Running Around

A busy time.

I vote for the Tony Awards and the Drama Desk, so I've been going to see shows on a nearly non-stop scheduled for a few weeks now.

But the shows that will stay with me most were a pair of optional ones.  The McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ has been hosting (and will continue to host through the upcoming weekend) Stephen Wadsworth's stagings of two of Beaumarchais' Figaro plays -- The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

"But," I hear you cry (not really, but ...), "those are the titles of two famous operas."  True.  But before Rossini and Mozart got their hands on them, they were plays, and pretty scandalous ones.  Why?  Because they took shots at the privileged class and suggested that a servant (Figaro) might have the upper hand over his masters ethically.  Apparently, some of the aristocrats in the audience thought such ideas insulting and revolting.  (Revolting indeed, because some thought Beaumarchais' plays gave encouragement to the French Revolution.)

Certainly, as I sat watching Wadsworth's remarkable stagings of these plays, Beaumarchais' outrage at the assumption the rich and privileged of the time had that they could, oh, buy justice and sleep with anyone they fancied, came through with full strength.  Of course today our rich and privileged behave so much better.

Barber runs a shade over two hours and is a succinct treat.  Marriage runs more than three hours and feels like an epic.  Size usually doesn't lend itself to comedy, but in this case a giant palace of hypocrisy is erected and when it all falls down at the end it is with almost explosive force.  I don't know the original texts to know how much of the frequently explicit satire is Beaumarchais and how much is Wadsworth's adaptation, but a clear case is made that human nature hasn't changed so much in the past couple of centuries.  Certainly the audience around me whooped and cheered and applauded many of the more incendiary pronouncements.

So, yes, the plays end their run on May 4th.  I wish someone would bring these productions into New York.  As strong a season as we've had in the city this year, Wadsworth's brace will probably stand as the achievement I will remember this season for.