Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage

A Songplay by
Banana Bag & Bodice
Co-Artistic Directors: Jason Craig, Jessica Jelliffe

With Jason Craig (Beowulf), Rick Burkhardt (Academic 1), Jessica Jelliffe (Academic 2), Lisa Clair (Academic 3), Anna Ishida (Warrior Vocals), Shaye Troha (Warrior Vocals), Brian McCorkle (King Hrothgar)

Grendel is a monster who lives at the bottom of a lake, with his mother no less, and, perhaps predictably, terrorizes everyone under the sun, until a great hero, Beowulf, comes along to set things straight. As though one monster were not enough, in short enough order, after confronting Grendel, Beowulf also has to deal with a dragon.

Just over two centuries ago, Charles Lamb and his sister, Mary Lamb, produced Tales from Shakespeare, a lovely rendering of the stories of the plays of the Bard unsullied by their complicated rhetorical twists and poetic turns. They were intended as introductions to the plays for children and hoped to introduce some of their language and themes while still being easy and accessible.

Since Diane Paulus took over as artistic director several years ago, the American Repertory Theatre has been busy presenting at regular intervals, in a similar vein, light versions of various classics, embellished with dance, suspenseful staging, and music. Though not specifically for children, they are obviously intended to make the classics fun and entertaining for those who might want a taste of culture without being obliged to take in a ten course meal of it.

During her first season, Paulus set up an abandoned school in Brookline with dozens of rooms staging various pieces of Macbeth. There was very little verbiage in the production, but the hordes of entertained attendees got to wander from room to room and piece together parts of the tragic tale, making the production of Sleep No More a huge hit, particularly among twenty-somethings, some of whom would go back for the fun multiple times.

During that first season, as well, Paulus initiated The Donkey Show at the Oberon Theater, which, due to its popularity, has run pretty much ever since, a local echo of that dramatic Methusalah, The Mousetrap on the West End. It is a cabaret-disco version of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream that conveys something of the story of the play while engaging the audience in a participatory evening of dance and revelry.

The current production by Banana Bag & Bodice, sponsored at the Oberon Theater by the American Repertory Theatre, continues this alternatively entertaining approach to the classics.

In a poke at the ribs of the proximate ivy covered halls, the context of the telling of this tale involves three characters initially posing as academics who muse about the relevance of such epics in the contemporary world. With modest jesting, they then lead the action forward and things begin to open up. As though Alice had fallen down another rabbit hole, an intellectual discussion of Beowulf, transforms into a dramatic enactment of it, engulfing and overcoming the identities of the academics in successive waves.

Quite soon, the two Warrior Vocalists show up and start pounding out, with the able assistance of the onstage band, a punctuated and ferociously driving narrative supplement to the action.

None of the enunciated verbiage takes direct leave from the poetry of the original, but veers towards the gruff and blunt, with a punk-like core embellished by a whole variety of musical influences, including Kurt Weill and Klezmer tunes. It is a rousing, kill the giant and the monster, story, but without the more subtle aspects of the telling. Since Beowulf does not have the plot intricacies of Shakespeare, the distillation of the story from the poem yields a fairly straightforward brew. Though zippy and energizing, when all is said and done one might as well be watching a Norse version of Jack And The Beanstalk.

It is all quite entertaining as long as one does not expect too much resemblance to the inner aesthetic of Beowulf and as long as one can abide the punky roughness of the production.

The music and lyrics are not what one would call witty or inspired, but they are energetic enough to keep one’s attention. The name of the game in appreciating this evening is keeping a light touch. Much as with the other light classics at the ART, this requires just letting go of expectations and taking what comes on its own terms.

There is some curiosity to the use of the name “Beowulf” for a production of this sort since it generates epic expectations and delivers a punchy short story in its place. The subtitle “A Thousand Years of Baggage” gives a clue that there is some trippiness in this interpolation, but the grand title tends to trump the clue.

From the epic showbiz angle, however, if one were to imagine the troupe of players out of Hamlet doing an entertainment of a classic myth in the twenty-first century, this kind of performance might be it. Those players in Hamlet were much more interested in language and articulation than is this production, but they did know what entertainment was all about.

There are some fun surprises in the casting of this show as it develops and that becomes an entertainment in itself.

The evening is set up cabaret style, so one can sit at a table and have a drink while the show unfolds. It only runs about an hour and twenty minutes, however, despite the extended length of the original classic, so don’t sip at too leisurely a pace.

– BADMan