Sunday Night on the Upper West Side: Hudson Warehouse presents Aphra Behn's "The Rover" at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park

Tonight we had the pleasure of seeing most of Hudson Warehouse's exquisitely staged production of Aphra Behn's The Rover, a raunchy, rollicking, racy Restoration comedy.

Despite its lurid excesses and elaborate, complex plotting, in the hands of an effective ensemble, The Rover's genuinely funny moments are frequently evident and the play's radical feminist riot grrrl polemic is nicely hidden in plain sight.

We say "most" of the performance because, most regrettably, a hard-hitting thunderstorm in the middle of act four of this five-act play brought everything to a halt, with four or five narrative threads still quite unresolved as cast, crew and audience all needed to leave the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park as soon as possible to avoid getting more drenched than we did (and we guess getting hit by lightning isn't fun, either).

This will teach us not to wait until the last performance to see the next Hudson Warehouse production, Richard III, starting next weekend. But we still got much enjoyment from director Jesse Michael Mothershed's version of The Rover, which transforms the English soldiers seeking sex and fun in Spanish-controlled Naples at Carnival time to American soldiers of the South looking for pleasures at Mardi Gras in New Orleans circa 1902, where the 17th-century swordplay, wildly divergent attitudes regarding female sexuality, and the tension between sophisticated cosmopolitanism and brutal feudalism seem perfectly at home.

The play opens as two sisters, Florinda and Hellena, talk about romance and relationships. Florinda pines for Colonel Belville, an English gentleman whom she admires. Helena speaks of her wish to experience romance before she is sent to a nunnery. Their brother, Don Pedro, enters, telling Hellena to banish foolish thoughts from her head. He reminds her that she will soon be a nun, and there is no place for romance in her life.

He then turns his attention to Florinda. He tries to persuade her that Don Vincentio, the man her father wishes her to marry, is a good match because of his wealth and social status. Florinda thinks Don Vincentio is too old, and has her heart set on the youthful and gallant Belville. Pedro, in an effort to insure that his sister make a good marriage, suggests that Florinda marry an esteemed friend of his instead. The friend, Don Antonio, has expressed interest in Florinda, and Pedro sees this pairing as an opportunity to help both his friend and his sister. Having said his peace for the moment, Pedro leaves. With her overprotective brother out of the room, Hellena convinces Florinda and Valeria, their cousin, to find costumes and go to Carnival. Helena is determined to have a taste of excitement before her liberty is confined by convent life.

In the streets -- this is where we came in -- Mardi Gras celebrations are underway. Belville and several bachelor companions have come to New Orleans for the festivities. Belville's friends, Blunt and Frederick, are wondering why Belville is melancholy in spite of the festive atmosphere. Belville admits that he is thinking about Florinda, whom he met several months prior and has not seen since. He pines for her, but fears he lacks the wealth and status to pursue her.

In spite of his romantic troubles, Belville's spirits rise when he runs into his old friend Willmore. Willmore, a nomadic flirt (nicknamed "the rover"), is taking a short break from shipboard service to relax and enjoy the fun of Mardi Gras, especially the ample opportunities for romance.

While this reunion unfolds, Florinda and Helena arrive with their cousin Valeria, costumed as gypsies, to join the party in the streets. Florinda is delighted when she spots Belville, the object of her affection. Helena is quickly intrigued by the handsome stranger (Willmore) she sees with Belville. Helena and Florinda separate to pursue their respective interests. Helena, in her gypsy garb, engages Willmore in conversation. He is enchanted by her wit and intrigued to know her real identity. Helena preserves the mystique for the moment, but promises to meet him at the same spot later in the day on the condition that he does not fall for another lovely lady before their date.

