As an adult Alexei has been employed at a Leningrad news publication where he had reported in detail on speeches made by a radical activist Nikolai Bukharin. Alexei never took notes but relied strictly on his memory much to the consternation of his editors. What he reported was, nevertheless, scrupulously accurate. That Bukharin was subsequently charged and convicted of crimes against the state, as defined by the then Stalinist regime, led to all data, photos and mention of him in print being subjected to removal.

Alexei is perplexed why his reporting the facts without a slant might not be in his best interest. Eventually he seeks help from Natalya so that he can learn to forget. The play uses flashbacks to show Alexei at home with his mother (Andrea Gallo) and his brother Vasily (also played by Brady) where his gift might imperil their safety.

Director James Glossman has staged the play beautifully and chosen a cast that delivers Gregory’s excellent text through wonderful characterizations. Except for Satchel, the other actors play multiple characters with skill.

Bravo to set designer Jessica Parks for providing a fine unit set that becomes a portal to the play’s various locations. All technical aspects are top-drawer in keeping with the professional tradition at NJ Rep.

  

Like a well-constructed mystery, we get little hints of what may be developing in the hidden and exposed relationships of the characters. A really clever device is used to frame the play that I won’t disclose except to say the play’s cleverness in this regard is not so nearly as memorable as is the play’s purposeful exposure of a scary world that would allow alternative facts take charge of our lives. Is it too close for comfort? I wonder.  

“Yasmina’s Necklace”

Playwright Rohina Malik has deployed elements of nearly every dramatic genre for her impassioned play “Yasmina’s Necklace.” From sitcom to agitprop, from farce to soap opera and from romantic comedy to intense melodrama, her play with its surfeit of both political and personal aspects is fractured to a fault. That it is also sincerely intentioned and often engaging helps the audience to stay apace with the romantic and familial tribulations of Sam (Cesar J. Rosado), a 30-something recently divorced American-born business professional who has decided to change his name from Abdul much to objection of his Iraqi father and Puerto Rican mother.

  

Recovering from a failed marriage and intent on maintaining a successful career in a racist environment, Sam is keeping his Iraqi/Puerto Rican as well as his Muslim heritage under wraps. This, to the dismay of his parents. 

  

In the play that begins comically with his outlandishly depicted father Ali (Eliud Kauffman) and mother Sara (Socorro Santiago) vigorously trying to make another match for their son with Yasmina (Layan Elwazani) an Iraqi immigrant. Her resistance to a match is as strong as is Sam’s. In marked contrast to Sam, Yasmina is committed to combating racism but also to making her past inform her activism. In addition, she has troubling memories of her distant lover.

Yasmina’s father Musa (Haythern Noor) is an Iraqi immigrant devoted to protecting Yasmina whose activism and imprisonment in Syria is partly channeled through her paintings depicting the horrors and the destruction of her homeland. Musa is also devoted to Kareem (Robert Manning, Jr.) the African-American Imam of the local Mosque whose presence and advice is welcomed. 

Dramatically  problematic is Yasmina’s fragile emotional state as are the flashbacks of her life in Iraq. These are too fitfully and ineffectively experienced and deserve more dramatic focus.  They appear with a seriousness, however, that is counter to the unconvincingly farcical behavior that defines Sam’s parents. 

The actors handle their assignments with skill and a willingness to go along with the play’s blatant mixture of theatrical tropes. Director Kareem Fahmy obviously had his hands finding a cohesive frame for a play’s mix of genres and also allowing Sam’s parents to become ethnic clichés. A more restrained approach to the parents’ unrealistic outbursts would be helpful.

Malik has evidently much to say and reveal about the state of refugees and the many displaced people of the world, especially as it relates to her own ethnicity. One comes away from the play with feeling that the reality being revealed has itself been displaced and sacrificed for the sake of entertainment. As inferred by the play’s title more meaningfully and explicitly is our need to cling to things and to memories when we are far from home.  

   

The production has a fine setting by David M. Barber that serves several locations both past and in the present and is enhanced by designer Cha See’s excellent lighting. Most noteworthy is that playwright Malik brings a fresh perspective to America’s multi-cultural dramatic landscape.

“Betrayal” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre through December 8, 2019

(L–R) Zawe Ashton, Charlie Cox, and Tom Hiddleston (Photo: Marc Brenner)

Three terrific leading actors making their Broadway debuts and a fine director’s new perspective on an old play DOES make a difference. But, what a bummer how disappointing that the mutual sexual dalliances in “Betrayal” don’t seem as important, icily fun, or simply as seductive as they did way back in 1980. As a matter of fact, and perhaps more interestingly is how the impact of the basic plot contrivance has been affected by time. Harold Pinter’s play of interlocking affairs has been deservedly afforded its due attention over the years and most recently with all the bells and whistles on Broadway with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz.

  

At the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater under the direction of Jamie Lloyd, this production that originated on London has made the transatlantic journey with all of Pinter’s wonderfully worn-out and wearisome emotional, intellectual, and conjugal betrayals. They are practiced by a quartet (one unseen) of rather superficial lovers, and have been duly presented from end to start (to use the play’s conceit).

However, it is the grim banality of the long dull affair between the play’s principal lovers Jerry and Emma that should provoke what we seem to like best about Pinter. Oddly, it doesn’t. It is only the gorgeously minimalist staging, spot-on direction and splendid performances that save the play this time around.

As their story devolves in two-steps backward and one-step forward flashback scenes, the mostly understated affair begins within the stunningly bare scene-scape designed by Soutra Gilmour that does more than you can imagine to inform the actions’ various locations. Soon enough we learn that Emma, an art-gallery owner who has not been Jerry’s lover for the past two years, is currently having an affair with a writer named Casey.

From this retrospective point, the play sets out its sequence of scenes backward to the point where Jerry first makes a pass at Emma, his best friend’s wife during a party. For Pinter aficionados, the play offers his typical gift of minimalist phrases in a text that expectedly ripples with rhythmic cadences. Happily Britishers Zawe Ashton as Emma, Charlie Cox as Jerry and Tom Hiddleston are conspicuously and irretrievably tuned into the oblique use of language that distinguishes British society. 

Discreetly breathtaking (if there is such a thing) with every well calculated movement, Ashton is a standout as the rather careless wife who thinks she has managed to keep her husband from learning of seven years of afternoon trysts with his best friend. The Pinter-perfect scene in which Robert confronts Emma in a Venice hotel room is wonderfully chilling and paradoxically comical. As Robert, Hiddleston has one his many fine moments when he goads and baits Emma with an incriminating letter whose contents could bring a calamitous end to their  relationships. Robert’s lines to Emma: “To be honest I’ve always liked Jerry rather more than I’ve like you,” followed by “Maybe I should have had an affair with him myself,” hints at the kind of homoeroticism that Pinter incorporates into his more sinister plays such as “No Man’s Land” and “The Homecoming.” But his use of such lines leads neither to dramatic incrimination nor recrimination but rather suggests a sly homage to Noel Coward.

What is most curious about this Pinter work is its short but non-enigmatic course. With its rather pedestrian pursuits, “Betrayal” makes me think how much fun it can be to wallow in someone else’s impetuously amoral behavior. The idea of watching lives run backward is, of course, a clever (if not totally original) device and one that this play sorely needs. While we do know how things will turn out, how much more involving the play would be if we cared just a whit about these people and what went wrong or right. 

There is something to be said for watching a play and coming away feeling smug and superior. The entire production, with its stunning lighting by Jon Clark and the attire by Gilmour (no time for changes thank you) aims to feel smug and superior. It is not a problem in this case. The only problem is mine with the play.