CYMBELINE CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER
WHEN Through 11/11: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM
The Princess Club
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For Barbara Gaines, who’s staged Cymbeline twice before, the answer appears to be “more is more.” Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s luxurious space and technical capabilities allow her to paint a bold, silly cartoon that occasionally threatens to cross the line from crowd-pleasing to pandering and sometimes steamrollers the work’s rare but welcome moments of melancholy. But then what place does subtlety have in a story that features a larger-than-life deus ex machina, Jupiter complete with thunderbolt descending from the heavens astride an eagle?
Chaon Cross’s winsome Imogen and Joel Hatch’s decent Pisanio are the only characters who have anything resembling an inner life, and their quiet moments together help ground this dizzy carnival of contrivances. As Imogen’s siblings, Stephen Louis Grush and Derrick Trumbly offer models of manly courage and honor that stand in stark contrast to vile Cloten (overplayed to annoying perfection by Brian Sills) and self-pitying Posthumus (Joe Sikora, who somehow pulls off the character’s lightning-fast switch from spousal devotion to murderous rage). Larry Yando’s performance as Cymbeline doesn’t really take off until the second half; he’s at his best reacting bemusedly to the unfolding coincidences and unmasked identities of the play’s conclusion.