While Helena carries on her flirtation with Willmore, Florinda tries to set up a late-night rendezvous with Colonel Belville. She has to be careful because Callis, governess to Florinda and Helena, is keeping a watchful eye on her. Taking advantage of her disguise, Florinda pretends to be a fortune-teller and reads Belville's palm while quietly revealing her true identity. Just as Belville realizes who she is, Callis announces the arrival of Pedro. Florinda slips Belville a note that instructs him to come to her garden gate later that evening. She wants Belville to help her escape her brother's control and her imminent arranged marriage. Helena rejoins Florinda and they exit with Callis to avoid rebukes from their brother for being out at Carnival against his wishes.

After the sisters leave with their governess, Belville shares Florinda's note with his friends, including Willmore, and asks them if they will meet at Florinda's garden gate later that night to help her escape. They agree to help. This settled, talk turns to Angellica Bianca, a famous courtesan (okay, high-class prostitute), who has come to New Orleans and who will be "entertaining" gentlemen at Mardi Gras. The men have heard that her charm and beauty are worth the high fees she commands. While the others talk of the revered courtesan, the less-than-dashing Southern rustic Blunt is delighted to find a costumed woman named Lucetta paying attention to him. Blunt is quickly seduced by Lucetta, and as Belville and his companions exit to dine and see more Mardi Gras sights, Blunt and Lucetta leave together for an amorous liaison.

And that's our adaptation of a summary we found of just Act One! There are still four acts to go, but the complications are funny and they moved fast in the Hudson Warehouse production, with especially good performances by Amanda Renee Baker - whom we've enjoyed in a variety of roles over the past few years -- as Lucetta, Chris Behan as Willmore, Christopher Travlos as a hapless Ned Blunt,

Sydney Stanton as Hellena, Elizabeth Alice Murray as Angelica Bianca, and Amber Bogdewicz as a sprightly Florinda. But the Hudson Warehouse performances are always tight-knit ensembles with even the "minor" roles being played well, and perhaps the best moments of The Rover include not just the comic romantic interludes but the wonderful fights and group set pieces where there are half a dozen or more actors interacting onstage.

Also, as usual, the productions use the north portico and its steps, balconies and ledges fluently. Even those of us in the back were sometimes in the "front" of the action as the characters stood nearby. We're sorry rain interrupted the last act and a half, but we still enjoyed The Rover and at home we read the rest of the play (and skimmed the first three acts).

We've often assigned to classes something we first read about 40 years ago, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. This 1929 polemic set into motion ideas that would forever alter the reception of texts written by, for and about women. Yet as many times as we've gone over it, we'd never understood fully before tonight why Woolf proclaims Aphra Behn to be the figurehead of gendered equality within the literary profession:

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

Now we do, thanks to Hudson Warehouse's fine adaptation of The Rover. (Video courtesy blueparrotable)

Thursday Night on the Upper West Side: Hudson Warehouse presents "The Taming of the Shrew" at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument

Everything seemed to work perfectly tonight in the Hudson Warehouse's blithe, colorful presentation of The Taming of the Shrew at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, not least the magic which kept the ominous clouds and claps of thunder at bay for the entire performance, with not a drop of rain falling on the parade of clowns, self-admitted or not, who populate Shakespeare's battle-of-the-sexes frolic.

This was the sixth Hudson Warehouse performance we've seen in the past three years, and the company's work is consistently excellent. It's interesting for us as a part of the audience to see actors multiple times in very different roles, inhabiting disparate characters onstage.

Our own "acting" experience is limited to a 1966 summer class at the Little Theatre School on Flatbush and Caton Avenues in Brooklyn (several years ago, our boyfriend in Miami discovered that our teacher, Joanie Edwards, is still teaching!), two senior-year semesters of Advanced Drama at Midwood High School in 1967-68 with Harris Sarney (later, longtime principal of Bayside High School), and an Acting class with Catherine Myers at Brooklyn College in 1970. So we are amazed at the range of the actors in the Hudson Warehouse company.

The Taming of the Shrew is not one of the masterpieces in Shakespeare's canon, with a lot of one-note characters, and the last time we saw the play, we detailed our own and others' problems with this comedy of good and bad manners. But it also can be very entertaining when done right, as in this rewarding production.

