by D. Jette

Kudos to the Porters of Hell’s Gate who recently finished a solid Richard II at the Whitmore-Lindley. Their simple staging of this under-appreciated history had good performances in the play’s most demanding roles, including a very well grounded Jamey Hecht as John of Gaunt and a sympathetic Thomas Bigley in the title role. By specializing in Shakespeare and now beginning their third season, The Porters deserve praise as a specialized company in a city that is often skeptical of classical work.

The Bard’s plays are a favorite for amateur companies looking to do meaningful work without spending a lot of money. Claudia Allick of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival recently commented that ‘”Shakespeare will continue to be American theatre’s little black dress, appropriate for all occasions and able to be paired with just about everything and everyone.” This is not true for all markets. Staging Shakespeare in Los Angeles is extremely difficult for a number of reasons:

1) The plays have large casts, requiring many actors to play small roles but nonetheless dedicate a lot of time to a project. Many companies solve this through double-casting. Often this enriches a play and poses a challenge for a talented actor, but when an audience is already confused about who-is-playing-who, it can lead to confusion. Actors in Los Angeles make theatre to get a chance to shine and stretch their muscles, not to walk on in someone else’s vision of an overdone play. Too often companies stuff their casts with willing neophytes who can drag down an otherwise well performed piece.

2) People already look at the theatre as a dying art, in this city more than others. There is a limited audience for the classics as many Angelenos will turn their nose up at the first sign of pretension (as opposed to New Yorkers, who characteristically seek out such erudition.)

3) Shakespeare requires extraordinary stamina, textual understanding, diction, energy and precision of thought and action to be well understood and enjoyed. While I do not speak for ALL actors in Los Angeles, as we have more well trained actors than any other city in the world, there is a vast population of under-trained and under-committed performers in this city who find their way onto Elizabethan casts, even in major roles. An amateur company is unlikely to provide much training for these dilettantes, and a director will often find himself explaining the basics right up until opening night.

4) In a city with so many writers, artists, directors and new talent, the pool of new and contemporary work is so deep it seems almost a shame to spend resources on rehashing a five-hundred year old play, even with a great cast and a unique vision. It means ignoring the throngs of playwriting groups and workshops, the vast talent that would remain untapped if we never ventured from the canon. Many small groups see it as a waste of time best left to college classes and Stratford festivals. Better to contribute something now and make a name for yourself in a crowded theatrical landscape, right?

I’m dealing in stereotypes, of course, but these concerns echo what I hear from colleagues close to such productions.

One of my Saturday night compatriots claimed that watching poor Shakespeare is like attending a religious service - going through the motions of some ancient ritual with archaic language with nothing to engage or appreciate in a modern context. For me, this is exactly why I attend Shakespeare, regardless of the quality of performance. It is a religious appreciation that draws us to the canon, his plays are like scripture, the words themselves hold such meaning that whenever they are read aloud something beautiful happens. I am not in the “if you’re going to do Shakespeare, you better do it right” camp. In fact, I’d rather see someone trudge through a play like Henry V than massacre some poor living playwright’s work. Henry doesn’t mind the occasional flop.

More than that, I think it feeds the soul of an artist to commit herself to a work as dense and ornate as Richard II, or Julius Caesar, or Much Ado. For a working actor, it’s hard to always feel like the work is worth the pain (wages aside, of course). After months and months of bad commercial copy, walk-on roles in uninspired TV shows, and the incessant flow of coming-of-age plays about snorting coke and wondering “what am I gunna do with my life?”, isn’t it nice to take the occasional sojourn into history, to ’sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of death of kings’? Isn’t it nice to come home?

The Porters of Hellsgate can be found at their facebook page.

Richard II was directed by Charles Pasternak and produced by Eddie Castuera and Jack Leahy and performed at the Whitmore-Lindley Theater in North Hollywood.