Theater Review: "Cymbeline," at Lincoln Center

Before it closes this Sunday, you can do worse than heading down to Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater to catch its production of Shakespeare’s relatively obscure Cymbeline. I saw it on November 10, not long after it opened, and found it to be probably as well-done as it is possible to mount, but problematic nonetheless – part comedy, part tragedy, with fairy tale tossed in for good measure, nearly three centuries before the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen got around to establishing it as a genre of its own. (W. H. Auden would beg to differ – himself nearing the end of his life, the great 20th-century poet noted that “Critics do not appreciate the pleasure a writer has in consciously writing a simple form-like the masque in Cymbeline.”)

The costumes by Jess Goldstein – not modern in this production, unlike so many other recent attempts to make the Bard “relevant” to today’s audiences – are fine, and the sets and other assorted stagecraft by Michael Yeargon (notably, Zeus’ appearance from the clouds, and the ghosts of the parents of Posthumus Leonidas, on stilts!) are breathtaking. The star, Martha Plimpton, makes it easy to see why Imogen is one of Shakespeare’s most vibrant heroines, giving to each line reading a fierce intelligence to match her fierce love.

But some elements of this production, directed by Mark Lamos, are jarring. For instance, a headless body is disposed of in particularly gruesome fashion (as if going headless wasn’t stomach-turning enough). A couple of main characters are paler versions of other great Shakespearean figures – for instance, the Posthumus-Iachimo conflict recalls Othello and Iago, while Cymbeline himself, in a Lear-like fit of pique, easily gulled by another family member, banishes the daughter who is the love of his life. And Zeus’ appearance, as effective as it is as stagecraft, is a literal deus ex machina (god out of the machine) – as if Shakespeare was at a total loss for how to resolve one of his character’s dilemmas.

The other principals – John Cullum as Cymbeline, Phylicia Rashad as his devious queen, and Michael Cerveris (completely unrecognizable here in a wig, after his spellbinding star turn in Sweeney Todd) as Posthumus – acquit themselves well. But the real reason to see this show is Plimpton. Since seeing her replace Parker Posey as Darlene in the closing weeks of the 2005 production of David Rabe’s HurlyBurly, I’ve simultaneously wondered why Hollywood doesn’t have more roles large enough to accommodate her – and thanked the heavens that Tinseltown’s loss is New York theater’s gain. Amazingly enough, for someone who grew up with an almost nonexistent relationship with father Keith Carradine, she also appears to have matured into a blessedly normal actress (or, at least, what passes for normal in show business).

You’ll find an especially enlightening interview given by this beguiling actress to WNYC-FM’s Leonard Lopate, about her role last summer in Shakespeare in the Park’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the link below:

http://www.wnyc.org/stream/ram?file=/lopate/lopate081607cpod.mp3