Reviews
The Delaware News Journal
Raucous play combines Shakespeare, trailer park
12:22 AM, Apr. 5, 2011
Written by
BODEN DAY
Special to The News Journal
THEATER REVIEW
WHAT: "Shakespeare in the Trailer Park" by V. Mark Covington and Sharon Cacciabaudo
WHEN: Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.
WHERE: Barnstormers Theater, Ward and Tome streets, Ridley Park, Pa.
INFORMATION: 610-461-9969 or www.barnstormers theater.com
It's an Elizabethan afternoon and a raucous, rowdy, unwashed rabble is enjoying a raucous, rowdy, pratfall- and pun-packed Shakespeare comedy in London's Globe Theater.
Wait! Fast-forward. Now it's the raucous, rowdy, pratfall-, pun- and double-entendre-packed world premiere of V. Mark Covington and Sharon Cacciabaudo's uproarious cornpone comedy, "Shakespeare in the Trailer Park," now on the boards in Ridley Park's Barnstormers Theater.
This very clever cockeyed (three) witch's brew of bubble-bubble-boil and Southern discomfort is the Bard's rhythms and blank verse, reconstituted with the spot-on Southern twang of the raucous, rowdy, oversexed, beer-swilling -- and, of course, feuding -- denizens of the Montegue Hills and, yes, Capulet Acres rural trailer parks near Frog Level, Va.
Call this "Hee Haw" with depth, respect and heart. And the sheer goofiness of pastiches like Shakespeare's famed "I am a mere shadow of my former self," now proclaimed by the ghost of the extreme wide-bodied clan leader Cheese McBreath, work only because the play sits firmly on a well-drawn script and a better-than-adequate troupe directed by Wilmington's Marsha L. Amato-Greenspan.
Seven other Delawareans are involved, including scene-stealing Timothy Sheridan as a quivering, half-witted trailer park rent-a-cop; set and effects designer Mike Enyedy; and techies Steve and Peggy Fullett.
With the inevitable pink flamingo lawn ornaments, named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and groaners like, "Aye, there's the Vapo-rub!" this production needs only more consistent pacing and some first-act editing to be an even more rewarding and solid A-plus.
Barnstormers, America's third-oldest community theater group, is about a half hour from Wilmington.
A new spin on Shakespeare at Barnstormers Theater
Published: Thursday, April 07, 2011
By JIM RUTTER
Correspondent
Shakespeare stole or borrowed the plots and characters of most of his major plays. He then filled the stories with humor, philosophy and sex, both to suit his own personal tastes and the demands of his Elizabethan audiences.
V. Mark Covington and Sharon Cacciabaudo’s “Shakespeare in the Trailer Park,” now in a world premiere at the Barnstormers of Ridley Park, offers a funny, fitting homage to this tradition. The setting: a pair of warring trailer parks, Montague Acres and Capulet Hills, about to be invaded by the “many tectacled Wall of Mart.”
Here, the play weaves the storylines from “Hamlet,” “MacBeth” and “Romeo and Juliet” while throwing in one shady character from “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Tempest’s” titular storm. In this mash-up, the exiled Scotch MacBreath (Patrick D. O’Neill) returns home after a 10-year prison sentence for stealing old people’s false teeth. He encounters three “People of WalMart-” style witches, who promise him a future of riches, women and title. Well, at least as much as he can get from a double-wide kingdom.
But first, he must do away with his brother the “Danish King” Cheese MacBreath (David Palmer), Cheese’s revenge-driven son Hameo (Ted Kogut), and his rival, the “BBQ King” Macon Bacon (Bill Starcher). Each man takes his title from the appropriately named trailer trash industries - a donut shop and a barbeque stand. Instead of fighting with swords, they square off with spatulas and whisks.
Throw in a few allusions to the Romeo and Juliet story - Hameo pines for the rival park’s stripper - and a bumbling, daft security guard named Doughnut (Timothy Sheridan) and stir all of these in a pot full of Shakespearian intrigue, incest and possible parentage, and well, if you know the stories of “MacBeth” or “Hamlet,” you know the plot that “Trailer Park” follows.
Covington and Cacciabaudo lighten the journey by playfully mocking Shakespeare at every turn. The Bard’s grand turns of fate now boil down to the outcome of a NASCAR race. MacBreath and his clan suffer a genetic allergy to BBQ sauce, leading to wonderfully absurd rumors of “I hear he sauced himself” during a murder investigation.
