Sunday Afternoon in Prospect Park: EBE Ensemble presents "The Comedy of Errors" at the Music Pagoda

This afternoon the sun came out and the rains held off, and we got the fun of seeing this season's Shakespeare at the Pagoda in Prospect Park, with the talented EBE Ensemble presenting another terrifically entertaining show, a cleverly staged, laugh-filled production of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Elyzabeth Gorman.

We came slightly late -- after all these years, finding the Music Pagoda is still a bit challenging to us -- and didn't get a program, but we know from the EBE Ensemble website that the cast included Whit Leyenberger, Dylan C. Digel, David Jenkins, Thomas Muccioli, Josephine Ganner, KC Wright, Jordan Douglas Smith, Jessica Loudon, Noam Tomaschoff, Eric Alba, Olivia Hayes, Allyson Boate and Andrews Landsman.

So the only cast member we recognized was the company's artistic director, Eric Alba, whom we'd seen before as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Brutus in Julius Caesar. Here he was one of two comic cops in a Sun Belt police officer's uniform playing one of Officers, Jailers, and Headsman.

Gorman's production uses informal contemporary costumes, nothing truly out of place in contemporary Brooklyn, and the more tedious parts of the text are thankfully dispensed with so that the comedy moves very fast and with a lot of laughs.

The two sets of twins -- the Antiphilos of Syracuse and Antiphilos of Ephesus and their slave Dromios -- are dressed almost alike and look pretty similar, but the actors taking the roles managed to imbue each character with a distinctive personality and particular comic tics.

Late Friday Afternoon in Prospect Park: EBE Ensemble presents "Romeo & Juliet" at Shakespeare in the Pagoda

Once again this afternoon, we went to Prospect Park to see Shakespeare. This is the final weekend of Shakespeare in the Pagoda, a presentation of EBE Ensemble, whose fine Julius Caesar we saw last Saturday.

At 4 p.m. today we got to see the company's equally well-done Romeo & Juliet (they use the ampersand so we are too), a high-energy production directed by Dev Bondarin featuring most of the excellent actors we saw as ancient Romans a week ago.

We've finally learned how to get to the Music Pagoda without getting lost, at least once we were at the easier-to-find Oriental Pavilion, where we saw Brave New World Repertory's As You Like It yesterday: from there, go under the arch, over the bridge and around.

EBE Ensemble has been doing Romeo & Juliet and Julius Caesar twice most of these weekend days (the final performances are on Saturday) at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. and we're astounded at the energy and endurance of the actors as well as their skill.

Since most of the actors here except the young lovers take multiple parts, we've now seen some of them in three or four roles, so it's impressive to see their range. It's also heartening to see what the company can do with the bare-bones set of the Music Pagoda, which is a beautiful (if neglected) venue but it has some limitations, which EBE Ensemble and the directors of these productions have found a way to use to turn into strengths. The music here, with cellist Frederick Alden Terry and percussionist Jonathan Churchill, was a big help, too.

This was a contemporary dress production, but low-key and not aggressively 21st century like the more stripped-down Romeo and Juliet we saw last summer by the Curious Frog Theatre Company at the Litchfield Villa on the other side of Prospect Park. (A nice touch by wardrobe supervisor Kelsie Cooper today was to very subtly color-coordinate the Montagues and Capulets early on.)

Since that production also featured Elizabeth Spano as Juliet, it was interesting to see her deeper and less impatient interpretation of the role here. This Juliet seems more mature, more thoughtful and also a bit more cautious and stoic than her earlier performance. This Juliet is a little bit less daring and physical, not delicate but with an emotional fragility to balance the character's determined strength.

We've now seen Montgomery Sutton (EBE Ensemble's executive director) in several roles, and he has a terrific stage presence. Perhaps because here he's often in front of the raised stage of the pagoda while Juliet is, until the play's final scenes, confined to the more distant reaches of the upper "stage," the role of Romeo becomes more intimate with the audience and more central to the story than the slightly ethereal Juliet.

Sutton's Romeo seems almost thoughtful even in his impetuousness. That the young characters in the play - except for Benvolio (Joshua Luria, in an impressive performance that somehow makes his character the moral center of the Veronese universe, even more so than the Prince) - act so rashly in typically adolescent behavior patterns drives the tragedy. Yet here you feel that Romeo is so close to controlling the events by making better decisions (in a year or so he'd handle everything differently) that it makes the play's awful progress that much more painful.

EBE Ensemble artistic director Eric Alba, so fine as Brutus in Julius Caeasar, makes lightning-fast changes here from the blithely incompetent servant Peter (along with Camille Mazurek's dithery Nurse, he gets most of the laughs) to the scariest Tybalt we've ever seen: as Tybalt, he seems slightly psycho to us, incapable of being reasoned with despite the impression that you have that Tybalt is capable of generosity and kindness.

