APT's "An Improbable Fiction" is a Warm Welcome Back to the Theatre

Photos by Liz Lauren.

The house was less than half full in the outdoor Hill Theatre on opening night — Saturday May 29 — due to COVID restrictions. But the cheer that went up from the audience was raucous as soon as American Players Theatre Core Company Member Sarah Day took the stage and raised her arms in welcome. In character as Mistress Quickly, Day exclaimed “We’ve missed you so!” before bidding us to turn off our cell phones and enjoy the evening’s performance. 

She then took her place behind the bar at the Boar’s Head Tavern — the 17th century London inn that is the setting for James DeVita’s new play, An Improbable Fiction. After receiving a virtual reading last summer, the script has been revised and the play is now fully realized. Directed at a brisk pace and with great balance, Tim Ocel delivers a story tailor-made to welcome audiences back to in-person performances at the classical theater. 

At rise, the portly troublemaker and bon vivant Falstaff (Core Company Member Brian Mani, reprising one of his greatest roles) calls for Mistress Quickly to fill his flagon once again. He is bored and anxious after being locked indoors, away from his compatriots, due to an outbreak of the plague. Falstaff also longs for an audience. But there are no friends to laugh at his antics in the tavern and no groundlings at The Globe to cheer his performances, since the theater is closed until further notice. Instead, normal life has come to a halt. Everyone is afraid of contracting the deadly pestilence, jumping at the ominous sounds of local watchmen nailing notices to nearby doors stating that the occupants are infected. 

And as we know all too well, merry-making in isolation is hard, even if there is a good supply of ale on hand.  

Eventually he is joined by a few other characters who are also having a rough time during quarantine. Othello (a striking and regal Chiké Johnson) is frantic with worry. He cannot find his new bride Desdemona and fears that her father may be using the lockdown as an excuse to spirit her away from a match that he did not sanction. With a shaved head, two gold earrings and a flowing white tunic underneath a studded leather coat, Johnson looks every inch a dashing general who is desperate to be reunited with his young wife. 

Later, Cleopatra (Core Company Member Tracy Michelle Arnold) enters in a jealous rage, looking for her inconstant Roman love Antony. In a gold Elizabethan gown adorned with faux jewels, she melodramatically weeps and wails, fearing that her beloved is dead. A moment later she screams like a banshee at the thought that he is having an affair, perhaps with John Webster's tragic Duchess of Malfi.

Not to be outdone, Juliet (Core Company Member Melisa Pereyra) enters and immediately throws a teenage tantrum, stomping her feet and complaining that parents just don’t understand. Annoyed with her father, her potential beau Paris and even her love Romeo, if Juliet could slam her bedroom door and turn her stereo up to 11, she would. Instead the adolescent has come in search of her “uncle” Falstaff for sympathy and a diversion from her family drama. 

To pass the time in quarantine the characters drink, play cards, engage in swordplay, discuss the downsides of going out into the provinces on a tour of Merry Wives of Windsor, and speculate gloomily about their uncertain future. The tension of the play sags here while they are literally killing time, filling up minutes until the next plot point. 

But they also discuss the grim reality of living in a time of plague that resonates very closely with our modern experience of the past year, particularly when Juliet remarks on the lack of empathy displayed by some of her countrymen in the midst of so many others suffering and dying.

Apart from the robust merry-maker Falstaff, the most interesting character in the play is the one who is least described in Shakepeare’s pages: the Messenger. Portrayed by newcomer Ronald Román-Meléndez, he is a bit player, crowd scene filler and musician who rises beautifully to the occasion when he’s suddenly given a spotlight. His role is most surprising, since instead of exiting hurriedly after delivering a key piece of news, he lingers in the pub to really live amongst characters who are all larger than life. In  addition to great comic timing, Román-Meléndez provides several songs (from a variety of Shakespearean sources) that lift the mood of the piece and provide a nice interlude in between characters’ crises.

In the end this Shakespeare mash-up is a valentine to Falstaff. By piecing together scenes from four different plays where the bawdy scamp is featured or discussed, there is a beautiful story told of the fall of the OG jolly good fellow. Broken hearted after being spurned by his onetime playmate Prince Hal — later King Henry V — and isolated by the plague from the company of friends he thrives on, the lusty hedonist faces his failing health, bemoans his mortality, and imagines the happy ending that he deserves. In his many excellent rants, Mani is in his element, both as the rascally knave and the big hearted old man, reliving his best days in the company of a future king. It is a joy to watch him inhabit a beloved character he knows so well.

He is consistently and sweetly comforted by the owner of the establishment, Sarah Day’s Mistress Quickly. Falstaff’s doting love of many, many seasons, Day wears her adoration for him like a warm shawl. In between playful squeezes from her towering mate, she admonishes the patrons when they get too rowdy, keeps their glasses full, gently mothers Juliet and reminds Falstaff to tread carefully because his health is fragile. Her tearful report of tending to his final hours is exquisite. 

Veteran APT costume designer Scott Rött hits just the right notes with his clothing for the ensemble. Dressed as actors at the Globe might appear, the characters wear Elizabethan versions of outfits made expressly for the stage. Likewise, Nathan Stuber’s set tricks the eye. It is actually the back of a theater set — with flats facing away from APT’s audience and a labyrinth of stairs descending into the backstage area where we see the actors gathered. Under the stage and behind the flights of steps, small furniture pieces are stowed for other performances. For their scenes, the characters assemble a makeshift actors’ lounge out of mismatched chairs, tables, and even a throne, perhaps leftover from a history play. 

With a cast of six, An Improbable Fiction uses significantly fewer actors than a traditional Shakespeare play, and at less than two hours it’s also quite a bit shorter, easily accommodating the safety-mandated switch to skipping intermission. It’s an entertaining, “Shakespeare lite” evening with more than half of the lines in An Improbable Fiction borrowed directly from Shakespeare. That gives the Bard’s devotees lots of reasons to gloat when they recognize bits and pieces from across the canon being used in new contexts. 

As he acknowledged in a talkback after a virtual reading last summer, DeVita not only had the advantage of being intimately familiar with these plays, he also wrote with specific members of the company in mind, many of whom brought these characters to life in previous productions. For loyal APT audiences that is definitely another part of this piece’s charm. 

One quibble with the play is the inconsistencies of its particular “world.” One moment the characters are speaking like actors, wondering about going on tour and complimenting each others’ performances. The next moment they are talking about playwrights like Christopher Marlowe and his characters as contemporaries, with whom they could interact. And the next moment, they are wondering about how to change their character arcs, a bit like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the famous Tom Stoppard play, which APT also did recently. Most obviously, several of the players are at the beginning of their tragic stories, where Falstaff is clearly at his end. It’s confusing enough to be a bit distracting.

Another quibble is with the playwright’s uneven treatment of the characters he brings together in the tavern. Both Falstaff and Othello are drawn as complicated men of diverse experiences and varying temperaments, and this piece deepens both our understanding and our affection for them. Cleopatra and Juliet do not fare nearly as well. Two of the Bard’s most famous women are reduced to shrews and brats who have little to contribute to the story after making stormy entrances. 

But perhaps the critic doth protest too much. By the end of the evening, hearing the breeze rustle through the trees and the whippoorwills calling, watching the actors I have missed so dearly taking their bows, I was completely content to take the advice of the Messenger and simply sing “hey nonny, nonny” along with the rest of a very appreciative audience. 

PS — And if you’re not ready to return to the Hill Theatre just yet, you can view the filmed performance by purchasing a virtual ticket on APT’s website, from June 6 - 26.