The two playwrights deftly switch from iambic pentameter to blank verse while transforming some of Shakespeare’s best lines and speeches into wacky one-liners and apt zingers. Scotch explains his drunken behavior with, “I was so trashed I wouldn’t know a hawk from a hand saw;” Doughnut deplores the paucity of his welfare checks in rhymed couplet and the witches narrate each new arrival with variations of “By the itching of my bum, something greasy this way comes.”
At the Barnstormers, the production yields mild, though consistent laughter that doesn’t always capture the clever humor of the script and the more confusing sections of the play trip up the action. O’Neill, Starcher and Kogut ably manage the flippant delivery of rhymed verse but only Sheridan gambles his entire performance on the spirit this play demands. Every moment he’s on stage, the audience responds raucously.
And why shouldn’t we? Shakespeare knew what his audiences wanted and gave it to them. Opera caters to modern tastes with librettos based on Jerry Springer and Anna Nicole Smith. The Jersey Shore’s Pauly D as Hamlet? He could pull it off in this Trailer Park.
If you go: “Shakespeare in the Trailer Park” continues April 7-10 at the Barnstormers Theater, Ward and Tome streets in Ridley. Call 610-461-9969 or visit www.barnstormerstheater.com.
Stage Magazine
SHAKESPEARE IN THE TRAILER PARK…A Redneck Experience!
By
Lila Achuff
– April 3, 2011Posted in: Reviews
Hear ye! Hear ye! Cometh to the Barnstormers in Ridley Park, PA to enjoyeth Shakespeare as never before-eth. OK, enough of that-eth … I had to do one more. Readers, this is truly different. (I’m still snickering.) If you don’t mind the words and soliloquies of Shakespeare being butchered in this original “hillbilly” production, then go but don’t say I didn’t warn you. And make sure your sense of humor is on full volume. Actually, crazy as this might sound, it’s not a bad idea to go twice (ouch!) because some of the lines go by so quickly that you miss a lot while you’re still thinking, “Did I just really hear what I thought I heard?” In all this, throw in drinkin’ and a-cussin’ and a-fussin’ and spittin’ (oy!) and…no, do not bring the kids. Don’t even bring your parents! But you can bring your (almost) worst behavior. My guest found it all very, very funny. I really didn’t feel well so my sense of humor was still at home. (I have to blame my lack of laughter on something.)
David Palmer (Media/Springfield PA) Cheese MacBreath; Gina Valania (Glasgow DE) Wormseba; Cindy McHenry Starcher (Hockessin DE) Varmenta/Plumrose; and Nancy Kersey (Newark DE) Fishbate in Barnstormers Theater's production of SHAKESPEARE IN THE TRAILER PARK running through April 10 in Ridley Park, PA.
It’s cabaret seating and BYOB which I really didn’t believe when I first heard it. At intermission we were reminded to make sure we cleaned up after ourselves and take home our own “crap”! You heard it here, folks.
You’re familiar with “Macbeth”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Merchant of Venice” and “Hamlet”. Now bring your knowledge of these plays to Frog Level, Virginia where the trailer park of Capulet Hills is feuding with that of Montague Acres over which one will remain standing after a new Walmart will replace the property of the other. Meanwhile, their love for Nascar racing equals their hate for each other. Add to these beer guzzlin’ characters a southern drawl, beer bellies (ugh!), big-busted gals about to burst outta their costumes, very high heels and rag-tag clothing. No high culture experience here. Cans of beer are on ice in the washing machine. Where else? And there’s enough incest around to fill up a whole crossword puzzle…use your imagination!
One thing that might have been the foam on the beer for me might have been a hee-haw cloggin’ kind of dance. Why not? Get this! Two pink flamingos, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, played themselves. Ya gotta see it to believe it!
There was a Q ‘n A with the two writers of the play (V. Mark Covington and Sharon Cacciabaudo), along with the cast and director, Marsha Amato-Greenspan, which I found rather interesting. I liked hearing that even they find much impromptu acting occurring within the show that surprises them. The actors were pointing to the character of “Doughnut” (Timothy Sheridan) who excelled in this. I wasn’t surprised then that I considered him to be clever and gutsy in his “crazy” performance. When each company puts its own “twist” on things, then one can almost never quite know what to expect. Also, the writers remind us that in the Shakespearean era, plays were lengthy (up to four hours!) and were meant to be comical for the times.
Well, all my redneck friends, in this bawdy, naughty spoof of Shakespearean plays, “All’s well that ends well.”
Ya gotta love it!
Until the next show…
SHAKESPEARE IN THE TRAILER PARK
by V. Mark Covington and Sharon Cacciabaudo
Directed by Marsha Amato-Greenspan
April 1 – 10, 2011
Barnstormers Theater
402 Tome St
Ridley Park, PA 19078
610-461-9969
www.barnstormerstheater.com
