Not the Bard at his best - the similar but simpler Winter's Tale works better. ASP squeezes the play into a reasonable two and a half hours (one intermission) by jettisoning the soothsayer and Posthumus's dream masque about his family (with the special cameo appearance by Jupiter) and making sensible cuts. Seven actors, all in white tops and trousers, zip about the carpeted performance space in stockinged or bare feet, sitting to the side and playing imaginatively deployed percussion instruments (including slide whistle) when not on stage. But characterization is also pared down, with Brooke Hardman a floppy, puppyish Innogen, De'Lon Grant an earnest Posthumus and a vainglorious Cloten (that's right, they're never on at the same time), Ken Baltin a blustering Cymbeline, Marya Lowry a vampy queen, and Risher Reddick a Pisanio who's not so different from his Arviragas. It's a little like watching Friends do Shakespeare; all the actorly histrionics give the play's pageantry and majesty short shrift. The Bard has seen much worse, of course. And if you want to see Cymbeline, time is not on your side.
Related:
Review: Johnny English Reborn, Review: Anonymous, Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC, More 
- Review: Johnny English Reborn
Like 2007's underrated Mr. Bean's Holiday, Johnny English Reborn, directed by Oliver Parker, improves on its unwatchable predecessor.
- Review: Anonymous
For most folks, if Shakespeare didn't write those plays, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Nor does it seem a likely topic for Roland Emmerich, whose films usually are about the end of the world.
- Les Misérables leads the charge at PPAC
I'm not sure whether Les Misérables is defiantly and respectably uncontrite as a melodrama or merely unabashedly so. Does this operatic musical rush with such defiant conviction across the mire of melodrama that it doesn't get stuck?
- The Gamm’s entrancing Hamlet
For many years, Tony Estrella is perhaps the strongest off-Trinity actor around here. One performance in particular — his 1997 Hamlet title role for Alias Stage — has had devoted theatergoers talking about it ever since.
- Interview: John Hodgman is pleased to serve
Brookline native, Apple pitchman, podcast host, and Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman has made a career out of hilarious pedantry.
- Los Campesinos! | Hello Sadness
"I've been digging my grave for quite some time," speak-sings Gareth Campesinos on his band's unrelenting fourth album.
- Review: Burke & Hare
Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are only faintly humorous as the titular team of assassins, Burke and Hare .
- Review: Tales from the Golden Age
The ironically titled film refers to the dreadful Alice-in-Wonderland years when Nicolae Ceausescu was the Communist strongman of Romania.
- Review: New Year's Eve
Lately Garry Marshall has shown a certain genius for turning miserable holidays into terrible movies.
- Raise the curtain
There's plenty of theater to keep us warm in Rhode Island through the winter. From the professional companies to the colleges, there are shows for every taste and mood.
- Meme forecast for 2012
When evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in 1976 — meaning "a piece of thought copied from person to person" — he probably didn't realize that, in time, the word would come to be synonymous with cat macros, various advice animals, and Rebecca Black.
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Doug Lockwood, Marya Lowry, Celtic, More
, Doug Lockwood, Marya Lowry, Celtic, WICKED, funny, British, Shakespeare, Actor's Shakespeare Project, Brooke Hardman, king, Less
