"... and a bit with a dog"

Just caught the Actors’ Shakespeare Projects's Two Gentlemen of Verona.  Exhilarating!  Crab is fabulous:  a slug of an English bulldog, phlegm with fur, his whole being contracted in one jowl of woe.  His ambition, as noted in the program, is to play the Dane.  On the other end of the lead, Launce (John Kuntz) was plaintively askew; Speed (Thomas Derrah) was a master class in Shakespearean clowning.  (Turns out he’s a founder of the ART, with slightly more stage experience than Burbage.  It shows.)  The two of them, the 30s wiseguy—Will Kemp as Shemp’s Curly—and the cowlicked simpleton, were all over the stage like racquetballs.  Great filthy byplay with the in-out handle of a suitcase.  Bill Barclay was a wonderfully mercurial Proteus—so fascinating to play with and so bad for you.  His adoring Julia (Paige Clark) was cute as a bug, in both her metamorphoses—she got a huge laugh, whipping off her newsboy's cap and shouting, "Behold!"  Nobody’s love Sir Thurio (Michael Patrick Kane) was waspily foppish.  Silvia (Miranda Craigwell) was about nine gorgeous feet tall in stilettos; Valentine (Jaime Carillo) was going to need that ladder.  The play began with a figured dance, a sort of a hipster Playford, with letters going hand to hand to hand, and ended with whacked-out revelry.  And "Who Is Silvia?" was done as doo-wop to a ukulele and a concertina, with the Duchess of Milan (Marya Lowry) chanelling Frankie Valli.  Three more performances.  I think you'd like it.

Nine