Last Decemeber, San Diego’s Poor Players Theatre Company suddenly found itself a lot poorer. Artistic director Richard Baird had landed a plumb acting gig with the prestigious Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore. “” and Players co-founder Nick Kennedy wound up assuming the brunt of the blow. Not only would Baird be gone until October, Kennedy fretted; he also happens to be one hell of an actor.
“Richard was the core, no doubt about it,” he told a San Diego newspaper at the time. “I think it’s going to be extremely difficult to put out a product that’s as good as it has been.”
But that was then, and this is now. With all due and exhaustive respect to Baird, Kennedy said, his name is rarely mentioned at rehearsals. Poor Players has four new members, only one of whom is acquainted with Baird. And if you’ve seen the snazzy poster for the group’s upcoming “The Tempest,” you’d think the company’s abandoned Baird’s meat-and-potatoes take on Shakespeare for the priciest item at Mille Fleurs.
Think again.
“The Tempest,” opening Friday, Aug. 11, at Point Loma’s Westminster Theatre, means business as usual for the Players, a collection of ragtag iconoclasts who over the last five seasons have garnered a cult following and glowing critical acclaim. Remarkably, they manage to retain Shakespearean intent alongside their bare-bones irreverence toward Elizabethan custom (period garb is replaced with quasi-military motifs and lots of black; traditional oratorical flair concedes to modern idioms and a heavy emphasis on body type). No real trick to it, Kennedy said, once you consider that the breadth and simplicity to Shakespearean characters and stories leave lots of theatrical latitude.
And Poor Players’ signature austerities?
“This is going to be an extremely minimal production,” director Kennedy said. “To some degree, the spectacle is understandable when you’re dealing with the kind of people you are (some, in fact, are superhuman, while others are invisible). But it’s really a very fundamental [piece], and I think that [takes precedence] over the spectacle.”
Prospero (Neil MacDonald) lives on a remote island off Italy, exiled by his scheming brother and the King of Naples. He and the spirit Ariel (Jen Meyer) shipwreck these conspirators, who in turn hatch a plan to murder Prospero. Meanwhile, Ariel’s genuine concern for the victims eventually weighs in the balance as she appeals to Prospero in their behalf.
The upshot is a tale of forgiveness, Kennedy said. Shakespeare doesn’t pontificate about such lofty qualities, he added; each character, he said, is free to interpret the relative value of such redemption for himself. “What these characters believe is the truth,” he explained.
The nonprofit Poor Players was founded in September of 2001, with Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” as its first production. The incalculable violence in “Titus” has led critics to compare it with today’s slasher films “” and the parallel wasn’t lost on the company. Ever since, it has sought to portray Shakespeare’s plays as modern commentary, contending that the human condition is fundamentally unchanged since Shakespeare’s day.
In October, the group will depart its Shakespeare-intensive agenda for the first time, with a production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” The playwright may be different, but Hedda’s character is ideal Poor Players material. She’s a larger-than-life victim of circumstance, driven by the same murky ideologies as the typical Shakespearean central figure. Poor Players thus remains in its element since the last trace they left for us (a series of staged readings last winter featuring Baird) “” its theater involves less a glimpse of Shakespeare’s world than a penetrating view of our own.
“The Tempest” runs Aug. 11 through 13 at Westminster Theatre, Westminster Presbyterian Church, 3598 Talbot St. in Point Loma. Tickets are $10 and $15. The show continues at New World Stage, 917 Ninth Ave. downtown, Aug. 17 through 27, with an admission of $15. All tickets are available at 619-255-1401.
