Thrive Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA, and: Twelfth Night Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Thrive Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA, and: Twelfth Night Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA Noel Sloboda Thrive Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA. 8 July–7 August 2022. Written by LM Feldman. Directed by Larissa Lury. With Annie Fang (Jean 4/La Giraudais), Eli Lynn (Jean 3/Prince), Jasmine Eileen Coles (Jean(ne) 5/Aotourou/Jean(ne)-as-Commerson), Jihan Haddad (Jeanne 1), Marcel Mascaro (Commerson/Commersonas-Jean(ne)), and Meg Rodgers (Jeanne 2/Bougainville). Twelfth Night Presented by the American Shakespeare Center at the Blackfriars Theater, Staunton, VA. 9 June–6 August 2022. Directed by Jenny Bennett. With Annie Fang (Sebastian/Malvolio), Eli Lynn (Orsino/Toby), Jasmine Eileen Coles (Maria/Antonio/Valentine), Jihan Haddad (Viola/Cesario), Marcel Mascaro (Olivia/Aguecheek/Curio), and Meg Rodgers (Feste/Fabian). [End Page 178] Click for larger view View full resolution Jeanne 1 (Jihan Haddad), Jean 3 (Eli Lynn), and Commerson (Marcel Mascaro) in Thrive, dir. Larissa Lury. American Shakespeare Center (ASC), 2022. Photo by Anna Kariel Photography, courtesy of the ASC. Run in repertory, LM Feldman’s new play Thrive and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night were promoted by the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) as being in conversation with one another. The former script won the 2020 Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries contest, sponsored by the ASC, which has the stated mission of recognizing new dramatic work that relates to Shakespeare. On the surface, Thrive and Twelfth Night do feature several parallels that might invite conversation. Both center upon young women who journey to foreign shores by sea. Along the way, they are compelled to disguise not only their gender but also their thoughts, passions, and accomplishments, all while navigating a variety of threats as strangers in strange lands. Both plays look critically at love conventions, particularly as defined by gender norms. Yet in watching Thrive and Twelfth Night, I found their overlapping threads at best loosely woven together. Far more satisfying to contemplate than any hypothetical exchange between playwrights were the many effective choices made by the artists involved in Thrive and Twelfth Night as they collaborated—sometimes masterfully—to bring these two productions to life, all while displaying a remarkable breadth of individual talent. Thrive centers on Jeanne Baret, an eighteenth-century (1740–1807) French herbalist. She was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe [End Page 179] over the course of many years, though her feat was not widely recognized until late in her life, when she received a pension from France’s Ministère de la Marine. Given the times, Baret had to disguise her sex even to set foot on a ship, posing as a valet—ultimately at tremendous cost. Though she had working-class roots, she rubbed shoulders at sea with scholars, doctors, adventurers, and aristocrats. To say the least, Baret was complex, and to showcase her layers, each of the performers in Thrive took a turn playing the character during a different phase of her life. We started with one Baret (Jihan Haddad) in Burgundy, where she was born, then followed another (Meg Rodgers) to Paris, before still another (Eli Lynn) went to sea, where she continued to evolve, honing her skills as a naturalist and her passion for discovery. Diversity in race and gender among the cast added to the character’s richness and indeterminacy. Sometimes Baret’s name changed as well to variations such as Jean or J.J. Yet it was primarily the rotation of distinctive actors, who made their trade-offs of the lead role conspicuous, that revealed how Baret developed, often as a consequence of persevering through adversity. Interestingly, the change in actors being (and becoming) Baret under the direction of Larissa Lury meant that parts of the character were always disappearing. After a fashion, this aligns with the historical record, not only because of Baret’s propensity for disguise, but also because she left behind no firsthand account of her experiences. What we have of her story comes from witnesses to her adventures, all of whom provided incomplete, sometimes unreliable accounts. Still, Feldman’s primary concern was to create a...