Featured photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Cymbeline may not be one of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays, but it’s still 400 years old. Centuries later, what does a reimagined take on the play look like? NAATCO’s new production at Manhattan’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater is attempting to find out.
NAATCO, or the National Asian American Theatre Company, is staging the classic story with an all-femme, all-Asian cast and design team. The production, a collaboration with Play On Shakespeare, uses a new modern verse translation by Andrea Thome and is directed by Stephen Brown-Fried. Their take blends Cymbeline’s ancient setting with quasi-modern aesthetics and language — including, of course, this production’s nontraditional casting.
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Cymbeline’s plot has gender-bending baked into it. The story follows Imogen, a British princess who, through the plots of a scheming Roman lord and her own wicked stepmother, finds herself forced into disguise as a boy in the hopes of reconnecting with her lost love. (Yes, it is complicated. Rest assured, the characters over-explain every plot twist and comic misunderstanding before the play’s drawn-out conclusion.) Even beyond Imogen’s cross-dressing, various characters spout off about gender disparity: Imogen’s husband Posthumus laments that “there’s no urge that tends towards vice in man, that doesn’t arise from the woman’s part,” and Imogen herself complains that “a man’s life is a tedious one” once she’s donned her masculine alter ego.
But here, with a cast composed entirely of women, what does gender really mean? To be clear, none of Shakespeare’s male characters were rewritten as women, and no pronouns nor gendered terms throughout the script were changed to account for the actors’ real-world genders. The production’s costuming (designed by Mariko Ohigashi) doesn’t attempt to conceal that any of the cast are women, though it does embrace a masc/femme binary for ease of understanding when Imogen makes the switch from woman to man.
Rather, gender in this version of Cymbeline seems to be whatever the individual makes it. The audience is told to take each character’s gender identity as face value: If you say you’re a woman, you are. If you say you’re a man, just the same. In that sense, Cymbeline presents something of a queer utopia, where implied transness has no bearing on one’s social standing, and bigotry (as we know it in a modern sense) has no opportunity to flourish.
Take Imogen as an example. Though she begins the play as a girl, she’s instantly accepted as a boy when she goes undercover. Nevermind that she’s changed nothing about her appearance besides pulling her hair back and putting on pants instead of a skirt — that’s all that differentiates any man from any woman in this production, after all.
Unfortunately, that dramatic potential goes largely unexplored. Yes, there’s ostensibly plenty of lesbian lust, romance, and gender transgression on stage, but it’s undercut by the understanding that famous characters like Posthumus, Cloten, and Cymbeline are, after all, still meant to be men. Without bolder directing choices or more major changes to Shakespeare’s script, Cymbeline as a play may not be the vehicle for attempting to explore queerness in the classics. (I’m reminded of this Broadway season’s production of Our Town, which I found had trouble fulfilling its apparent goal of wide-reaching inclusion.) Beyond the novelty of seeing Shakespeare’s male roles performed by women, there’s little commentary on gender in this production that wasn’t already present in the script.
Still, this version of Cymbeline has plenty to admire beyond its buzzy casting choices. That includes the scenic design by Yi-Hsuan (Ant) Ma, which makes stellar use of the Angelson’s sparse theater space, using cleverly draped fabric to transport audiences from a British palace to the Welsh wilderness and back again.
It also goes for the 11-person ensemble, which has its standouts: Jeena Yi swings for the fences as rotten prince Cloten, bringing a high-energy sensibility that helps keep the show’s first half barreling forward. Narea Kang only has a few featured moments as the doctor Cornelius, but she makes them count, earning massive laughs from the audience. And Amy Hill, perhaps the cast’s biggest name, is a commanding presence as the titular Cymbeline, holding court as the play comes to its conclusion.
But far and away the best performance comes courtesy of Maria-Christina Oliveras, pulling double duty as both the murderous Queen and the woodsman Belarius. As the Queen, she’s a classically camp and fabulous villain, with a sharp wit and bold red lipstick to match. (I resisted the urge to “yass” and finger-wave each time she came on stage.) And as Belarius, she delivers this production’s most compelling monologue in the play’s final scene, showing a degree of emotional authenticity that, regrettably, is largely lacking elsewhere from this company.
NAATCO’s Cymbeline invites audiences to take a closer look at gender: How we perceive it on stage, and how that compares to its role in our everyday lives. It may not hit the mark in all of its messaging, but it’s still well worth a watch for any Shakespeare buffs looking for a fresh take on a classic. ♦
Cymbeline runs through February 15 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater in Manhattan. Tickets are available here.
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