Photos courtesy Steve Miller Images
The Central Coast Shakespeare Festival has returned to its two-story stage and sylvan amphitheater under the oaks at Filipponi Ranch in San Luis Obispo.
While the festival is staging Macbeth in the fall, it is taking a creative respite from Shakespeare this summer, performing The Servant of Two Masters, an 18th-century example of commedia dell’arte that flourished from the 1500s well into the 1700s in troupes touring around Europe.
Outlandish and zany plots are performed by groups of recurring stock characters, the most recognizable of which is Harlequin, the diamond-pattern-clad trickster at the middle of complex schemes who seems to have just as much fun getting into intense situations as he does getting out of them.
When I was a teenager, I came across something about this prankster, and my curiosity was so piqued that I looked him up in our family’s set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. There I discovered commedia dell’arte characters and plots, and became an instant fan.
But I’d never had the chance to see one live until now, and CCSF’s production delightfully fulfilled all of my lifelong expectations.
Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters (1746) has all of the plot components that audiences love in a convoluted and complex comedy: dual identities, a bold woman posing as a man (her own dead brother), important letters and documents going to exactly those who should not be reading or receiving them, and everything going wrong in general mayhem and chaos.
In truth, I was lost and confused at more than one point in the play’s action. In this production, the Harlequin character is a scheming servant, Truffaldino (played by Tyler Lopez), who begins all of the action with his simple desires: make a few coins, get something to eat, and maybe even meet the woman of his dreams.
It was great to see Lopez returning to the CCSF stage after enjoying his performance in last year’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and many other CCSF productions. In fact, many of the players in Servant acted in Merry Wives, and the director of both productions, Cindy Totten, shows an ever-developing acumen for staging comedy.
Totten has made some interesting theatrical decisions, like casting the stock character Brighella (typically a male character in the commedia) as an inn-keeping woman, played perfectly by Sophie Rhiannon (also a Merry Wives alumna).
Mark Klassen (who we loved last year as the notorious Falstaff in Merry Wives) as Pantalone and Abe Lincoln as The Doctor (“Dottore!” as he repeatedly insists being addressed) entertain in their laugh-provoking recurring interludes throughout the play.
The real show-stealers are Lopez as Truffaldino with his perfect timing and great physical comedy, and my personal favorite—and MVP of the production—Isabel Skene (Mistress Page in Merry Wives, here playing Smeraldina) with her varied but often deadpan delivery of some of the play’s best lines (What would a woman do with two men? “One for the winter, one for the summer.”). With a subtle but commanding stage presence, Skene makes Smeraldina the most memorable character: a cynical and pragmatic maid on the surface, but an intelligent romantic after all.
“[Skene] seemed to know exactly how to use every moment to make the audience laugh without overplaying it,” according to a CCSF first-timer who accompanied me to the show. “Florindo (Jude Walker) brought warmth to the role that balanced all the chaos around him whenever he was on stage (it didn’t hurt that he was handsome). Besides the setting itself, sitting outside on a breezy summer evening felt like part of the production. Mostly though, I came away thinking ‘why have I waited this long?’ I’d happily go again.”
Take heed, those in search of exquisite and rare entertainment!
Grab a couple of chairs and a blanket (it can get chilly in the canyon), and treat yourself and a companion or two to one of the most unique and mystical theatre performances on the Central Coast.
See you in a few weeks for Macbeth!