“The Amorous Quarrel”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - June 2010

“I know it is wet
And the sun is not sunny
But we can have
Lots of good fun that is funny!”

- Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)

Those lines from The Cat in the Hat popped into my head yesterday evening as watched the rain drip from the edges of the tent over the Rose Footprint Theatre at Shakespeare & Company during an hilarious performance of Molière’s The Amorous Quarrel. In past years the days on which I have attended the free productions on the Rose Footprint have been idyllically sunny, but this year it was gray and sporadically showery, and the theatre was the perfect place to be.

I should warn you that the show will be canceled if there is a thunderstorm, since the central pole of the tent functions very effectively as a lightning rod, but if the day is merely gray and drizzly the show will go on and I would pack up the family and go. Of course I would do the same if it was sunny. The grounds at Shakespeare & Company are gorgeous and just beg for a picnic (pack one of your own or buy goodies at Josie’s Place in the Founders’ Theatre), and this show’s 5:30 pm start time leaves plenty of time for swimming, hiking, shopping or museum-going earlier in the day.

With the exception of last summer’s rather cloying and kiddified Toad of Toad Hall I have always loved the summer shows on the Rose Footprint. At their best – Scapin, The Servant of Two Masters – they have provided the kind of double-layered hilarity that The Muppet Show did on television. There are jokes for the kids and jokes for the grown-ups but it’s all good clean fun and everyone leaves happy. I am delighted to report that things are back on track this year with a very loose adaptation of Molière’s (nee Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673) early work Le Dépit Amoureux* (1656) by Jenna Ware, who also directed, from a translation by Samuel Foote.

The plot is really, really confusing and so Andy Talen has written a bouncy opening number to explain it all to you – and warn you that none of it is true. As I was reminded the other night at It’s Jewdy’s Show, it was Sherwood Schwartz, creator of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island who claimed that his shows worked because he told the entire back-story in the theme song. Ware and Talen have followed his advice – and a grand Rose Footprint tradition – and it works. But even if you never understand the plot, you’ll enjoy all the laughs along the way to its merry, much-marrying conclusion.

While the play is nominally about a young woman passing as a man whose father knows she is a woman but pretends he doesn’t (never mind) it is really all about the servants. Here there isn’t one central servant clown role, there are three. Two female servants – Mascarill (Jennie M. Jadow) and Marinetta (Meg O’Connor) – and one male, Hugh (David Joseph) who keep the laughs coming, although one of the straight men, Valere, played by the talented comic actor Daniel Kurtz, is not above putting daisy petals ‘round his face or dressing like one of the Blues Brothers while providing guitar accompaniment for some more of Talen’s songs.

O’Connor and Jadow are very different comediennes, and depending which one of them was entertaining me at the moment, I liked that one best. They are both excellent. Jadow gets the larger, showier role, and she makes the most of it using a high silly sing-song voice. Amanda Nicole Mattes has designed brilliantly colored and very funny costumes for the whole cast, but especially for these ladies and for the servant Frosina (Lizzie Fox) and her mistress Lucillia (Kaitlin J. Henderson). Sadly, you get only the vaguest idea of them from the pre-production press photos available as of this posting.) Panniers, farthingales, and bustles are used to great effect to exaggerate the women’s figures, but they are not always concealed. O’Connor’s costume consists of a visible corset and pannier from beneath which descend yards of vividly green and transparent tulle through which her pantaloons can be glimpsed. Her footwear consists of a pair of the greenest possible sneakers.

In a recent interview Ware was quoted as saying she asked Mattes to make the women look as much like cupcakes as possible, and she got her wish. Cupcakes in sneakers, that’s just what they look like.

But the gentlemen are very colorfully attired as well, and it is interesting to see who matches who as the cast couple and recouple throughout the course of the play. I was particularly taken with the handsome frock coat Mattes has made for Alberto, played by Paul D’Agostino.

Joseph is not only funny but delightful eye-candy and strong singer. He and Jadow duet adorably on the afore-mentioned Blues Brothers number. When he isn’t being silly Kurtz is channeling Frankie Avalon in his hey-day and swashbuckling about with Ross Bennett Hurwitz as Erastus, his rival for Lucillia’s hand.

Jules Findlay as the pompous clerk Metaphrastus and Jennifer Young as Valere’s mother, Polydora are both engaging. And Fox is funny with her repeated musings about Agnes, the nosegay woman (also Young).

I am delighted to report that Shakespeare & Company has FINALLY taken my advice and is offering The Amorous Quarrel as a single and entire-unto itself 75 minute offering. In the past the Rose Footprint show has been presented in two part offered in a complex alternating-not-quite-every-other-day schedule that made it challenging to see the whole thing. This year you can book your tickets and go and see it all in one sitting, which is wonderful. If you are not toting children you can grab a bit and stay for an evening show at ShakesCo in the Founders’ Theatre or the Bernstein. Or you can make a day of it, as I always do, and see a show at a different theatre at night. However you plan it, make The Amorous Quarrel part of your Berkshire summer.

Click HERE to see the full Photo Gallery for this production.

The Amorous Quarrel plays on the outdoor, tented Rose Footprint Theatre, the future site of Shakespeare & Company’s historically accurate re-creation of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, on the Company’s Kemble Street campus in Lenox, MA. The show runs 75 minutes without an intermission and performances are scheduled Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. June 23 through August 28.Tickets are free for children 18 years and younger, and just $10 for adults. Ticket information and the full schedule is available at www.shakespeare.org as well as the Box Office, which can be reached at (413) 637-3353 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (413) 637-3353      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or Boxoffice@shakespeare.org.

* If you are interested in a script there is an anonymous English verse translation The Love Tiff available electronically for free on Project Gutenberg. I recommend taking a look at it for its interesting introduction.

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