The Taming of the Shrew is a simple-to-understand farce and there's a lot of rollicking slapstick comedy with a number of clownish characters. But it's the conception of the production and the quality of the actors that can make or break the show, and the Hudson Warehouse has made this workhorse of a farce seem truly fresh, buoyant, and absorbing.

The director, Jesse Michael Mothershed, wisely dumped the prologue, and has set the play in what seems somewhere between the 1930s and early 1950s, judging by the costumes (terrific designs by Emily Rose Parman).

The pacing is fast, and the rapid-fire verbal fireworks and the knockabout physical comedy keep the play moving.

Vince Phillip as Petruchio is no dreamboat, but his virile arrogance and obvious immediate romantic feelings for the obdurate "cursed Kate" (played with panche by Amanda Renee Baker, whom we saw last month as Masha in The Seagull). Apart from all the fun, for us the pivotal moment in this production was when Katherine and Petruchio first set eyes on one another.

The chemistry is immediate and stuns both of them, and from that moment, you never doubt that whatever the intense ferocity of their battles, this is a couple who are deeply attracted to one another sexually and more. At least to the audience, it's obvious that Petruchio, to his surprise, actually loves Katherine.

Kate and Petruchio clearly admire one another's bluntness, and during the "taming" process, as the slinky, haughty, handsome Kate is reduced to a bedraggled mess, Petruchio never seems all that cruel; it's clear to us, and probably to Kate, that his bad temper is somewhat feigned and that his solicitousness toward his bride prevents him from crossing the line, even as he denies her more than a spoonful of food and makes maddening, contradictory demands of her.

The play's buffoons are some of the best we've seen. There are moments when the mercurial, clownish physical antics and alternating exasperation and resentful spite of Petruchio's servant Grumio threatens to run away with the show due to Robert Colpitts' limber, hilarious performance: he seems to have eight legs like a spider, only they're going in all directions at once.

Nathan Oesterle's comic flamboyance as a fussy Biondello gives another, more cerebral and less slapstick, level to the clowning,

as do Nick DeVita as Tranio, impersonating his master with insouciance and intelligence, and Roger Dale Stude as the hapless schlemiel Hortensio. (Both actors were excellent last month in The Seagull.)

As the ingenue couple whose subplot drives much of play's clowning apart from Petruchio and Kate, Sydney Stanton made a fetching, giggly and somewhat mischievous Bianca, and Chris Behan as Lucentio was likable, devoted and shrewd. Their chemistry was evident, too, though it's of a different nature altogether than that of Bianca's older sister and her seemingly tyrannical husband.

David Palmer Brown never ceases to amaze us. This is the fifth time we've seen him in a Hudson Warehouse production, and his chameleon-like ability to thoroughly play such different characters seems remarkable. Here he's a hearty if somewhat befuddled Baptista.

Demetri Bonaros gets a lot of laughs as the creaky old codger, Gremio; like the other performers, his acting is never coy or self-conscious, as it easily could be in a role that lends itself too easily to easy laughs. Throughout the play, the laughs, and there are a lot, are earned.

But it's not all knockabout comedy; there's a nice underlying mood of sweetness inhabiting Padua. This is a play without villains, and everyone, including the deceivers -- and that's just about everyone -- seems to have a big heart.

Sarah Doudna effectively plays both the sneering Widow and the Tailor; David Allison DeWitt was funny as a fusty Pedant; and Charles Baker makes a late appearance, playing Vincentio with a slightly faded sense of authority. There's an autumnal feel as the play's various subplots move toward resolution, and beneath all the hijinks, you see real love in all its disguises.

As we said, at times during the last hour, it seemed as if we all, actors, those behind the scenes at Hudson Warehouse, and the audience on the steps of the monument's north portico, would all suddenly be drenched in a tremendous downpour. That the rain held off until the performance reached its satisfying conclusion seemed something of a miracle. We're grateful it did, and to everyone connected with this valuable theater company and its work.