Troupe travels with ‘Shrew,’ ‘Cyrano’ in tow
Montana company bringing two plays to three outdoor venues
Montana Shakespeare in the Parks has been traveling the Western U.S. with its productions of the Bard’s great works since 1973.
This year the troupe is bringing two productions to area parks – one is Shakespeare, the other not – and it’s the first time the troupe has appeared in either Spokane or Sandpoint.
They’ll perform Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” today in Sandpoint and Sunday in Riverfront Park; their take on Edmond Rostand’s classic comedy “Cyrano de Bergerac” comes to Liberty Lake’s Pavillion Park on Saturday.
“All of our actors come from Chicago and New York, and our designers are in from across the country,” executive artistic director Kevin Asselin said from his office in Bozeman. “So there’s a great deal of effort placed into the overall aesthetic.”
Asselin directed this year’s take on “Shrew” (it was last tackled by the theater in 2005), and he’s transplanted the story from 16th-century Italy to 1870s Wyoming. Although the play has sometimes drawn criticism for Shakespeare’s portrayals of women, Asselin says he’s made a few twists to the formula that make the production more modern.
“ ‘Taming of the Shrew’ is lighthearted, though it does have some significant themes, especially for contemporary audiences in the way women are perceived,” he said. “My goal was to get the audience to view the play in a different light, which can be hard to do. But I feel like it works.”
“Cyrano,” which was directed by Si Osborne, is a more traditional production, although it has been trimmed for time (all of the troupe’s shows run less than two hours). Asselin says the premise of the play – a romantic with a comically large nose helps a more conventionally attractive dullard woo a beautiful heiress – is still duplicated and referenced because it still strikes a chord with audiences.
“Cyrano is the everyman,” Asselin said. “He’s identifiable because of his fight for love, his courage, his use of language. … We’ve found that over the course of the summer, ‘Cyrano’ has had as much of an impact as ‘Taming of the Shrew.’ ”
Montana Shakespeare in the Parks’ current season began in June, with the tour kicking off after two weeks of previews in Bozeman. That tour continues through early September, and by the time the season wraps, they’ll have put on 77 shows in five states.
“The mission has always been to bring live, professional theater for free to these communities in our region,” Asselin said. “Audiences are able to experience Shakespeare and other classics of the highest quality right in their backyards. The thing I love the most is the variety of generations that will come to enjoy both shows and will find them accessible and relevant.”