In ancient Greece, the Satyr Plays lay somewhere between the ever-popular comedies and tragedies. These early forms of farcical-satire took well-known, dramatic stories and infused them with overtly sexual, scatological humor, often filled with slapstick and visual puns. Short and humorous, the Satyr Plays not only lightened the mood between the bleaker dramas of their time, they also cast a satirical and sometimes audacious view on stories and subjects that were taken quite seriously socially. Though hundreds of Satyr Plays were likely written during the heyday of Greek theater, only one, Euripides’ Cyclops, has survived.
I was assigned to read Cyclops in a theater history class and in all honesty, I was reluctant to do so. I was assuming that what was considered funny and bawdy thousands of years ago would come across as tame and dull to a modern reader. To my surprise, the material turned out to be just as irreverent and over the top as any adult comedy found in film or television today. With Cyclops I learned an important lesson; penis and poop jokes have always been funny and what’s more, they will always be.
Contemporary playwright David Ives’ new, all-verse-“translaptation” of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 play The Heir Apparent is very aware of these facts, as is the creative team behind International City Theatre’s current production of it. Although the relentlessness of the play’s perpetual rhymes and the onslaught of puns (some smile- winning, some groan-inducing) may at times feel a bit laborious, a dedicated cast, some fantastic production design and a confident directorial turn by Matt Walker provide an entertaining, if not particularly enlightening night of theater.
Jean-Francois Regnard’s plays were wildly popular in his time, but unlike Molière (the most famous of the early French comedic playwrights) Regnard’s work has mostly been forgotten. Ives’ translation of Heir Apparent has great fun with its source material, cleverly rhyming enough turns of phrase to make any hip-hop artist envious, and sprinkling his text with enough modern references to keep his audience on their toes. For all his clever artifice, he never lets the material’s darker themes of greed and selfishness come to light long enough to register profoundly, a fact that keeps his Heir in a sometimes curiously similar tone.
In case you haven’t been able to intuit it yet, Heir Apparent is not a deep-reaching character study, nor is it a complexly plotted parable; in fact, its plot is rather simple:
Geronte is a rich old man who is just as stingy as he is ailing. Ill tempered and selfish, he has yet to write out his will, a matter that has caused a great deal of distress amongst those closest to him. His nephew Eraste is his proper heir, but due to either sheer tenacity or perhaps a longing to give the world a final goosing, Geronte continues to keep his fortune and its future dispersal to himself. With the help of Geronte’s servant Crispin and his fiancee Lisette, Eraste must get his uncle to entrust him with his fortune or else he will continue a penniless existence and will never be allowed to marry the love of his life.
What makes The Heir Apparent enjoyable is clearly not this pedestrian plot, but rather the opportunities for laughs the plot provides. In the execution of these integral elements, the production at ICT certainly delivers.
All of the cast is clearly up for the task, unafraid to be silly, strange or ridiculous as the material demands and for the most part functioning as a strong and unwavering whole.
Strangely, however, only one cast member, Paige Lindsey White as Lisette, manages to come across as a real human being beneath the clown facade. Joining the team halfway through rehearsals when the previous Lisette left to star in TV’s Orange Is The New Black, I wonder what effects her subtle depth of character would have had on the rest of the cast over the course of a full rehearsal period.
Matt Walker’s direction is mostly sure footed and he manages to keep the pace brisk and the mood light. The action is always clear and in spite of the material being a bit over-long and routine in its formulas, he manages to find new elements to keep our attention just as that attention finds room to wane. My only real criticism lies in the mishandling of some of Heir Apparent’s subtext with heavy handed jokes overplayed for laughs and underlying social commentaries and human conditions often brushed over. All in all, these criticisms are minor in a play more cartoon than reality.
Emphasizing that bright and theatrical world are Christopher Scott Murillo’s giddy pastel study of a period parlor and Kim DeShazo’s lovingly over the top costumes, some of the more sumptuous work I’ve seen at ICT in recent memory.
Aside from witty wordplay, The Heir Apparent finds most of it’s humor in the timeless acts of shitting and fucking. As banal and tired as that may seem, these fraternal twins are are two of the greatest, constant reminders that we are alive. Your personal taste for indulging in a high-brow Bacchanalia of these very base and human needs are likely to determine whether or not The Heir Apparent will be something you enjoy. It remains, regardless of its shortcomings, a celebration of our own and proves yet again that the Greeks, those thousands of years ago, were likely more accepting of our mortality than we.
The Heir Apparent runs through July 12th at the International City Theatre, located at 300 East Ocean Boulevard.