Arden Blew My Socks Off
This production of Arden of Faversham was just beyond. Everything about it was completely cohesive and on point. The staging, the concept, the comedy, the ending—it all works. This is surprising because Arden, as a play, was always a bit flat on the page in my opinion.
Arden as a play is pretty uncreative in that it doesn’t really deviate from its historical source material. However, by moving the concept to modern day/noveau riche/Big Brother alums, it started on a completely original note. The opening scene is predated by a genius bit of staging, wherein Arden’s company is shown in a presumably everyday occurrence, its workers loading boxes to be shipped away. Everything about the tableau is nonessential—the workers are merely facsimiles of live people, the room is strewn with an excess of boxes, even the products they are loading are useless knickknacks like neko cats—the whole thing screams (if it’s even possible) of the monotony that is often a precursor to insanity.
And insane the whole thing is; the entire production seems ripped straight from the id in the grandest way possible. Arden and Franklin are perfectly crabby and suspicious. The absurdity of so many murder attempts is exploited to the fullest, with a full range of slapstick from Shakebag and Black Will put to especially hilarious effect. Mastermind Alice is wonderful, mincing about and enchanting with her tacky charm. Mosby proves an admirable equal with his ineffectual, bumbling affections: at one point, he restrains his lustful self with a rolling chair. Michael is charmingly spineless, while Susan is a sweet but chillingly inert bystander. Greene is the perfect oaf; Lord Cheyne plays with effeminacy for laughs that are consistent, if not politically correct. Finally, Mrs. Reed is chilling, the beleaguered woman who curses Arden to his death.
While the question of whether or not Arden deserves to be murdered is clearly answerable, what the production manages to do, between all the hilarity, absurdity, and plot complications is to breed a moral ambiguity that pervades like the fog generated onstage. Arden is not portrayed particularly sympathetically here, red-faced and rude, but those are not crimes deserving of death. It is easy to see why Alice and Mosby are drawn to each other, but that does not make them justified as murderers. One feels for poor Michael and Susan, but again, they’re no innocents. The would-be assassins are fools, but they’re aware of what they do. All are caricatures, but all portray these caricatures so convincingly as to make them completely fleshed out and real. At the end, when all is revealed, they sit in a circle and are condemned to death. One feels more sympathy than they deserve, but that seems to be the whole point.