Yale Repertory Theatre's "The Servant of Two Masters."

(Part of a series in which I make up for not updating my blog recently.)

As one of Boston's more verbose commedia dell'arte enthusiasts, it was only natural that I was asked to review Yale Repertory Theatre's presentation of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters when their tour brought them to ArtsEmerson this past winter.

As I write in The Arts Fuse:

This inventive adaptation opens with light pouring through a doorway that opens upon a dark stage. Two silhouetted figures enter with flashlights, discover and open two large crates, and then discuss the contents in an Italian grammalot. The pair list off the names of the iconic masks of the commedia dell’arte: Pantalone, Dottore, Brighella, and of course, the eponymous servant, Truffaldino. It as if they are discovering something vital stored away.

Soon after the flashlights become fireflies dancing against a night sky, over a maquette of Venezia. The sun rises over a city square. Under the Paramount’s own proscenium stage stands a much smaller proscenium from which the cast emerges. Katherine Akiko Day’s stage concept brilliantly references the earliest commedia troupes, while Chaun-Chi Chan’s lighting design evokes the blazing sun under which these troupes performed as well as forecasting the arrival of dusk at the story’s end.

Goldoni’s comic gift comes down to a genius for narrative design: he arranges a convoluted story of mistaken identities, disguises, miscommunications, and matters of honor by which true lovers are kept apart and then, as if by clockwork, are finally brought together. Goldoni lacks the poetic gifts and thematic depth of Shakespeare, but the Bard of Avon never plotted so tightly. Goldoni’s plot becomes so complex that he seems compelled to include a recap of the plot for the audience in the final scenes of his comedies.

Note that I also wrote about a modern adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters when I reviewed Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors.

Re-Post: Review of "One Man, Two Guvnors" in The Arts Fuse

In light of One Man, Two Guvnors Richard Bean's musical adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters being nominated for seven Tony Awards, my editor at The Arts Fuse Bill Marx has elected to repost my review of the broadcast presentation of the original run at the National Theatre:

English comedy has never shied from its roots in the Italian commedia dell’arte: Shakespeare set most of his comedies in Italy, the Mister Punch who beats the devil, the hangman, and Judy was once a Neapolitan known as Pulcinella, while the popular English form of the Harlequinade is unmistakably a nineteenth-century permutation of commedia. England’s continued preoccupation with class and the long history of southern English cities receiving groups of migrant workers from other parts of Britain, each bringing with them their own distinct dialects and culture, nurture an appetite for commedia-inspired comedy of class and ethnic stereotypes. Consequently, it is natural for playwright Richard Bean to adapt the plot of Carlo Goldoni’s classic The Servant of Two Masters from seventeenth-century Venice to the 1963 Brighton, England of One Man, Two Guvnors[....]

Read more in The Arts Fuse!

Review: "One Man, Two Guvnors" in The Arts Fuse

My review of London's National Theatre Live's presentation of Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors a modern adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, is up at the The Arts Fuse.

Earlier this summer, I reviewed Shakeapeare and Company's production of Goldoni's The Venetian Twins for The Fuse.

Review: "The Venetian Twins" in The Arts Fuse

Last week I took a road trip to Lenox, Massachusetts to review Shakespeare & Company's production of Carlo Goldoni's The Venetian Twins for The Arts Fuse. Goldoni, of course, had an interesting relationship to the commedia dell'arte tradition:

As a playwright, [Goldoni] saw himself on a mission to replace the commedia with comedy that proffers a more classical form: Instead of actors improvising upon a loosely sketched scenario, Goldoni wrote three-act scripts that adhered to the Aristotelian unities and even wrote librettos for the emerging genre of opera buffa. Still, though he rejected improvisation, Goldoni preserved many of the iconic characters of the commedia for centuries.

The Venetian Twins runs through to August 27th.