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The Worthy Master of the Law
NORTHERN LIGHTS The Chance Theatre brings bouncy, flouncy summer fun, fun, fun our way with its "Worthy Master of the Law" directed by Jocelyn Brown. Inspired by a medieval folklore classic immortalized in the French Renaissance under the title of "La farce de Maître Pathelin," Australian playwright [Mark] Scrivener rewrote the piece in the best of Shakespearian and Molière traditions in ... classical iambic pentameter. A tall order, but well suited to the highly stylized humoristic piece with its dual themes of cunning and naïveté. The central characters are a jocund and truculent Vulpes, a down and out "master of the law," played with bravura by Alan Hartung and his conniving wife, vixen Marguerite, a buxom shrew played with great alacrity by Alex Bueno. The two are out to "fleece" a greedy draper, the prominently nosed Jasper, aptly brought to life by Robert Davis. Simple spirited William, a cherubic shepherd in the person of Nicholas Anderson with his great natural locks, may have more wits about him than appears. The feeble minded and ailing bodied judge, John Reimer, completes the cast. Place and time are deliberately undetermined, but the set and costumes firmly establish the Comedia Del Arte period and style with bold, Harlequin-like patches, swatches and swaths. The premise works on multiple levels, with fun and puns poked at the foibles of the legal profession, without debasing to clichéed lawyer jokes, but rather by artful craftsmanship of words. On the most concrete level, this is about madness and reality, follie-à-deux and the resulting delusion when others plant their realities in the heads of others. Even today, the courts are mired and bogged down in convoluted wordiness, justice is routinely bought and misapplied, and smoke and mirrors screen facts - O.J. Simpson, anyone? Reflecting the current fiasco of corporate America's relentless greed, we see corruption and gullibility as two all-too human characteristics throughout the ages. And who has not at one point rationalized petty behavior? So let yourself be seduced by this merry romp -
by hook or crook! The morality of the story is the proverbial "Tel
est pris qui croyait prendre," or "He who laughs last will laugh
most."
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AOL DIGITAL CITY You've got to hand it to the Chance Theater for consistently
experimenting with plays that very few if any other venues would showcase.
With the world premiere of 'The Worthy Master of the Law,' they're truly
offering something unique. The focus of the play is on a shady lawyer
and the absurdity of the legal system -- subjects hardly innovative in
and of themselves. However, Australian playwright Mark Scrivener has composed
the entire piece in iambic pentameter, giving Shakespearean cadences to
his darkly comic vision. Jocelyn A. Brown, a veteran of many of the Chance's
prior plays, directs.
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