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Not
Your Father’s Shakespeare
By
James Yeara
Immo
+ Leo
By
Lucas Svensson, inspired by Shakespeare’s Cymbeline,
English translation by Kjersti Board, directed by Christer
Billstrom
Theater Vastmanland at the New York State Theatre Institute,
May 22
Great fun could be had viewing the Swedish import Immo
+ Leo as the theatrical equivalent of Kill Bill, Volume
3. As with Tarantino’s great film series, there’s a bride,
Immo (Pernilla Gost), a much-desired, athletic blonde whose
wedding day goes dreadfully wrong. She’s separated from her
intended, Leo (Swante Thunberg), and pursued by an unwanted
admirer, Cloten (Jakob Fahsledt), and has a set of misadventures
against a gang of misadventurers.
A series of scenes and images accompanied by a quirky, peppy
soundtrack create a surreal parallel world (call it Sardonica)
where actions are hyperbolic; because of this exaggeration,
human gestures, speech, and feelings become heightened. They
cause smiles of recognition, a lot of physical mayhem, and
an appreciation of dry wit.
If you attended Immo + Leo expecting a plodding recitation
of a great classic, as if theater were a mathematical formula
where the exact movement of performers in rich costume before
elaborate sets equals success, Immo + Leo would seem
an incomprehensible failure. Immo + Leo didn’t safely
tick off the elements of conventional fare. If you expected
the usual, Immo + Leo was Kill Bill in a different
sense.
Sometimes not knowing the ur-text aids the entertainment value
of a high-concept, low-content production of the classics,
as was the case with Shakespeare & Company’s indulgent
meandering through MacBeth in 2002 or the New York
State Theatre Institute’s 2001 version of The Tempest.
If you didn’t know the originals, the copies fascinated with
glitter, literally.
However, knowing Shakespeare’s Cymbeline helped in
the appreciation of Immo + Leo, the latest in NYSTI’s
excellent annual visits from European theater companies. As
with the superb The Red Balloon in 1999 and 2000’s
Tir Na N-Og, this production by the Swedish troupe
Teater Vastmanland challenged its audience. Boiling Cymbeline
to its essence, presenting the titular king as an Internet
creature (plasma screen upstage, laptop computer downstage
left floor), focusing on the lovers Imogen (Immo) and Posthumous
(Leo), and bringing out the play’s latent class warfare, all
make for a lively theatrical evening.
The high-concept, split-stage set (stage right was the whiter-than-white
domain of the ruling class; stage left was the worn and wasted
verdigris of the working class; and a railroad track ran down
center stage, in case anyone still hadn’t picked up the symbolism),
the ensemble acting from its 10-actor cast (creating 20-odd
characters of equal verve and exactness), and nonlinear storytelling
heavy on the physical and light on the narrative, were all
elements of a type of theater vastly different from the produce-by-numbers
approach usually staged in the area. This 78-minute pastiche
on the loves and lives of the upper class is part of an exchange
between NYSTI and Sweden, and it will be interesting to read
of the Swedish reaction to the excellent, but more traditional,
narrative of Born Yesterday when it tours Sweden in
2005.
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