IWU's TREASURE Brings History Alive (Including Its Seamy Underbelly)

Tim Slover's Treasure, in performance through Saturday at Illinois Wesleyan University's E. Melba Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre, illustrates exactly why history matters. It may seem like dusty data from crumbling pages, but the issues, the choices, the drama is oh-so-very current as it unfolds.

Treasure is all about Alexander Hamilton, a familiar name from the early days of the United States of America, from the time when a new nation was finding its way and forging a path for its future. Who would decide what America would be? Would it be Federalists like Hamilton who wanted a strong central government based on a national bank and national debt, strong manufacturing and tariffs? Or Jeffersonians, who wanted power to remain in the South with its rural and plantation-based economy? In the play, Hamilton tells us that his primary concern is money, as the first Secretary of the Treasury in American history, as well as someone who himself came from nothing but traded on his intelligence and insight to carve out a position at the top of the heap in American politics.

Hamilton wants opportunity for everyone through manufacturing, so that hard work and brain power will mean more than family name or inherited wealth.

North vs. South, Industrialists vs. Landowners, Bootstraps vs. Inheritance, National power vs. State's Rights, the 1% vs. the 99%... It couldn't be more current, could it? And while the arguments about who is right and who is wrong to lead America may form the crux of the debate, what turns everything upside-down is not political ideals, but personal weakness. Like so many other politicians, Hamilton thought his personal life -- and marital infidelity -- couldn't touch his political reputation. And he was very, very wrong.

Treasure works as a piece of dramatic literature because Slover was careful to build the tension and to weave the larger issues into Hamilton's personal story. Director Michael Cotey gives his young cast -- three sophomores, a junior and two seniors in Illinois Wesleyan's School of Theatre Arts -- the tools to home in on the story, to communicate the complicated theories of wealth and governance by focusing on the characters and their conflict instead. Treasure is staged in the round inside the Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre, a tricky proposition in any space, but here it serves to keep the action right in front of you.

Zachery Wagner has the profile for Hamilton, a handsome man as you can tell from your ten-dollar bills, and he also does well with the hard intelligence that bound Hamilton to his principles even as it blinded him to his own failings. He is well-matched by Elizabeth Albers as Betsy Hamilton, his loyal wife, who has spirit and a mind of her own. When push comes to shove and tempers fly inside the Hamilton marriage, Wagner and Albers do their best work.

On the political side of the equation, Elliott Plowman is an audience favorite as Frederick Muhlenberg, the Lutheran pastor who was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives and someone who found himself on both sides of the Congressional conflict, here offered for comic relief,  and Steven Czajkowski is a little scary as future president James Monroe, the villain of the piece, who is willing to lie, cheat and manipulate muckrakers to get what he wants, which is keeping all the nation's wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

The other villains are more low-rent, with Nick Giambrone as a thug named James Reynolds who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, and Anna Sciaccotta as his wife, Maria, who looks sweet and pitiful, but plays both sides of the game extremely well. Playing the bait in a blackmail trap, Sciaccotta negotiates the turns in Maria's motives nicely.

Sydney Achler's scenic design is simple -- a rug or two, a desk, a chair -- but effective, and Laura Gisondi's lighting design enhances the mood and shifts scenes appropriately.

I hope today's students who know nothing of Colonial America, who think the 21st Century Tea Party and state's rights demagogues either sprang up out of nowhere or reflect the beliefs of our Founding Fathers, will pay attention to what's really happening underneath the sex scandal in Treasure, where ambition, greed, carelessness, righteousness, honor, betrayal and potential (the words in Cotey's director's note) and a fight for America's future lie.

TREASURE
By Tim Slover

E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre
Illinois Wesleyan University

Director: Michael Cotey
Scenic Designer: Sydney Achler
Costume Designers: Kelsey VonderHaar
Lighting Designer: Laura Gisondi
Sound Designer: Michael Cotey

Cast: Zachery Wagner, Elizabeth Albers, Elliott Plowman, Nick Giambrone, Anna Sciaccotta and Steven Czajkowski.

Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes including one 15-minute intermission

Remaining performances: November 1 and 2 at 8 pm

For reservation information, click here.

Alexander Hamilton Exposed in TREASURE at IWU, Opening Tomorrow

What do you know about Alexander Hamilton? Founding father, on the ten-dollar bill, mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr... That's about all I know, although the ten-dollar bill thing reminds me that he was the first Secretary of the Treasury in the new United States and created the foundation for the nation's entire financial system.

Tim Slover's play Treasure, opening on Halloween night at Illinois Wesleyan's E. Melba Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre, takes a more personal look at Alexander Hamilton, focusing on his marriage and the political ambition -- as well as the sex scandal -- that almost ruined it.

In the IWU press release for the show, guest director Michael Cotey compares Hamilton to the likes of President Bill Clinton, saying, “Treasure dramatizes the United States’ first political sex scandal... Our history is full of ambitious politicians who have tested the fates with their own indiscretions.”

And it wasn't just that Hamilton had a fling while he was married and while he was at the height of his political power under George Washington. Hamilton had the bad fortune -- or bad taste -- to pick one Maria Reynolds, who had been married to a ne'er-do-well named James Reynolds since she was 16, as the partner in his transgression. Hamilton's and Mrs. Reynolds' sex-on-the-side arrangement lasted some three years, and during most of that time, her husband was blackmailing Hamilton, threatening to expose the affair. If you watch a lot of movies or television shows about con artists, you might recognize this sort of thing as a long form of the badger game.

Reynolds was also involved in other nefarious schemes, including counterfeiting and a scam involving speculation on unpaid wages to veterans. He used his leverage over Hamilton to keep himself out of trouble for those offenses, but some of the Secretary of the Treasury's political rivals found out, anyway, and Hamilton was accused of being a participant in the veterans' wages scheme. Hamilton eventually admitted his relationship with Maria Reynolds and published a very long defense with a very long title -- Observations on Certain Documents contained in Nos. V. and VI. of The History of the United States for the Year 1796, in which the Charge of Speculation against Alexander Hamilton, late Secretary of the Treasury, is fully refuted -- with all kinds of detail about his illicit love affair.

That scandal put all kinds of pressure on Elizabeth Hamilton, his wife, and severely damaged Hamilton's reputation on all fronts. It also created a dandy little story about how the world worked behind the scenes in the early days of American politics, one which playwright Tim Slover digs into in Treasure.

For IWU, Zach Wagner will portray Alexander Hamilton, with Elizabeth Albers as Elizabeth "Betsy" Hamilton, and Anna Sciaccotta as Maria Reynolds, the "other woman." Others in the cast include Nick Giambrone as James Reynolds, Steven Czajkowski as James Monroe, and Elliott Plowman as Reverend Frederick Muhlenberg, the first Speaker of the House.

Director Michael Cotey comes to Illinois Wesleyan from Milwaukee, where he was Founding Artistic Director of Youngblood Theatre Company. Cotey's directing credits include The Comedy of Errors at last summer's Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and he also worked as an actor at the ISF in The Taming of the Shrew and Titus Andronicus.

For ticket information, click here or call 309-556-3232 for the IWU School of Theatre Arts Box Office.

COMEDY OF ERRORS Is Fast on Its Feet at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival

Kevin Rich (L) and Jordan Coughtry appear in The Comedy of Errors

The last time we saw Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors on stage at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, one actor played each of the play's two sets of twins. If that sounds confusing, let's just say that Shakespeare wrote the play to include two sets of identical twins who were separated at birth. The twins not only look exactly alike, but bear the same names. And they've never seen each other because during a storm at sea, Dad, one Egeon, split them up, so that one of his twin sons was lashed to Mom and one to him, along with one tiny twin servant child attached to each son. Fast forward to the current day, when we find two masters named Antipholus, one who has been living in Ephesus and one in Syracuse, and two servants named Dromio, with one Dromio in Ephesus, attached to that Antipholus, and the other in Syracuse, attached to that Antipholus. And in those two sets of identical twins lies most of the play's Comedy as everybody mistakes one for the other and comedic hijinks ensue involving gold, dinner, doors, infidelity and knocking about. The Errors, or the mistaken identities, furnish the farce.

