How it’s (New York) New Jersey: Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey is one of the state’s most prominent companies.
How it’s Irish: The play is about an insane love of poetry and by extension poets. Irish: guilty.
Finishing up a summer run this weekend is David Ives’ “Translaptation” of a little-known face by French playwright Alexis Piron, La Métromanie. Ives is primarily known for his short work, particularly the short plays that make up the work All in the Timing, but he has done quite a lot of translation and adaptation too, including Pierre Corneille’s The Liar and an adaptation of Moliere’s The Misanthrope.
This is more than a translation, however, and as Ives’ portmanteau suggests, it’s a mash-up of a translation and an adaptation. It does not reset the strange poetry-mad world of the play into our times– but there are contemporary jokes, including a reference to Britney Spears.
A metromaniac, the program tells us, is “a person addicted to poetry, or to writing verse.”
In the 16th and 17th centuries, plays were written in verse. That helps to explain the setting for the play: a private party thrown by Francalou (ebullient Brent Harris), where his new play will be performed — and where he hopes to get his sullen, “whatever”-speaking daughter, Lucille (pitch-perfect Billie Wyatt) who also weirdly has a thing for poetry and poets, to perk up and get a boyfriend. Comic servant Lisette (DeShawn White, whose attitude makes so much of the play work) will be playing Lucille in the drama.
That’s important to know, because at one point she’s mistaken for her mistress. But then, a lot of people are incognito. Lucille has a thing for a poet named Damis, whom she’s never met but only read – his pastoral poets are all the rage. Damis (nerdy but charming Christian Frost) however is in love with a poetess that he’s never met– in fact
nobody has, because this pastoral poetess is actually Baliveau, writing under a nom de plume.
Damis is hiding out from his uncle, Baliveau (rather hilarious John Ahlin), who’s been paying to send Damis to law school–which he has not been attending.
There’s also a comic servent, Mondor (A sly Austin Kirk) and an earnest, unpoetic suitor for Lucille, Dorante (Ty Lane). People are incognito, pretending to be other people, and taking roles in the play.
We never do get to see the play.
How much you’ll enjoy all this depends entirely on… how much you enjoy all that.
For me, this was all a huge set-up without much of a pay-off. A set piece in which Damis imagines the opening night of his play and all his nerves is powerful — but feels like it’s from another play, say, Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare.
The show is gorgeous to look at, thanks to the clever set – an opened book, some patently
fake trees – by Dick Block and saturated lights by Tony Galaska. The costumes by Brian Russman are so beautiful I gasped when they came on: flowered waistcoats, a purse made to look like a sheep; pajamas that were so pretty they might have been the party wear. Each costume revealed character and also a sumptuousness of the period, without being stuck in the period.
Director Brian B. Crowe kept up a good pace, and the physicality largely worked. It’s the kind of play where milking the one-liners works pretty well. Of the cast, Harris with his palpable glee at the party and the matchmaking, Wyatt — who makes a transformation from sullen teen to radiant lover– and White, whose eyerolls speak so loudly, are standouts.
The Metromaniacs is at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, 36 Madison Ave., Madison, through Sunday, Sept. 4. 973-408-5600.
