AYLI, rehearsal 6: MARRYING AUDREY (3.5), SET-UP (5.2)

Because your director is an idiot, he managed to schedule Audrey’s big scene on a night when Lily had a planned absence. Doh.

MARRYING AUDREY (3.3)

It’s always a question as to what Touchstone’s intentions are towards poor Audrey. There’s also the question of whether she’s stupid or just naïve — although either is fine. Amanda and I are leaning towards the idea that while his first impulse was simply to arrange a shoddy wedding in order to get laid (and “leave her hereafter”), he does stick with her and follow through with the actual wedding.

We’re also looking at Touchstone’s long bit about horns as a stand-up routine, actually bringing him downstage and hitting him with a spot. (The rest of the cast, called in from the lobby where they had been working to be our laugh-track, suggested adding a mic and a stool. Sure, why not?)

THE SET-UP (5.2)

Even just two rehearsals in, we’re starting to see the real people in the fairy-tale personæ that Shakespeare has given us.

The group’s work out in the lobby while I went through 3.3 paid off in many ways. Although we haven’t seen Oliver’s malevolent side from Act I yet, Chuck’s goofy in-love Oliver is such a 180° turn that even the most obtuse audience member will chuckle in disbelief.

While I wasn’t looking, the cast made the decision that Oliver has tumbled to the fact that Ganymede is a girl in disguise, though not that it’s Rosalind (whom he has never met). It’s funny by itself — he greets her as “sister” and means it, while his brother is still cluelessly putting airquotes around “my ‘Rosalind’” — but it also provides a small comic bit when Rosalind has a momentary panic when she thinks Orlando knows.

(Or, Mariel, and this just occurred to me — what if she’s thrilled he knows?)

I think one of the moments that will become an audience favorite is the moment when Rosalind realizes that Orlando can no longer pretend that Ganymede is the woman he loves. It’s over; the Temporary Autonomous Zone is beginning to come unraveled. She says she won’t bother him any longer “with words,” and she turns to leave. For one microsecond, we might think these two will not get together after all.

He’s leaving as well when she stops and launches her final plan: I’m a magician, and by Jove, by the end of the scene, we believe it.

One big change I made to the lobby choices was the section where Silvius explains what love is. They had played the scene with a lot of movement, a puppy pile of tangled emotions and unrequited love; I stripped it down to Silvius standing DC, simply and sincerely stating what love is while the others stood on the ramps behind him. It’s pretty effective.

Then, without their moving off the ramp, Rosalind gets into the center circle and begins her “incantations” to bring all right again in the final scene.

THE BIG SCENE (3.2)

Backtracking to go through the Rosalind/Celia scene from last night — again, a scheduling error on my part left out Embree — and again we found lots and lots that make these privileged, witty girls just regular people. My favorite moment? The squeals on “ORLANDO!”

Orlando’s love poetry is really, really awful.