Most productions use four actors to fill those roles, employing costumes, wigs, makeup, fake noses, what have you, to make the Antipholi and the Dromii resemble each other. In 2006, when director Chuck Ney helmed Comedy for the ISF, he used a single actor to play both separated-at-birth masters and a single actor to play both separated-at-birth servants. As I said in my review at the time, "The biggest challenge...is for the actors playing Antipholus and Dromio, who have to race on and off stage and remember to change their headgear and accessories as well as their personae every time they re-enter. The Comedy of Errors is already a fast-paced farce, but singling Antipholus and Dromio turns it into a foot race."

The current Illinois Shakespeare Festival production, under the direction of Michael Cotey, goes for a middle ground. In this production, opening July 12, Cody Proctor and Jordan Coughtry appear as Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse, respectively, while Kevin Rich stands alone, playing both Dromios. Yes, that's right. The last time we saw Comedy of Errors here, there were two actors covering the two sets of twins, the norm is four, and this time, there are three, just to mix things up.

Rich, who is also the Artistic Director of the Festival, is skilled and confident switching hats between Dromio 1 and Dromio 2, mining the comedy quite nicely, and actually building the laughs based on the fact that he is just one while his characters are two. Letting us in on the trick and acknowledging the absurdity makes the material even funnier.

Over in Antipholus territory, Coughtry and Proctor navigate their individual twins just fine. The only problem is that the actors don't really look that much alike. Comedy of Errors already requires audience members to not just step over the threshold of disbelief, but take a flying leap, what with all the coincidences at every turn. For the mistaken identity premise to fly, it would be nice if there were headgear or at least hairdos to help out the actors, so that the characters don't seem quite so silly when they mix up who's who.

Based on Fred M. Duer's bright Kismet scenic design and Juja Rivera Ramirez's slinky Thief of Bagdad costumes, this Comedy of Errors seems to be going for an Old Hollywood take on an Arab setting. Douglas Fairbanks comes to mind as a model for Coughtry's Antipholus, while I kept thinking of Miriam Hopkins when I looked at Nisi Sturgis's charming Luciana. Sturgis gives Luciana a more specific personality than the character usually gets, which serves to enliven her part of the plot. I also enjoyed the inclusion of vendors (Kelsey Bunner, Martin Hanna, Michele Stine and Arif Yampolsky, each manning a wagon) set around the edges of the action to provide sound effects and double takes.

Coming in at just two hours, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival Comedy of Errors is fast on its feet and a definite audience-pleaser.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
By William Shakespeare

Illinois Shakespeare Festival
The Theatre at Ewing

Director: Michael Cotey
Costume Designer: Juja Rivera Ramirez
Scenic Designer: Fred M. Duer
Lighting Designer: Sarah EC Maines
Sound Designer: Shannon O'Neill
Stage Manager: Sarah G. Chanis
Vocal Coach: Krista Scott

Cast: David Hathway, Carlos Kmet, Kelsey Bunner, Martin Hanna, Michele Stine, Arif Yampolsky, Preston "Wigasi" Brant, Eva Balistrieri, Cydney D. Moody, Amanda Catania, Cody Proctor, Thomas Anthiny Quinn, Kraig Kelsey, David Fisch, Lindsay Smiling, Joe Faifer, Allison Sokolowski, Jordan Coughtry, Kevin Rich, Andrew Voss, Nisi Sturgis and Wendy Robie.

Running time: 2 hours, including one 15-minute intermission.

Remaining performances: July 12, 16, 20, 23, 26, 28 and 31; August 4, 6 and 8.

For ticket information, click here.

Please note that the performance of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival production of The Comedy of Errors which I attended was a preview, which the Festival treats as a final dress rehearsal. Over the years, I have at times written about productions based on dress rehearsals or preview performances if there was some reason I was unable to attend the official opening night. As with any production, my remarks reflect the specific performance I saw, which in this case was a preview.