Fan Letter & Review page

A Fan letter from our four-person production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
performed in Three Oaks, Michigan in the summer of 1999:

6/22/99

Dear Tripaway Players:

I caught the 6/19 performance of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. It far exceeded my expectations. I have seen productions in the U.S., England, and Canada, and yours certainly ranks as one of the best I've ever seen. Not only was it funny and energetic, but it was clear. My grade school daughters said they could understand everything you said. With only four players one wouldn't think you could carry the play, but you did. I've been recommending the play to my friends who have summer residences in the area.

One of the most memorable productions of DREAM was way back when, in Oak Park, IL. David Mamet (yes, the playwright) played Oberon/Theseus (in a smoking jacket) and W. H. Macy (from FARGO and PLEASANTVILLE) played Puck with an aqualung instead of wings. In common with your performance was their high energy and bare bones setting. Bravo! to you for your bravura - and bravado! Keep up the good work.

Reviews

COMMEDIA DIVINO E PROFANO; OR, SCOURGE OF THE DOOM PIES!

"It's not surprising that the once transgressive form of commedia dell' arte has not been mostly relegated to college classrooms and historical re-creation societies. Even when stripped down, commedia involves unparalleled challenges, requiring performers to be lightening quick, razor sharp, and physically agile in a multidimensional style of improvisation that isn't the norm on this city's improv stages.

Tripaway - a company known mainly for its off-kilter, unorthodox Shakespeare adaptations - has obviously channeled its anarchic spirit and madcap energy into this commedia update. The first act of COMMEDIA DIVINO E PROFANO, an original fable about people in a small town who join together to save the world from impending destruction, is performed in a traditional style. And the five cast members prove themselves adept at the intricacies of commedia performance: their improvisation within the structured script is fluid, and their execution of the slapstick-style gags is nearly flawless. The inventive second act, which reinterprets the play's stock characters and events for the present day, is as decisive a statement of the continued relevance of commedia dell' arte as can be imagined... a grand epiphany."
-Nick Green, Chicago Reader

A Plot Synopsis
COMMEDIA DIVINO E PROFANO; OR, SCOURGE OF THE DOOM PIES! is divided into 2 acts.

Act I is set several hundred years ago and is performed in masks. Our cast of characters includes some from the traditional commedia canon (Pantalone and Zanni) as well as a few new ones: Metrodora, the "witch," Dogmastico, who heads the church, and Belladonna, his young ward. In Act I, Dogmastico reveals that the end of the world is nigh (tomorrow) and a special sanctuary must be built to shelter those who are chosen to survive the apocalypse. Zanni, everyone's servant, is assigned the task of building the sanctuary. However, through a slight miscommunication due to the fact that Zanni lives to eat, the sanctuary ends up being built out of cream pies, which of course serve as ammunition during the panic which ensues as the world is supposed to be ending.

Act II is set in the present, with updated versions of the same characters with their faces made up to look like their Act I masks. The town of Pantalonia is ravaged by a terrible moral scourge indicated by its whimsical yet fatal symptoms. The cure, water, is obvious, but Dogmastico warns everyone against going against The Great Gilboah's master plan: to drink the water is to defy Gilboah. His belief is strong and well-intentioned, even when is daughter is struck by the scourge and the only cure is a glass of Gilboah-defying water.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST - Critic's Choice, Chicago Reader

Tripaway's open-air revival of this courtly comedy deserves an audience. Director Karin Shook refuses to succumb to the creaky plot - four scholar-courtiers who vainly flee the shafts of Cupid - instead inspiring the fifteen rough-and-ready actors to combat Shakespeare's sometimes tedious raillery with hearty slapstick. Dressed in burlap vests and black shorts and cartoon-faced in white makeup, the players employ outsize gestures and leather-lunged projection to hold their own against outdoor distractions. It works: the young cast brings a hormonal urgency to this mating play - it's as if the French court had become a ritualized singles bar. Nobody's labor's lost here.
-Lawrence Bommer, Chicago Reader

In Tripaway Theatre's new adaptation of Molière's 17th-century "play within a play," LES PRECIEUSES RIDICULES, Mademoiselle de Scudery, the main source of the playwright's farce, asks, "What will people remember in 400 years, my book or Molière's play?" Just as she is sure that it will be her book about manners for upper-crust young ladies, we can relish the fact that after 238 years we're watching the enjoyable production by Molière. Adaptor/translator and director Karin Shook and adaptor/translator and actor Henry Andrew Caporoso use modern, straightforward language that stays true to Molière's intentions and retains his playful use of word games and allusions. Shook keeps the work set in its original time and place and focuses on the simple plotline of two young ladies from the provinces who shun two suitors for not being cultured enough, then fall victim to a masquerade the suitors set up to prove the ladies' gullibility and shallowness. It's a relief to see one of Molière's plays without it being placed in a post-modern setting. Mary Ellen Brennan and Kelly Woods were right on as the young ladies, and Caporoso as Molière and Allison Talis as Jodelet, his servant wife, captured the spirit of the comedy, making us understand why the play has survived.
-Gabrielle Kaplan, Chicago Reader

BELIKE YOU MEAN TO MAKE A PUPPET OF ME, OR, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

"...relaxing at the Elysian Fields while you premiered SHREW lived up to a lot of expectations for me. Bright, funny, colorful, it combines the old Bard's words and characters with Punch-and-Judy aplomb, a dash of tongue-in-cheek ad lib, and references to mosquitoes, Robin's Donuts, etc. All three humans in the company were wonderful - wizards at keeping the 18 puppet characters upbeat and clearly differentiated. Bianca, Kate, and Petruchio were played as fully developed human characters and even amid all the revelry I savored the nuances in Kate and Petruchio's first meeting in particular. Lovely moments, all of you."
-Heather Edson, Festival Founder, in In-Fringe, Official Newsletter of the Thunder Bay Fringe Festival, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

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