Milwaukee Shakespeare's Vivid Cymbeline

There may not be many memorable stanzas in Cymbeline, but Milwaukee Shakespeare’s production of the Bard's ornate romance takes place in the space of pure poetry. Josh Schmidt’s and Victoria Delorio’s sound design saturates every scene in atmosphere and punctuates almost every significant gesture (and offers a beautiful setting to the song, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”). Dominated by a huge sheet of shimmery gold fabric (even Christo would be envious), Misha Kachman’s set is as elemental as the story. A huge tree branch spreads across the ceiling of the space, suggestive of the plays convoluted plot and complicated family tree. The walls are a textured, saturated red, filled with shadowy figures that split the difference between Surrealism a la Joan Miro and cave paintings. A shock of arrows pincushions one wall, another opens onto a heavenly space of blazing light (for the entrance of the gods, of course). The playing space is lovely, dark and deep, and it has to be to make room the cast in the almost comically exhausting final resolution scene. It packs more coincidences and “surprises” than a year’s worth of General Hospital.

Without any conceptual heavy-handedness, director Jeffrey Sichel captures the essence of Shakespeare’s play in all its fairy-tale sprawl. The story includes familiar elements: lost siblings, damsels in hiding, manufactured deflowerings, poisons that aren’t really poisons, not to mention buffoonish royals and noble savages. Other than Posthumous, the play’s heart and soul, the characters are only So Deep. But Sichel’s cast finds lots of comic, fiendish and romantic possibilities. Todd Denning, acting in a wheelchair due to a broken ankle late in rehearsals, finds the oily heart in the Italian Iachimo, who incites Posthumous’s jealousy by pretending to seduce his wife, Imogen. And Sarah Sokolovic plays her with a pure, unaffected grace. One could wish for a little more sturm und drang from Wayne T. Carr, but his Posthumous is filled with that sweet nobility we expect in Shakespeare’s romantic heroes.

And besides, too much emoting (unless it is from the hilarious drama queen, Cloten, played deliciously by Joe Foust) would detract too much from the one-two- (three-four-five-) punch of the story. It’s no small feat that this Cymbeline spins its tale with clarity and a surfeit of rich images, inventing a magical world in which trust and truth can be fragile and ephemeral, but can be joyfully recovered through the keen vision of a generous heart.