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Event Play s the next festival thingContinued from Page A1Thorson came across both comedies while flipping through a catalog, considering possibilities. “Ralph” in particular, he said, he hadn’t thought about in years, although most first-year drama students run across it.“It seemed like a natural kind of marriage, Thorson said. “I like loud, I like boisterous for the summer.”Both plays certainly fit the bill. “Ralph Roister Doister, written somewhere between 1534 and 1553, is a broad comedy that often in dulges in slapstick. The title character (played by Trey Fannin) falls in love with every desirable woman to cross his path, which recently in eludes the young widow Christian Custance (Shannon Phifer). He dispatches Matthew Merygreeke (Kris Sisk), a parasite who depends on Ralph for all the necessities of life, to find out how to win her. But she despises Ralph, putting Matthew’s lifestyle in dangerThankfully, Ralph is pathetically easy to control and easier to fool, as Merygreeke knows from long experience. He and Custance come together to make life miserable for Ralph, to the cheers of her servants (Dawn Pittillo, Valerie Smith and Tasha Clark) and the horror of Ralph’s (Kevin Hoskinson, Adam DeWitt, Autumn Pittillo and Ashley Pittillo).Plays like this, Thorson said, would have been performed by trav eling companies for small villages and would have been among the first non-Church plays of their era.“They would produce irreverent plays about lusty situations, servant and master, servant and servant, and so on, Thorson said of the Renaissance companies. “This was several steps closer to the common man, the common person, even than Shakespeare.”Ah yes, Shakespeare.Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” trimmed to one act by Cecil Pickett, includes several of the bard’s favorite devices, including women dressed as men, mistaken identity and proud men set up for a fall. The fools Feste (Sisk) and Fabian (Dawn Pittillo) act as narrators for this ver sion of the tale in which Duke Orsino (Allen Twitehell) longs forthe woman he cannot have, Countess Olivia (Clark). Meanwhile, a disguised Viola (Smith) longs for Orsino, but must maintain her disguise as a boy in respect of her twin Sebastian (Fannin) whom she believes drowned.Another would-be suitor for Olivia, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (DeWitt) finds greater entertainment carousing with the drunken knight Sir Toby Belch (Hoskinson) and Olivia’s maidservant, Maria (Phifer). Together, the three set a trap to de^ flate the balloon of the arrogant steward Malvolio (Scott Rochat), a preening peacock of a man.Shakespeare. Thorson said, pre sents few problems for a modern audience that has recently seen him performed everywhere on screen.“They may miss a word here, a word there, an allusion, but they get the meaning, he said. “In the Bible Belt, people are attuned to the Bible and especially the King James Version and Shakespeare wrote in that style. So it’s not as if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it.“As long as they perceive it’s good, they will accept it.”
Newspaper Details
Garden City Telegram
Garden City, Kansas, US
Thu, Jun 03, 1999
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Dennis J.
USA 19 Jan 2021
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