Shotgun Players
Berkeley, CA
“The Triumph of Love”
March 25, 2023. Preview
“Love” withstands the test of time…
…in the theater with Shotgun’s delightful cast and Patrick Dooley’s direction. Shotgun has remade a 300 year old “commedia” play into a contemporary ‘action’ drama. The play echoes the French theater tradition from Racine as well as that of “commedia dell’arte,” the famous Italian tradition.The program note states…
Marivaux’s characters – in struggling to understand what is happening to them and to accept the the sobering notion of change at great cost to themselves – we can see the image of Enlightenment Europe.
All that is so, but really the play is a comedy of characters who resist and then accept love’s advances, seductive, delightful, humorous but always marvelously delivered. Veronica Renner as Leonide (dressed as a man) invades the household of Hermocrates to rescue Agis who is wrongly kept there. By exquisite persuasion, she is able to convince both Hermocraates and his sister Leontine that she loves them and promises marriage. The endless (sometimes too much) verbal play (translated by Stephen Wadsworth) is effective. Agis is restored to his rightful position in court. All characters have felt the impact of love’s power and are thus ‘transformed”.
A delightful scene is performed by Jamin Jollo, a classical triad mime-clown whose physical skills in acrobatic feats as well as facial and gestural skill are transformative throughout the play. Jollo as “Harlequin” snuggles up to Leonide’s ‘helper’ Corine, played by Susanna Martin. With no words at all, Jollo accomplishes friendliness, affection and an intimacy not seen between other characters. Their interaction is a true ‘commedia’ accomplishment.
All players, scenic designers, and director Patrick Dooley deserve great praise for bringing the ‘classic’ Marivaux to our contemporary theater. Although the play runs 2 hours and 30 minutes with two intermissions, the audience is enchanted and beguiled by the action and verbal skill of the players, (especially Renner as Leonide). Bravo to all! “The Triumph of Love” is certainly that.
Joanna Harris