Stage Door News
Stage Door News
[Mississauga ON, October 2014] Lope de Vega may well be the most famous classical playwright that Canadians never see. His life story is so vivid that it was recently adapted for a movie called The Outlaw. A 2008 production of his best known work, Fuente Ovejuna, was acclaimed as “one of the most exciting plays at Stratford this season” (Stage Door). But that was the first and only Lope de Vega play Stratford has ever produced, though more than 400 of his masterpieces survive!
Lope de Vega was born in the same year as Shakespeare, and based The Capulets and the Montagues on the same sources as the latter’s Romeo and Juliet. But amazingly, Lope’s version is a comedy which ends with not one but three marriages and in which (almost!) everyone survives! It’s the first of two unusual takes on the classic love story that are part of Theatre Erindale’s innovative “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” season for 2014-15. Directed by Mimi Mekler, the play has swordfights (by Daniel Levinson), dances (by Sarah Jane Burton), and loads of fresh and funny twists on situations you thought you knew – plus some you never dreamed of!
The Spanish Golden Age is acknowledged as one of the greatest periods of world theatre. Developing at the same time as the Elizabethan/Jacobean drama in England, the plays were written for very similar theatres. The reason Canadians see them so rarely is the problem of translation: despite the fabulous story lines, very few renditions of the dialogue in English are actable, let alone entertaining.
And that’s where Dakin Matthews comes in. Matthews is a popular TV character actor almost anyone in Mississauga would recognize, with nearly 30 movies to his credit. But he is also a Shakespeare expert who has played anyone from Falstaff to King Lear and dramaturged multiple productions in NYC for Shakespeare in the Park and Broadway (for example, Denzel Washington’s Julius Caesar). A few years ago, almost on a whim, he decided to start translating classical Spanish comedies. He even founded a small professional theatre company in California to produce them. And that is how The Capulets and the Montagues won the LA Critics Drama Award for Best Adaptation in 2010.
The day he finished shooting a Steven Spielberg movie with Tom Hanks in New York (after closing the musical version of Rocky on Broadway a month earlier), Matthews called up and asked if he could visit Theatre Erindale’s rehearsals. The answer was a resounding yes! For two days last week, he watched rehearsals, answered questions, coached Shakespeare and Musical Performance classes, and opened a window into both the world of the Spanish Golden Age and the world of American entertainment.
His The Capulets and the Montagues, unlike most other translations, follows the rhymes and rhythms of the Spanish original, Castelvines y Monteses. But – also unlike most others – Matthews’ characters speak in a lively contemporary language that is both hilarious and fully actable. It is so fluent that most of the rhymes seem to disappear until they are used to make a point, or a joke.
The show runs October 23rd to November 2nd at the Erindale Studio Theatre on the UTM campus. Single tickets are $12 or $18, and Memberships featuring one show free are still on sale. Parking is $6.00, and Mississauga Transit Routes 44 and 110 will take you to the campus. For further information, call the Box Office at 905-569-4369 or visit www.theatreerindale.com .
THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES
by Lope de Vega
Translated by Dakin Matthews
Directed by Mimi Mekler*
Choreography by Sarah Jane Burton*
Fight Direction by Daniel Levinson*
Stage Management by Kathryn Phillips*
You’ve never seen a Romeo or Juliet like this before!
Preview Oct 23; Opening Oct 24; runs Oct 25 and Oct 30-Nov 2
Thurs 7:30; Fri 8:00; Sat 2:00 & 8:00; Sun 2 Nov 2:00
$12.00-$18.00
Erindale Studio Theatre
(3 lights north of Dundas off Mississauga Road)
www.theatreerindale.com or 905-569-4369
2014-10-08
Mississauga: Theatre Erindale stages Lope de Vega's version of "Romeo and Juliet"