peteg's blog - noise - theatre - 2014 11 18 TheWintersTale

Promethean Theatre Ensemble: The Winter's Tale at the Anthenaeum Theatre.

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$24.45 = $20 + $2 restoration fee + $2.45 "Convenience Charge", bought 2014-10-21. I took the purple line to Wellington and schlepped up that street, and had an early dinner at the Golden Apple Diner: the first steak I'd had in six months or more, totally serviceable. After grabbing my ticket I headed back to Heritage Bicycles, which I think mostly functions as a repair and coffee shop. Their coffee was great, the decor flawlessly evoking the romance of bygone fixies and gramophones. Yes, it's a hipster stop.

This was a Megan DeLay segue from Smash at the Piccolo Theatre; Pete R. knows I'm not much into Shakespeare, especially not the drecky lesser-known later works like this one. It falls into two halves (and fortunately not three). The first is something like The Tempest or King Lear: in a barely-plausible fit of pique the King decides to ruin his life by ruining the lives of those most dear to him. OK, so far, so familiar. The second is a bucolic comedy, where the thief worryingly does not get his comeuppance. Am I not in America, the home of happy righteous endings?

The Anthenaeum Theatre is huge, but this was produced in the tiny Studio Theatre 1, which is smaller than the back room of the church I went to on Sunday. It proves beyond the actors, who are otherwise mostly fine, to scale down their vocalisations. This is unfortunate as the play itself is entirely about standing around and holding forth, and as it turned out, they often stood right in front of me (front right corner) and occluded what little action there was. Megan had one of the sensible characters and was as solid as everyone else at waiting for her turn to declaim.

The Reader got it about right, though I think Cameron Feagin over-emoted the whole time. There was some form of dance going on upstairs, attracting loads of younguns. The building itself is similar to the church that put on the Albee. Once again the #9 bus on Ashland got me home.