Art imitates life as Stephen Greenblatt and Charles L. Mee imitate Shakespeare (albeit in contemporary prose) in Cardenio, and while the playwriting duo’s take on the Bard’s mismatched-lovers comedies is a bit hit-and-miss, its City Garage debut is nothing if not a feast for the eyes.

Both the setting (Umbria, Italy) and the setup are classic Will.

Nagged by the thought that his newlywed bride Camila (Devin Davis-Lorton) will end up cheating on him, groom Anselmo (Anthony Sannazzaro) asks best man Will (Gifford Irvine) to seduce his wife “so that I will know if I can trust her.”

Though initially hesitant to accede to his friend’s request, Will eventually agrees to do as he’s been asked, though before said task can be accomplished, there are wedding toasts to be made and a wedding feast to be savored under sunny Italian skies.

First up at the dais is Camila’s unmarried sister Doris (Kat Johnston), who describes marriage as way for menstruating wives to manipulate their husbands with sexual favors in order that the menfolk will bring home blood-soaked dinners every night. (Ouch!)

Next up is Edmund (Jason Pereira), whose considerably longer toast has him revealing that he would find “more warmth and companionship in a homeless person’s shelter” than there is living with his wife Sally (Angela Beyer). (Ouch again!)

With toasters like these two sourpusses, it’s no wonder the sudden arrival of Anselmo’s parents (Martha Duncan as Luisa and Bo Roberts as Alfred) comes as a welcome if unexpected surprise, Camila’s in-laws having already celebrated the couple’s courthouse wedding in New York several weeks before.

Accompanying the older couple is Anselmo’s, Will’s, and Sally’s college friend Susana (Natasha St. Clair Johnson), a professional actress who’s been brought along to play opposite Will in an impromptu staged reading of Cardenio, a lost Shakespeare play that Luisa and Alfred will soon be appearing in back in the States.

And if things weren’t already made a bit more uncomfortable by three uninvited guests, they get even more so when Luisa explains the play’s plot:

“Cardenio, a young gentleman, is in love with the lovely and virtuous Luscinda. But then it turns out that his best friend Don Fernando has Cardenio called away on some business so that Don Fernando himself can seduce Luscinda.” (Ouch once again!)

All this is merely the start of Greenblatt and Mee’s frothy romp, one whose cast of characters is completed by a trio of Italians: housekeeper Simonetta (Loosema Hakverdian), carpenter Rudi (Troy Dunn), and chef Melchiore (Andy Kallok).

There is much to be savored in City Garage’s latest, and though I can’t help wishing that director Frédérique Michel had reined in a few of the performances (or that Rudi and Melchiore’s soliloquies hadn’t each gone on rather a bit too long for my tastes), the full-cast dance sequences Michel has choreographed to accompany a pair of scene changes are absolute delights.

There’s also some very good work being done on Charles Duncombe’s Italian countryside set, most notably by Beyer (who delivers some priceless “reaction shots”), real-life couple Duncan and Roberts as a couple of quintessential show people, Johnston’s embittered Doris, and Dunn’s molto spumante Rudi.

Best of all is the tall, dark, and handsome Sannazzaro, displaying effortless comedic panache as Anselmo while radiating the kind of charisma that had audiences swooning over Rupert Everett in My Best Friend’s Wedding.

And speaking of movies, you’d have to go back to the glorious saturated hues of 1940s/50s Technicolor to replicate the gorgeousness of the reds and blues and greens of Duncombe’s under-Umbrian-skies set and Josephine Poinsot’s festive costumes, designs that look even more resplendent under Duncombe’s vibrant lighting.

Holly Dunnigan is assistant director.

Though Cardenio as a whole may not add up to the sum of its parts (some which work quite marvelously, others not so much), it makes for a colorful, largely entertaining evening of lively live theater at City Garage.

City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica.
www.citygarage.org

–Steven Stanley
March 11, 2023
Photos: Paul M. Rubenstein

Tags: Charles L. Mee, City Garage, Los Angeles Theater Review, Stephen Greenblatt