Theatre in Review: Cymbeline (NAATCO/Lynn F. Angelson Theatre)Oddly, Stephen Brown-Fried's staging of William Shakespeare's nuttiest play is at its best when soft goods are involved. Very early on, members of the company remove large swaths of fabric from the elaborate iron bed at center stage, attaching them to rigging lines, and a grand canopy is hung over the stage; it's a lovely effect and even got a smattering of applause at the performance I attended. Later, the body of Imogen, the play's put-upon heroine, is dragged onstage via a shroud. (She isn't dead, of course; she has merely taken one of those drugs, so popular in Shakespeare, that leave one looking expired, only to come back to life at an inopportune moment.) Soon after, another body is similarly brought in; in this case, it is the beheaded corpse of Cloten, the idiot princeling, who, in his pursuit of Imogen, would just as soon rape her as woo her; the tableau of two young lives brought to ruin is highly effective. Later, when battle breaks out and British soldiers fight their Roman invaders, it is staged as a series of tug-of-war contests, each soldier holding on for dear life to rough pieces of cloth; one feels the implicit violence in these encounters. That's about it for the production's plus side, which is pitched as an all-femme, all-Asian-American cast; fair enough, and some fine talents have been recruited for the cause. But Cymbeline is a wild, untamed beast, a bizarre mix of melodrama, comedy, fairytale, and war epic, culminating in a recognition scene so packed with twists that the audience can't help guffawing in disbelief. If you're going to make sense of this sprawling, moody epic, with its quicksilver emotional shifts, you'll need a battle plan. Brown-Fried sends his company forth without one, however; thrown back on their own devices, it's all the cast can do to get through the convoluted narrative. Cymbeline is an interesting choice for an all-femme cast since the action is driven by male rage, lust, and pride. It's a parade of the seven deadly sins: Imogen has incurred the displeasure of the British king (and her father) Cymbeline. Posthumus, her spouse, is exiled to Rome where he foolishly accepts a wager with the arch-villain, Iachimo, who insists he can seduce Imogen in a trice. Landing in England and insinuating his way into the royal court, Iachimo slips into Imogen's bedroom and, while she sleeps, takes note of many details, including the distinctive mole on her breast. In more effective productions, this scene is shockingly invasive, a rape in all but the word. Here, Anna Ishida, as Iachimo, is about as sinister as a department store manager taking inventory. I don't mean to single out Ishida, who is better in two minor roles as a soldier and jailor, because everyone seems to be shying away from the play's darker, unrulier emotions. None of the play's men emerges morally unscathed: Iachimo happily destroys Imogen's reputation to win a bet. Posthumous, having risked everything (including banishment) to marry Imogen, recklessly puts her in harm's way to assuage his pride; later, convinced that she has betrayed him, he orders her killing -- can this marriage be saved? Cymbeline -- vain, choleric, and manipulated by his queen -- drags his kingdom into war with Rome. Cloten is an evil clown, laughable in his stupidity but with an undertone of violence. Even Belarius, the relatively benign rustic, has, driven by revenge, kidnapped Cymbeline's sons and raised them as his own. Unless we feel that these designing men mean it when causing so much trouble, the endlessly twisting plot can be interminable. But Amy Hill's Cymbeline is a snappish old man without a touch of menace. KK Moggie can't supply any clear motivation for Posthumus's frivolous bet. Jeena Yi leans so hard on Cloten's preening, dumb-bunny qualities that he becomes a caricature of a caricature. Even Jennifer Lim's Imogen seems more put out than devastated at being separated from her husband and not deeply terrified when faced with the possibility of murder. Further diluting the experience, the production uses Andrea Thome's verse "translation" of Shakespeare's text. It's part of the program known as Play On Shakespeare, which attempts to make the Bard's verse easier for modern audiences. According to Lue Douthit, its president "The typical Shakespeare production follows an odd convention: a contemporary setting with Elizabethan language. What if we flipped that? Contemporary language with an Elizabethan setting. What might we learn about the plays from putting them through that lens?" As it happens, not much: The premise appears to be that the real glory of Cymbeline is its twisty narrative, obscured by all those pesky Elizabethan locutions. But surely the opposite is true. For example, the play's opening lines are: "You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods/No more obey the heavens than our courtiers/Still seem as does the king." Here's Thome's version: "There's not a man who doesn't frown: the king's/Courtiers ape his moods more faithfully/Than our fates obey the stars." The enterprise recalls Classics Illustrated comic books of my youth, and I doubt it will win many new friends for Cymbeline. But we live in a consumer culture, and everything must be made easy for the customers; it's regrettable but there you are. The production has its occasional successes. Maria-Christina Oliveras, wrapped in a tight black bodice and framed in maribou, her hair pushed back by a tiara that looks like a set of brass knuckles, is an evil queen to remember; she is also authoritative as Belarius, who drives much of the plot in the second half. There are also fine contributions from Julyana Soelistyo as Pisanio, the servant caught between Imogen and Posthumus, and Purva Bedi in a trio of roles, especially the Roman general Caius Lucius. Yi-Hsuan (Ant) Ma's scenery, Yiyuan Liu's lighting, and Caroline Eng's sound are all solid enough: Mariko Ohigashi's costumes, which draw on many eras and styles, are especially striking and sometimes very witty; in a production featuring plenty of doubling, she gives even the most minor character a distinct, detailed profile. But at no time in the production's three-hour running time can one discern what drove this group of artists to tackle this play at this time. Cymbeline is not for the faint of heart; this production may be easier to understand but its point of view remains opaque. --David Barbour 
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