Marivaux, with his mixture of commedia-style tomfoolery, French philisophe musing, & subtle psychological/erotic annalysis, can be tricky to bring off, but Shotgun Players have succeeded splendidly with their current production of The Triumph of Love (in the Stephen Wadsworth translation, directed by company Founding Artistic Director Patrick Dooley).
The single set is the garden of Hermocrates, a philosopher living in the country who advocates capital-R Reason & vociferously opposes the whimsical vagaries of Love. It is a French-style garden, which means it is formal, ordered, & regular: Nature brought under control. But there are hints that Nature is not so easily controlled: the lovely fountain in the middle has a few tufts of grass growing up in the cracks, & the water is cloudy. Some of the hedges look, upon closer examination, as if they are starting to grow out of their trimming. You can see where this is going, but of course there are complications on the way to getting there.
There's no need to recite the whole plot; for one thing, there's a lot of it, & as is the case with baroque opera, it makes perfect sense as it unfolds in front of you but if you read a synopsis the story collapses into a confusing set of disguises, plots, & counter-plots. The basic story is a bit of a fairy-tale, & has some (I assume coincidental) similarities to As You Like It, which also involves usurpers, gender-swapping, & a restoration of order guided by Nature: the young Princess Leonide, heir to an usurped throne, disguises herself as a man so she can infiltrate the society of Hermocrates & his equally unmarried sister, Leontine, with the purpose of meeting & forming an alliance with the rightful heir, Agis, whom they have raised in secret, teaching him to hate both Love & the usurping Leonide. Achieving this end means Leonide, going under several different male pseudonyms as the occasions require, must verbally seduce both the spinster Leontine, who thinks she is speaking to a handsome young man, & the pompous Hermocrates, who recognizes that s/he is actually a young woman in disguise (it's surprising & refreshing to see the "no one will recognize me in these trousers" convention blithely upended like this, though throughout there are also teasing implications of confused same-sex attraction). In addition, Leonide has her maid, Corine, also disguised as a man, & there is a greedy & somewhat dim gardener, Dimas, & Harlequin, doing his Harlequin thing. That's a lot to keep spinning effortlessly in the air, in an elegant Watteau-style, but the cast beautifully keeps it all aloft.
The commedia elements were, to me, surprisingly successful: I love the look of commedia, & I love the thought that I'm watching something that I could have seen in 18th-century Naples, but honestly, as theater, it doesn't quite work anymore: scheming servants getting beaten, attempts to swindle "old" people out of their money so young people can get married . . . they may have worked when the theater audience was made up of frivolous young people while the old people stayed home counting their money, but nowadays the theater audience has reversed, & is mostly made up of the prosperous & aged – don't they see where they fall in this schemata? OK, bit of a digression there on my commedia issues, so let me bring it back to the Ashby stage by saying that Jamin Jollo as Harlequin (complete with facial half-mask, the only one in the cast, & the traditional diamond-patterned outfit) is, unlike most Harlequins, genuinely funny, both in his actions & his line readings, & Dimas the somewhat dim gardener (Wayne Wong) also goes beyond the stereotypical low-comic countryman to achieve a genuine personality. Susannah Martin as Corine the maid mostly gets to provide exposition & otherwise move the plot along with Harlequin & Dimas but she manages all that so that it seems effortless & natural, rather than mere plot scaffolding.
The central quartet is also strong. As Hermocrates, David Boyll brings humanity to the overly self-certain philosopher, a role that could easily become too much of a caricature. Mary Ann Rodgers as his sister brings off a difficult role with aplomb: there's a touching longing (or longing to touch) in her slowly opening to the unexpected love she thinks is being offered to her by the handsome young stranger. Both of these roles, but particularly that of the sister, could come dangerously close (in the commedia manner) to callously mocking an "older" (read: middle-aged) person for daring to think that Love might still be a possibility for them. As the end of the play approaches, it becomes clear that there isn't going to be an overly neat solution: too many people are in love with one person. There is just the right amount of bittersweet at the end: Hermocrates has been embarrassed, as is to be expected from the Enemy of Love in a play called The Triumph of Love, but his situation is not irreparable, & perhaps his philosophy will be broadened by the chastisement. The last moments of the play are Leonide apologizing for misleading the sister, realizing that her necessary plot has upset the sister's quiet life, but also acknowledging that perhaps Leontine will not be entirely unhappy to have her life upset. It's a poignant, ambiguous finale.
But I've leapt ahead to the ending without mentioning the other two members of the central quartet! Veronica Renner, looking dashing & convincingly androgynous in her masculine attire, keeps the whole thing running with clarity & warmth, switching seamlessly from one persona to another. By the end, she too has learned something about the power of Love, as we can see in her final remarks to Leontine. Edward Im as Agis, the isolated, therefore socially awkward, rightful heir, is both funny & ultimately deeply touching as a lonely young man desperately trying to find friendship & then love.
The set is by Malcolm Rodgers, & I wished I had booked one of the seats on stage, in the garden, even over my front-row seat. Ashley Renee designed the handsome costumes, basically 18th-century in style with modern touches. Spense Matubang designed the lighting & Michael Kelly the sound. The show runs through April & is well worth seeing (even more than once), though Shotgun often extends their shows so it's worth keeping an eye out for that.
(The mural outside the Ashby Stage is by graphic artist R Black; the painting right above is a detail of Watteau's The Foursome at the Legion of Honor.)
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