KEENE (Red Bull Theater/American Shakespeare Center)****

 

By Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYNsNsg0X4&feature=youtu.be

Available until: Friday 24^th October, 12am

This play sounds quite heavy. It’s all about academics at a conference and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me a few reservations. But it’s actually a sweet, funny and very relevant play about human beings. It helped that I’m a fan of Shakespeare and opera and that I managed to learn a fair amount about One Direction in the days when Imogen refused to speak about anything else but I don’t think this knowledge is necessary in order to appreciate the play. I think you’ll probably pick up what you need to know as you go along.

There were things in this play which weren’t familiar to me and I felt that they were explained to me as I watched the play. The explanations were clear and they weren’t too fast or too slow. They weren’t too highbrow but I also didn’t feel it was dumbed down. I had no idea who Keene was before I watched the play. There wasn’t even a Keene on the cast list. But I feel like I know quite a lot about him now.

Keene was the stage name of a Shakespearean actor named Ira Aldridge. Tyler, one of the central characters in this play, is presenting a paper on Keene. Tyler is fascinated by the actor, who plays a big role not just in his life as an academic but in his thoughts and dreams. Watching this play is not only a great way of learning about a fascinating man, it’s a great way of seeing how he’s relevant in the present day.

There are a lot of good Zoom productions around but not all of them have this level of technical control. Ethan McSweeny is credited as the director so I would guess he had at least some involvement in this. Usually, when you watch a Zoom production, the actors could be positioned anywhere on the screen. If two characters are supposed to be next to each other, there’s no guarantee the actors will appear next to each other.

Keene doesn’t have as large a cast as many Zoom plays but everything is beautifully arranged. The Zoom screens are spaced out around the main screen, on a background which looks like a wooden table. Although the conference involves speaking onstage rather than sitting at a table, the presence of the table does remind us that the conference is serious; that these characters are doing their jobs. The screens are not arranged randomly – when all or most characters are present, the two most important characters in each part of the scene are at the centre of the main screen and appear larger than the other characters. The other characters are arranged around the outside.

This is firstly good on a practical level as it shows us where our attention needs to be. The larger screens allow us to see the important characters more clearly, which makes it easier to appreciate their physical acting. It also helps to give us the sense that the characters really are talking to each other. I appreciate that this might not be an option for every theatre company but it makes it easier for us as an audience and it helps to make Anchuli Felicia King’s play even more real.

As well as having their own characters, most of the actors appear as the Chorus. Their function is to explain things about the characters’ background and also to say what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s illuminating, sometimes funny, sometimes endearing and it’s really effective. It allows us to find out more about the characters in bite-sized pieces so we can find out what we need to know without getting bogged down in the details of a character’s history.

On the surface, the play is about academics meeting at a conference, where they spend quite a lot of time getting drunk and getting laid. But it’s also about human beings and the way they’re treated, particularly when they look different. The problems faced by the main characters, Tyler and Kai, are compared with the experiences of Ira Aldridge and with the character of Othello. We see the ways in which things have changed – and the ways in which they really haven’t.

Grantham Coleman is charming and fun as Tyler and Ira Aldridge and he works well with the phenomenally versatile Sarah Suzuki, who plays the shy, earnest Kai and also Margaret Gill, an acquaintance of Ira’s. The Chorus also do well as an ensemble and in their individual roles, particularly Amelia Pedlow as the flirtatious Dana, Sam Lilja as Tyler’s rather smug friend Ian, and Paul Gross, who plays the intriguing James Wallack, another character from the past. Sam Saint Ours reads the stage directions and plays a character named Harry Styles. (Yes, that one.)

Keene deals with some very serious subjects without shying away from them but it’s also about a group of real people and it deals with many facets of their lives. So there are also moments of humour, romance and excruciating mistakes. The play isn’t always serious but the main issues are still taken seriously. Education is important but this play shows it can also be enjoyable.