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This left me scratching my head.

Saturday May 05, 2001.     By Bill Gorman

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Court Theatre
In rotating repertory with The Learned Ladies
Tickets: (773) 753-4472
Through May 28, 2000

As has become customary, Court Theatre ends its 1999-2000 season with two plays in rotating repertory. Usually, this is an opportunity for the theatre's loyal audience to see the same actors in two different plays during the same performance run. Normally, I welcome the opportunity to see two plays in rotating repertory, but Court's American premiere of Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards left me scratching my head.

Originally written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon in 1714 as a play for puppet theatre, Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards was originally intended to be performed with silent puppets responding to a narrator. Peter Oswald's stage adaptation of the story is problematic in its inconsistency. But more than that, the inconsistency in the Court's production is at the heart of the problem here. Director Charles Newell doesn't seem to be able to craft a production that walks the same stylistic line for two and one-half hours.

It is the 12th century, and Japan's ruler is in retirement as a Buddhist monk, leaving the Empress (Lisa Dodson) and her brother Lord Shigemori (Thomas Joseph Carroll) to rule the country, which they do separately and simultaneously from their own courts. Two samurai families are prominent in Lord Shigemori's court - one is represented at court by Lord Moritsugu (Matthew Fahey) and his younger brother Yoshitsugu (Guy Adkins), the other by Takiguchi (Steven Rishard), a samurai whose father Katsuyori (Bradley Mott) has also entered a monastery. Lady Tonase (Hollis Resnick) and her brother Morotaka (John Reeger), the warden of her four ladies in waiting, staff the Empress' court. Two of the Empress' ladies are Yokube (Carey Peters), in love with Takiguchi, and Karumo (Kate Fry), Yoshitsugu's love. The jealous Morotaka hatches a plot that results in a trial in which two of the lovers face death by beheading. The second act takes place outside the court, and thus the narrative becomes less courtly and more poetic.

While Fair Ladies… has a good story, it is betrayed slightly by the adaptation and the production, which seems to go back and forth between a period drama and a contemporary comedy. Some of the actors are capable of the fluid movement necessary for the story to work, and still others aren't. It's the attention to detail that makes this production less than it could be. Contemporary directors must update a classical story to make it relevant for a modern audience, but you must be consistent for it to be effective. This is neither. Some scenes, although classical in language, were oddly reminiscent of early television comedy. I didn't get the impression that Mr. Newell knew exactly what he wanted to do with certain scenes.

The performances are uniformly consistent, although Bradley Mott and Matthew Fahey drop the ball stylistically. Also, the usually consistent John Reeger plays Morotaka as a cartoon of a villain. The best performances come from the four lovers: Steven Rishard, Guy Adkins, Kate Fry and Carey Peters. These four actors seem to adapt well to the changing styles of the adaptation.

Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards is a good experiment for the Court, but not quite up to their usual high standards.