The other principals from Julius Caeasar also gave remarkably thoughtful performances here. Camille Mazurek was particularly fine as the Nurse, at turns petulant, deeply empathetic, self-pitying, histrionic and good-hearted. This Nurse seems to know she was destined for better things and chafes in the limited role society has assigned her. We didn't realize at first that Mazurek was also the actress playing Lady Montague, so different are the two women; Lady Montague here is utterly helpless, someone (you suspect) crippled by depression, and so her ultimate fate comes as a horror but not a shock. This is an accomplished dual performance.

Nick Reinhardt made a wonder of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, essentially undercutting all the passions of the other characters that dominate the drama. For us, it was the part of the text, even more than the excellent well-known romantic monologues and dialogues of the two protagonists, that highlighted the beauty of Shakespeare's language, even if you think Mercutio is high on something during it. Reinhardt also made an interestingly distracted Prince, someone who could be a lot more competent if only he weren't rushing to check off the next item on his to-do list.

Len Rella, whose Cassius was so interesting, here embodies the dysfunctionality of Veronese society in his performance of Capulet. He and Montague (Steve Viola) may preside over two households "both alike in dignity" - which is to say they have very little of it. Capulet's intrinsic kindness is thwarted again and again by his being so over his head as the head of this weird family. Continually exasperated, Capulet seems to envy the life of Friar Lawrence (also Steve Viola) every time they meet, and one suspects this man would be better off as a priest - as well as more competent than Friar Lawrence.

Viola, too, in his dual roles as Friar Lawrence and Montague, adds to the sense that everyone in Verona, from the Prince down to the servants, is just a little out of their league, that the Peter Principle was at work here and every character except the star-crossed lovers and Benvolio has risen to a role just beyond their ability to function effectively. At one point at the end of the play, Viola has to change in like three seconds between the Friar and Montague, and it's a remarkable transformation.

Ugo Chukwu gives a good performance as Balthasar, but his Paris is what's interesting. The actor manages to portray Paris as someone who has become so accustomed to playing a role that he's almost shocked when he drops his mask and his real, much more genuine, self comes through. His finest moment is when he's so overjoyed by the news that Juliet will marry him that he impulsively hugs a discombobulated Capulet and betrays this wide boyish exuberant grin, a fleeting view of a less artificial, better self that he otherwise manages to hide effectively.

While Sutton and Spano, both attractively winning and incredibly sympathetic as Romeo and Juliet, dominate the story, this production made us see how victimized they are by everyone around them, including the older characters who attempt to help them.

Judy Alvarez's Lady Capulet is no help, but she epitomizes the futility of attempting to get beyond one's assigned role. She's both narrow-minded and single-minded, a fiercely protective mother and aunt who nevertheless can't move beyond self-interest and pretension.

We've seen a lot of Romeo and Juliets, but this one is the only one that left us feeling so angry at the characters', well, stupidity. Director Dev Bondarin, along with the performers, managed to convey this, along with the expected romantic passions, in nearly every scene.

We admired both plays in Shakespeare in the Pagoda - the way the ensemble works together is inspiring - and so we gave another contribution, larger this time, at the end, hoping they can come back next summer.

Saturday Afternoon in Prospect Park: EBE Ensemble presents "Julius Caesar" at Shakespeare in the Pagoda

Early this afternoon we were in Central Park for the 1 p.m. show in this season's new Shakespeare in the Pagoda series at (of course) the Music Pagoda.

The EBE Ensemble presented a taut and thoughtful version of Julius Caesar with a terrific cast under the direction of Kristine Ayers.

The costumes were contemporary/casual, casting was somewhat gender-neutral, and the production made effective use of the setting, which is really quite good for classic theater, as last year's production of Henry IV and Henry V by the Rebellious Subjects company proved.

From our previous experience at the Music Pagoda, we knew enough to bring a little blanket (or a chair, for those not schlepping on two trains from as far away as Williamsburg) because the ground is mostly black dirt.

But it's very comfortable and cozy, and off the beaten track enough so that there aren't many of the distractions that outdoor theater is prey to. (The biggest one today came late in the play when a girl about six ran ahead of his father up the pagoda's steps to play, unaware that she was briefly in the middle of a stage production.)

Early on, a few actors were egging on the crowd to cheer for Caesar. We at first thought they were doing warm-up exercised but as they were shooed away in the play's opening lines by a Roman official, it was clear that they represented the frenzy of the mob that makes Julius Caesar so frightening as a political document.

The way the crowd is whipped up into a frenzy, first against Caesar and in favor of Brutus, Cassius and their fellow conspirators, and then, turning on a dime after Mark Antony's clever (and passionately controlled) sophistry at the fallen leader's funeral, they run to attack the conspirators, is one of this production's triumphs.

The actors use the audience and setting effectively, but the most chilling scene is the mob tearing to pieces the poet Cinna because he's unlucky enough to have the same name as one of the conspirators who kill Caesar. (He's the Roman Shirley Sherrod, with the crowd the Tea Party high on Fox News, without benefit of the complete videotape.)

