By Joel G. Fink, Director
Posthumus, an orphaned nobleman, has been brought up in the court of the British king, Cymbeline. The king’s daughter, Imogen, brought up as Posthumus’ playmate, has fallen in love with him and the two have been secretly married. Because of this Posthumus has been banished from Britain by the king. The king has a second wife, whose son, Cloten, wishes to marry Imogen. His mother, the queen, secretly plots to have her son become king. The Roman ambassador, Lucius, informs the king that because he refuses to pay tribute money to Rome, there will now be a war between the two countries.
In Rome where Posthumus goes in exile, he meets an Italian nobleman, Iachimo, who challenges him to a wager concerning Imogen’s chastity and fidelity to Posthumus. After much goading, Posthumous accepts the offer and Iachimo goes to Britain in order to seduce Imogen. When they meet, Imogen repels Iachimo’s advances, but he then pretends it was all a ruse to test whether she was as virtuous as Posthumous had said. He asks that she protect a chest full of precious gifts he has bought on his trip and unsuspecting, Imogen agrees to keep them in her bed-chamber. During the night, Iachimo, who has been hidden in the trunk, steals a bracelet that Posthumus has given her, and also notes intimate marks on her body while she sleeps. He returns to Rome and convinces Posthumus that Imogen has been unfaithful to him. Posthumous rages against women in general and Imogen in particular, and sends a message to his faithful servant, Pissanio, instructing him to lure her to the distant location of Milford Haven and to kill her.
Imogen, receiving a loving letter from Posthumous, leaves the court with Pissanio thinking she is going to meet Posthumous. When they are far from the court, Pissanio confesses the true nature of his mission, but will not do what Posthumous wants. Instead, he provides Imogen with men’s clothing and tells her to seek out Lucius, the Roman ambassador who has landed to declare war on Britain. He also gives her a packet that he got from the queen, which she told him was a healing potion. The queen thinks, however, that it is a deadly poison, although the audience already has been told it is only a sleeping potion. Pissanio tells her to become a page to Lucius and to let “time” work things out for her.
Now…this is where the plot gets really complicated!!!! Left alone, Imogen finds a cave and meets Morgan, and his two sons, Polydore and Cadwal. In reality, Morgan is Belarius, a soldier who had been loyal to Cymbeline, but had been banished by him on false charges of treason. The two boys are in reality Guiderius and Arviragus, the two sons of Cymbeline who Belarius had stolen in revenge when they were infants. Immediately the boys love Imogen, calling her brother, having no idea that she is really their sister. Still heart-sick at the betrayal of Posthumus, Imogen takes the potion that Pissanio gave her. The boys believe that she is dead and speak a funeral dirge over her body.
In the meantime—Cloten has come looking for Imogen. He plans to revenge himself by raping her while wearing Posthumous’ clothing. He meets Guiderius, challenges him to fight, but is killed and has his head cut off. Cloten’s body is laid out next to Imogen’s and when she reawakens and she sees the clothing of Posthumus, she thinks that it is his body, and that he has been betrayed by Pissanio and Cloten.
The war rages, and thanks to Belarius and the boys, Cymbeline’s forces have carried the day. Pothumus, who has come to Britain disguised as a Roman, is captured, as is Iachimo, the leader of the Italian forces. Lucius finds Imogen who is mourning over the body of Cloten (who she thinks is Posthumus), and he takes her into his service as a page.
Everyone finally winds up in the camp of Cymbeline. All of the plot tangles are resolved, Cymbeline declares a pardon for all, and everyone is reunited in a happy ending for everyone except Cloten and the queen!
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DIRECTOR'S CONCEPT
By Joel G. Fink
One of Shakespeare’s late plays, Cymbeline is often classified as a Romance. Along with Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, Cymbeline is a story that utilizes, in a new way, elements of comedy and tragedy that Shakespeare had explored in earlier plays. While all of these stories have happy endings, they involve loss and painful journeys towards redemption. Cymbeline is a play in which redemption is achieved through forgiveness and reconciliation.
Despite this rather somber sounding description, the Romances are filled with light, laughter, music and comedy. In Cymbeline, Shakespeare creates a fairy-tale world with separated lovers, evil step-mothers, magic potions, long-lost brothers and a happy ending. In Imogen, the heroine of the play, he also created one of his most complex and interesting characters.
Although ignored for many years, Cymbeline is enjoying a resurgence of productions around the world and in the wake of post-modern productions, it now seems much more cohesive and persuasively stage-worthy. George Bernard Shaw wrote of the problems of the play and particularly of its sprawling fifth act. Never a modest author, Shaw wrote his own ending for the play, which transfers the setting to the comfortable middle-class drawing room of may of his other works. While not taking this radical a route, I have reshaped the final portions of the play to help sharpen the focus and deepen the impact developed in the preceding scenes and acts. The strengths of the text are Shakespeare’s; I freely accept the weaknesses as mine.
