What rhymes with impeccable?
Before heading to Red Eye to see Walking Shadow Theatre Company’s A Midwinter Night’s Revel, I expressed some concern to a friend. From everything I knew about the show, it seemed steeped not only in Shakespeare—it is described as a sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—but in Englishness itself. And I’m not much of an anglophile. I find England’s lack of pain au chocolat and abundance of stoicism disconcerting and have, on occasion, openly questioned friends’ decisions to vacation in Britain. “You do know that France is right there, right?”
To be sure, Revel feels very much an exercise in appreciation for Shakespeare and England—unsurprising since playwright John Heimbuch researched his material in England. There are accents and snippets of music and set pieces that unmistakably telegraph the Englishness of the piece, and the level of detail makes this production, for good and for ill, feel as intricate as lace.
With a script so meticulously researched, the question of how squarely and forcefully Heimbuch hits the nail on the head comes up, of course, and I’m nowhere near qualified to answer that. It is one thing to write a sequel to Shakespeare. It is another to place one’s show in a foreign country that’s not exactly foreign, in an historical period—the show takes place in 1915—that has only recently slipped out of living memory. I mean, England and World War I are not obscure fields of knowledge in these parts. I would be deeply curious to hear from an English spectator how close this script comes to the genuine article.
A winter meditation
But Revel is an exercise in appreciation for winter, too, and Heimbuch has given his characters—Puck in particular—exceptionally graceful things to say about the emblematic and concrete relationship we humans have this coldest and darkest of seasons. What is sunset at 4 o’clock in the afternoon if not a reminder that we are doomed to die alone? Revel strikes a nice balance between the depths of death and the promise of rebirth. It is a welcome addition to the prose and poetry concerning winter.
But one of the weaknesses of the production is that, to say everything there is to be said in a plausible way, Heimbuch had to create a rather large number of characters who interact with one another in a complex set of scenarios. There are lovely turns of phrase and observations, but there are also moments where I had to pause to sort out what, exactly, was going on. This may have been my fault, though. I wasn’t in a sit-up-straight, eyes-forward, paying-attention mindset when I saw the show. It could be that I was glomming onto the more energetic, entertaining bits because that’s where I was that night. Perhaps those who see the show with a bit more rest and a bit more caffeine won’t run into my problem.
Impeccable and fussy
At any rate, the occasional confusion does not detract from the performances. All of the actors were working from a pretty solid baseline. Daniel Ian Joeck and Heidi Fellner as Oberon and Titania were a particularly engaging pair, and I am a little haunted by Neal Beckman—mainly because his Puck was a brand of fey that reminded me of Andrew Robinson’s portrayal of Liberace in the 1988 made-for-TV movie “Liberace,” a pop culture artifact I suppose I saw in junior high and then completely forgot until now.
Director Amy Rummenie has a knack for figuring out exactly how far she can stretch her company’s skill, time and money on stage. The creative team—Rob Jensen (sets), Tim Cameron (music), Jesse Cogswell (lights), Kathy Kohl (costumes) and Sarah Salisbury (props)—knocked all of their jobs out of the frosty, Anglo-Saxon park.
For me, this show seals Walking Shadow’s reputation as a theater company that does detail impeccably well. They do not shirk from fussy. And it is impressive to watch a group of people plan and execute a vision with such precision. Walking Shadow is ambitious, but even when it comes close, their reach never exceeds their grasp. The temptation to inject spectacle is never allowed to surpass the script’s and company’s ability to tell the story at hand.