With the exception of the small roles of Portia and Calpurnia, the wives of Brutus and Caesar, in scenes expressing their fears on the morning of the Ides of March, Julius Caesar is nominally entirely male, but we loved the gender-neutral casting of the title role (and a few others) here. Camille Mazurek has the gravitas and charismatic bearing of the great Julius, and giving the role of Calpurnia to Montgomery Sutton, who plays it as an intelligent but unheeded spouse treated mostly as a boy toy, was really a wonderful touch.

Julius Caesar is probably the Shakespeare play whose text we know best. Back in the spring of 1965, Mrs. Sanjour at Meyer Levin Junior High School 285 in East Flatbush made class 9SPE2 each get up and recite a lengthy monologue (we picked the one by Brutus that opens Act II) and recall its lines and others.

That was old-fashioned teaching, but Mrs. Sanjour also took us on a bus trip one day to Greenwich Village, where we watched the 1953 star-filled film version at a revival showing at a West 8th Street movie house, either the Eighth Street Playhouse or the Art. (Our teacher told us to spot anachronisms, and there's not only the tolling of the clock in ancient Rome - Shakespeare's doing - but at one point Brutus is seen leafing through a page-filled hardcover book rather than a scroll.)

We last taught Julius Caesar in the summer of 2006 at the School of Visual Arts. It seemed freshly relevant in light of the Iraq war. The play deals with issues of leadership and conscience, of political ambition and idealism and how they get mixed up. Brutus is the play's fulcrum and his death at the drama's end, mourned by his enemy and vanquisher Mark Antony as "the noblest Roman of them all," is both inevitable and deeply disturbing. Today's production at the Music Pagoda brought out Julius Caesar in all its facets as both human and political tragedy.

The troupe made good use of the audience, bringing some of us up to circle Caesar's body at his funeral, where Mark Antony wept over our assassinated leader, showed his bloody garment, and told us of Caesar's generous bequeaths to us, the people of Rome.

The show, sponsored in part by Green Mountain Energy (which had a table today) and Arizona Iced Tea, featured among the cast directed by Kristine Ayers (along with the alternating Romeo and Juliet, directed by Dev Bondarin) many familiar faces to Prospect Park area residents, including ensemble members like the magnetic Montgomery Sutton (Rebellious Subjects’ Henry IV/V at the Music Pagoda; Gallery Players’ King Lear and Candide) as a callow and impetuous Octavius Caesar and in a sweet turn as a worried Calpurnia;

a bearded Eric Alba (EBE’s Buddha Nosh and Russian Roulette) portrayed a complex and conflicted Brutus, a good man, well-meaning but easily swayed and ultimately too naive to be an effective leader;

and Joshua Luria (Rebellious Subjects’ Henry IV/V) as Casca, who's plain-spoken but in the end not too dumb to comprehend the implications of the conspirators' actions.

The play also featured guest artists Camille Mazurek (Pulse Ensemble Theater’s Twelfth Night and Ladies in Retirement) doing a magnificent job in the title role, creating a portrait good enough to do what the best of actors playing Caesar do, which is to dominate the play's action even after the assassination (she also appears at the end as Strato, the friend who assists Brutus's suicide);

Nick Reinhardt(Rebellious Subjects’ Henry IV/V) as Mark Antony, by turns cynical, oleaginous, inflammatory and masterful;

Len Rella (Gallery Players’ Candide;Gorilla Rep’s Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc), playing the wily Cassius looking very lean and hungry and also petty, sneaky, easily offended - but not so much a manipulator that he doesn't feel pain and sympathy at others' distress;

Ugo Chukwu (The Heights’ Players Take Me Out) as stolid Messala, and effectively as Flavius and other players in the Roman streets.
Jessica Rothenberg (The Huntington Theatre’s The Cherry Orchard; Gallery Players’ King Lear) does effective triple duty as a hapless Lepidus, Artemidorus the failed informer, and most brilliantly in her brief turn as Portia, showing womanly steel despite her frail condition (there's a suggestion that Portia has suffered a stroke).

Elizabeth Spano (whom we saw last year in Curious Frog’s Romeo & Juliet) on the other side of Prospect Park) and who reprises that role in the Pagoda this summer) is the soothsayer ("Beware the Ides of March") and Brutus's protective servant Lucius; and Jessica Frey (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles) plays Cinna and some really riled-up Romans.

The play's costume design was by Amanda Jenks, with original music by Nicholas R. Wright, fight choreography by Turner Smith, and live foley design by Joshua B. Jenks and Nancy Valladares. On Julius Caesar, director Kristine Ayers was joined by assistant director and stage manager Mandee Kulaga.

According to the promo material,

EBE Ensemble is dedicated to developing and presenting new and unique works of theatre. They believe that making theater accessible enhances a community and that, through an ensemble-based approach, they can better present quality theatre that strives for an emotional truth. Now finishing their third season, EBE Ensemble has produced several new plays and adaptations and created the “You Fill in the Blank” play festival and competition in addition to the award-winning national one-act festival, Elephants on Parade.

For us, Julius Caesar at the Music Pagoda proved a fast-moving, exciting, and powerful production of Shakespeare's most readable play, a political thriller with ominous overtones for today.