If you’ve never seen or heard of Cymbeline, don’t worry. It’s not exactly one of Shakespeare’s best-known works.
And now you have the perfect opportunity to fix that by watching the delightful theatre master class that is Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s (SOTS) first-ever production of the play this summer.
Cymbeline follows Imogen, daughter of King Cymbeline, as she strives to reunite with her banished husband Posthumus. At the same time Imogen’s step-mother and her step-brother Cloten are plotting to seize the throne, while Posthumus plots revenge on Imogen after being deceived into thinking she had an affair while he was banished.
If that sounds like a rather complicated plot, that’s because it is. The seven performers in the cast are tasked with bringing a myriad of characters to life during Tuesday night’s show.
A great amount of credit must go to director Jennifer Brewin, who didn’t so much bring order to the chaos but conducted it beautifully. Brewin’s work — from the marvellous use of the space both on- and off-stage, to drawing humour from a rather dense Shakespearian play, to orchestrating seamless set and costume changes — is a master class in theatre, drawing on the audience’s imagination to fill the gaps and keeping a steady pace through a hodgepodge script.
It takes a lot of cunning to pull of costume changes onstage, during scenes — and Brewin and the cast do so with aplomb, cleverly drawing the audience’s attention while performers duck in and out of different characters without leaving view.
Speaking of the cast — there wasn’t a weak link in the lot. In fact, you could call each individual performance strong in its own right. Particular praise has to go to Mara Teare as Imogen in her first-ever live-and-in-person SOTS role. Teare carries herself onstage with a regal bearing befitting the princess Imogen, and deftly pulls the audience through joy and heartbreak and determination.
If the audience gave out applause based on the number of times someone switched characters, we’d still be clapping — and rightfully so — for Tim Bratton and Bob Wicks. The two brought some much needed levity to the show in multiple roles, with Bratton shining as the foppish and petulant Cloten and Wicks adding a magnificent physicality to the show as the conniving Iachimo scheming to seduce Imogen. The pair even went so far as to show off some fine singing chops in the second half of the performance.
Bratton is also credited as the sound designer for the show, and the sound elevated the production from the stage to fill the amphitheatre and surround the audience. Cymbeline does not reach the immersive heights it achieves without the great sound work drawing the audience into battles or the wilderness.
One small nit to pick: SOTS has become well-known over the decades for attaching strange and exciting aesthetic themes to its shows (like a production of As You Like It drawing inspiration from the colour and absurdity of “Alice in Wonderland,” or Much Ado About Nothing set in a fantasy world of bugs and insects).
Conversely, the visual themes of Cymbeline are mercurial at best. Characters in turn wear medieval-esque leather armour or sparkling skirts pulled that wouldn’t look out of place on Disney princesses, or wield weapons made from railroad crossing barriers. We get hints of some “play-within-a-play” meta-theatre ideas early in the show that are quire fun, but they are left by the wayside after intermission. A stronger commitment to a theme would have helped unify and elevate this otherwise chaotic script.
The audience also lost some of the lines from the performers, particularly in group scenes. And the long final act drags on somewhat as character after character delivers weighty exposition to clean up the tangled plot threads.
But those are relatively small gripes. As the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Cymbeline, as topsy-turvy as it is, works for SOTS because all of the parts come together to make it work, so even the nit-picks are rapidly forgotten in the wake of wonderful performances.
You might not be familiar with Cymbeline. But you don’t need to know the script to know top-tier theatre when it hits the stage — and this year’s SOTS main stage show is nothing but.
Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s Cymbeline runs from July 2 to August 14, 2022 in Saskatoon. Tickets can be purchased online at shakespearesask.com.