On a personal note, it is wonderful to have the opportunity to return to the stage of The Colorado Shakespeare Festival with a production—especially one featuring the gifted students from The Theatre Conservatory, Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Audiences returning to CSF after last season will recognize the actress playing Imogen, Elizabeth Tanner, from the 2002 season’s productions of Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I am very pleased to have her return to CSF in this production, along with her talented colleagues from The Theatre Conservatory. My thanks to Richard Devin and the staff of The Colorado Shakespeare Festival for making this collaborative production possible. My thanks to the students and staff of The Theatre Conservatory for their work in bringing the play to the stage, and for teaching me so much about how it works in performance.
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DRAMATURGICAL ESSAY
By Todd Coulter, Dramaturg
“The Best Actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral…” or Failing that a Romance
Late in his career, Shakespeare wrote Pericles, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest which are often grouped under the collective heading “ Romances.” What distinguishes the plays as such is their peculiar resistance to be labeled as tragedies, comedies, or histories. When Cymbeline fist appeared in the folio of 1623 it was categorized as a tragedy whereas The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale were catalogued as comedies. It has been suggested that Cymbeline was listed as a tragedy because, “a play with a British king as its title character belonged to the more elevated genre of tragedy.” If scholars resist the genres of comedy, tragedy, and history where do we place these plays and in particular Cymbeline?
While the First Folio did not include the genre of Romance, it was a tradition well known in Elizabethan England. It is into this genre that critics place Cymbeline and the other later works. Recent scholarship has sought to reclaim these plays as a legitimate part of Shakespeare’s work rather than deviations from his norm. To achieve this, many argue that beginning with Pericles and culminating with The Tempest, Shakespeare began writing in a different genre, namely Romance. Shakespeare did not create this new genre; he simply employed it to write a different sort of play.
Romance is commonly defined as a play that express tragic, comedic, and even historical elements. Cymbeline and the other Romances do indeed mix these elements, but they do much more than resolve a tragic story comically or happily ever after.
To legitimize the Romances’ position in the cannon, scholars searched for common themes among the four plays. Norman Sanders suggests the plays, “all work repetitively with romance materials: large time-spans, riddles, shipwrecks, the strange loss and recovery of children, rural and court settings, extremes of characterization, happy endings embracing incipient tragedy, and so on.” Perhaps most intriguing of these characteristics are the themes of rediscovery and redemption. It is true that in all the romances past wrongs and recent trespasses are forgiven as lost children are reconciled with their parents.
Accepting this structure as an intrinsic part of the Romances, scholars have asked the question “Why?” Why does Shakespeare create such a fabricated and idealistic world in these four plays? Some look at Cymbeline, and the others, as biographical expressions of a middle aged author reconciling himself with the forces of nature and of course with his family. Expanding on the above listed characteristics, Sanders adds a list with a more personal tone. He asserts that Shakespeare was expressing, “ [an] all-embracing repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness, love, and peace; … [an] interest in the happy innocence of youth; the sense of maturity and wholeness.” All of this has made Shakespeare a, “sadder, wiser, and serene man.” Against this theory is the idea that Shakespeare consciously created idealistic environments mixed with tragedy, comedy, and history to allow for such promising and comforting scenes of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Whatever Shakespeare’s motivation was in the creation of the Romances we may never know. However, Cymbeline should be viewed as a celebration of forgiveness and reunion irregardless of Shakespeare’s intent. Perhaps he meant us to consider the absolute redemption and salvation in Cymbeline as an alternative to the worlds of tragedy, comedy, and history.
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CAST
Director/Dramaturg_________________________Joel Fink
Scenic Designers___________________________Joel Fink, Steve Kruse
Costume Designer__________________________Alison Heryer
Assistant Costume Designer___________________Angela Howard
Lighting Designer___________________________Richard M. Devin
Sound Designer____________________________Richard K. Thomas
Cast List
Cymbeline/Cornelius________________________Robert Colpitts
Posthumus/Cloten__________________________Will Hare
Imogen__________________________________Elizabeth Christine Tanner
Queen___________________________________Tahni DeLong
Pissanio__________________________________Robert Oakes
Lucius___________________________________Chris Dennis
Iachimo__________________________________Timothy W. Hull
Belarius/Philario____________________________Phil Canzano
Guiderius/Singer____________________________Taj McCord
Arviragus/Singer____________________________Zachary Ford
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BIOGRAPHIES
Joel Fink: Director, Scene Designer for Cymbeline
Dr. Fink is the Associate Dean of Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he serves as the Director of The Theatre Conservatory. For 14 years he served as the casting director for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. He has also directed and acted in numerous plays at CSF, most recently directing Edward III and a 1950s musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and playing the dual roles of Polonius and the Gravedigger in Hamlet. In Chicago, he has directed productions of The Cradle Will Rock, Dear Liar and The Sandbox, which were featured in the Chicago Humanities Festival; appeared in the Organic/Touchstone's production of Racing Demon; and directed Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, Candide, The Mandrake, The Beggar’s Opera and the world premiere of An Unkindness of Ravens at Roosevelt University. In addition, he is the author of numerous reviews and articles.
