Linda Kelsey, familiar from "The Lou Grant Show" and other television appearances, proves to be an engaging stage presence in playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald's comic, feminist take on a couple of classic heroines. As cloistered academic Constance Ledbelly (an unnecessarily oafish name), she travels back in time to find out the truth about the women who played opposite Othello and Romeo, and discovers some truths about herself as well. MacDonald's play has always seemed to me more of a professorial tract than a comedy aimed at general consumption, but Wendy Lehr's broadly comic staging makes a good case for it as popular entertainment.
Kelsey is deftly comic in her frustrations and confusions as she becomes an object of desire in both Cyprus and Verona, especially when passing herself off as a young boy. All the other roles are shared among four actors, with the women having much the better of it.
Mary Frances Miller is a strong and well-spoken Desdemona as well as Mercutio (it's that kind of play), while Jennifer Paige skillfully evokes the willful and sexually rapacious Juliet of the playwright's imagining. The men, Michael Tezla and Bryan Schmeling, don't measure up in appeal or versatility, although Schmeling earns some laughs as a gay Romeo vying with his Juliet for the affections of the disguised Constance, and Tezla is suitably sleazy as her inconstant academic mentor.
The set by Joel Sass, a group of heavy seeming bookcases, proves surprisingly mobile as it is rearranged to provide a number of locales. The audience laughed loud and long at the play's plays on the words and situations of Shakespeare, and indeed, the production provided an entertaining evening of theater.
