Shakespeare!

Tonight I had a very enjoyable and highly unusual night at a small local theater company, the Buntport Theater. I went to see their performance of "Titus Andronicus! The Musical!"

This is, in their words, "Shakespeare's bloodiest and, by many accounts, worst play." They move along at a brisk clip (very vaguely in the vein of the Reduced Shakepeare Company's Complete Works, if you're familiar with that), using only about 50% of the actual text, and adding in songs.

Already, you may have the sense that this is a highly creative production, but that hardly begins to describe it. The entire play is performed by five people; roles are tripled up in cases (or more, with one cast member playing various "Someone Probably About to Be Killed" parts). Two of the characters are presented as hand puppets made out of an old car stereo and a gasoline can. A board is placed in view to help track who's playing who in all this, with labeled pull-chain light bulbs arranged in five neat columns, switched on and off by various cast members to indicate the characters currently on stage.

A slate attached to that board is used to keep a running tally of the Death Toll.

The one piece of scenery is a huge old van. It's painted on all sides, each representing a different setting from "Rome" to a forest to a house. The cast all bands together to push the van (while one steers) into one position or another to reveal the appropriate side for a given scene. This is all supplemented with holes cut in the roof, horizontal blinds installed on one window, various contraptions fixed to the body, and anything else needed for this one van to serve as the backdrop for the entire play.

And then there's the blood. They gleefully spew strawberry syrup all about the stage to cover stabbings with swords, trombones, the oil dip stick from the van's engine block, and more. It gushes forth from Lavinia's mouth -- her tongue having just been cut out -- before she begins to sing her big (and utterly incomprehensible) musical number.

There are ridiculous accents aplenty, creative and humorous props, and lots of inserted wry jokes about how truly ridiculous the source material is. (I'm only familiar with about half of Shakespeare's plays, but I can most certainly agree that this seems to be by far the worst of those.) And yet it's actually all pulled off with some real acting skill, such that the preposterous plot is indeed comprehensible as the too-quick two hours whips by.

It's doubly rough that I should so enjoy this and then attempt to talk about that here, since A) many of my readers don't live in the Denver area, and 2) this engagement of "Titus Andronicus! The Musical!" closes tomorrow night (to an already sold-out house, no less). But this theater company does perform regularly, and they certainly won a fan in me tonight. Point then being, if you do have the chance to check out another show of theirs, I recommend it. Or, to those of you who live elsewhere, you might take a plunge some time and try out a small local theater company. You never know what gem you might discover.