Robert Colpitts, Actor playing Cymbeline/Cornelius
Robert Colpitts received his BA in theatre from Stony Brook University (2001) in Stony Brook, N.Y., and is currently an MFA acting candidate at Roosevelt University (2004), located in Chicago, Ill. Roles at Roosevelt University include Senator Geoffrey Maddux in View of the Dome, Cymbeline/Cornelius in Cymbeline and Sir Timothy Bellboys in Penny for a Song. Mr. Colpitts is also a theatrewright, stage manager, sound designer, musician and director. (1 season)
Will Hare, Actor playing Posthumus/Cloten
Will Hare is a recent graduate of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts Theatre Conservatory, where he received his M.F.A in Performance. Chicago credits include Tony and Tina's Wedding, The Great Fire with Lookingglass Theatre (A Conservatory collaboration), and Milly's Orchid Show. T.V credits include The Wonder Years, Unsolved Mysteries, and commercials for Colgate and the Army. He is planning to take his successful one person show, Sinbad and the Eye of the Dinosaur, on the road this winter. (1 Season)
Elizabeth Christine Tanner, Actor playing Imogen
Elizabeth Tanner holds an M.F.A. in Theatre Performance from Roosevelt University, and has also studied at London's Royal National Theatre Studio. Ms. Tanner performed at CSF’s last season as Queen Margaret in Richard III and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Chicago credits include: Mrs.Peachum in Three Penny Opera, Imogen in Cymbeline, and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet. In 1997, Tanner received a Best Supporting Actress award for her work as Bananas in The House of Blue Leaves. (2 Seasons)
For a complete list of actor bios, please see the CSF 2003 program.
Artistic Staff:
Alison Heryer: Costume Designer for Cymbeline
Alison Heryer is a costume designer based in Chicago. She has designed extensively for Chicago based Redmoon Theater whose most recent production of Seagull premiered this spring in Chicago’s Steppenwolf Studio Theatre. Other Chicago credits include Lysistrata and Pan and Boone with Running With Scissors, World Set Free with the Steppenwolf Arts Exchange, Ache of the Arch with Hedwig Dances, and The Great Fire performed at Roosevelt University in conjunction with Lookingglass Theatre. Alison received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Costume Design and History in 2001 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. (1 Season)
Richard M. Devin: Producing Artistic Director/Lighting Designer, Cymbeline
Richard M. Devin is in his 23rd season as CSF’s lighting designer and his 14th year as producing artistic director. He moved to Boulder in 1990 from Seattle, where he served for 15 years as professor of arts management and design for the University of Washington and for six years as associate director and acting director of the UW School of Drama. He was managing director and lighting designer for Massachusetts’ Williamstown Theatre Festival for seven years and more than 60 productions. He is past president of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (North America’s association of design and production professionals in the performing arts) and has served for eight years on the board of the Boulder County Arts Alliance. He has also designed lighting for more than 40 productions during the last 23 seasons of CSF and has served as lighting designer for more than 200 productions at 33 of America’s regional theatres and in Hong Kong, Tokyo, off-Broadway and recently designed a production of The Comedy of Errors in Cairo with fellow CSF designers Stancil Campbell and Jeannie Arnold. This December, he received an award for Best Lighting Design for 2002 for a new adaptation by playwright/director Oscar Giner in Phoenix. He has served as consultant on stage equipment and architectural design on a dozen new or renovated theatre buildings. Mr. Devin received his MFA from Yale School of Drama and his BA in drama from the University of Northern Iowa. (22 seasons)
Richard K. Thomas: Composer, Cymbeline
Cymbeline marks the eighth score Richard K. Thomas has composed for CSF. Mr. Thomas recently designed the First International Exhibition of Theatre Sound Design and Music Composition at the 2003 Prague Quadrennial. He won the USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology) Herbert D. Greggs Award for outstanding journal article in 2002. Mr. Thomas is a professor and head of the Design and Technology Program at Purdue University (Ind.), a certified sound designer in IATSE Local 1, (New York), chair of the OISTAT (International Organization of Scenographers, Architects and Technicians of Theatre) Sound Working Group, and a member of the Board of Directors of USITT. (8 seasons)
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