Ask Australia

Walking into Western Washington University’s Performing Arts Center you know you are in for a treat. Their commitment to performing new works, works with diversity, and classics truly establishes an interesting environment to be in. Their final main stage show for the 2015-2016 season was part of the classic genre: “As You Like It”, the romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, directed by Evan Mueller.

I know what you are probably thinking. Either you hear the mention of the playwright and you go running or the hills, or you flock like honeybees to the hive that is Shakespeare. For me personally, I am not in shape but I sure like to pretend. Going to see “As You Like It” wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do with my Thursday night, but when the show ended my mind had been completely changed.

The story is your typical Shakespeare. Orlando and Oliver de Boys are brothers who hate each other for apparently no real reason. After a fight, Orlando hears his life is in danger and he escapes into the Forest of Arden.

Rosalind and Celia are cousins who double as the ideal best friends, but Rosalind’s father, Duke Senior, was banished by Celia’s father, Duke Frederick. Duke Frederick has some anger issues and banishes Rosalind, who has fallen in love with Orlando. Celia goes with Rosalind, both disguised, into the Forest of Arden, where they come across Orlando. Except Orlando doesn’t know it’s the cousins because Celia is dressed as Aliena, a shepherdess, and Rosalind is dressed as Ganymede, a man. “Ganymede” teaches Orlando how to love Rosalind better. The rest of the play is filled with characters comically falling in love with each other and trying to be the best lovers they can.

The set was beautifully eye-catching. Instead of using rectangular panels to show different places, large circular panels created a distinctive and dynamic visual. The panels had what appeared to be watercolor painted trees on them. The watercolor effect was very unique, looking almost like methodically spilled coffee.

Keeping with the circular theme, there were two raised circle platforms. One was flat, but the other was raked in true Shakespearean fashion. This created some nerve-racking fight scenes when actors were nearly rolling off into the audience. Above them was a round screen that allowed images to be projected on it. Different images produced different settings. There were blue skies with white clouds, tree branches indicating the roof of a forest, and even a pattern that symbolized the ceiling of Duke Frederick’s home. The overhead screen was helped with the cyclorama being lit in different colors to help indicate the time of day. Overall, the lighting crew did an amazing job building the ambiance of Arden.

What confused me most about the production was the costuming. I had a hard time figuring out what time period it was supposed to be set in. While gorgeous, I felt as though I needed more knowledge to understand why characters were wearing what they were wearing. At first, there was a Victorian vibe with a little bit of 1920s edge, but then costumes felt very groovy and 1970s while still being very country-chic (a personal favorite of mine).

A huge factor of WWU’s version of “As You Like It” is that there is music. That’s right, I’m talking musical numbers right with the iambic pentameter. Even better, they are extremely catchy tunes performed by extremely talented people. If you aren’t a musical fan, don’t worry too much; the songs don’t take up the whole show and are fairly spaced out. There isn’t even dancing until the very end! It was a very clever addition to make Duke Senior’s followers a band. The music makes the often dry beats of Shakespeare energetic and lively without feeling forced or unnatural.

The actors all appeared to be having a good time, which is something I always look for. They seemed upbeat and hit all their cues on time. It was a fun watch with a good cast. Alyssa Balogh and Marlena McHenry were bubbly and tireless as Rosalind and Celia. Brian Ollivier shined as Duke Senior, who become one of my favorite characters. Shakespeare can be hard to sift through, but the cast found the gold.

Would I see it again? Probably. Since Shakespeare wrote his plays to be seen, it was definitely easier to watch than it was to read. Is it my new favorite show of all time? No. It was entertaining and endearing, and maybe had I gone a different day I would have felt differently. Spring quarter dead week is a killer and Thursday nights seem to drag on for eternity. It was a nice break from writing papers to be able to laugh and jive to a great performance.

Sources Referenced:

As You Like It. By William Shakespeare. Dir. Evan Mueller. Western Washington University Performing Arts Center, Bellingham. 2 June 2016. Performance.

“She just heard you gained weight. She doesn’t know you’re a monster.”

Charlie is huge. 550 to 600 pounds to be exact. He is surrounded by his own filth in a tiny apartment in northern Idaho. A laptop, a sagging couch, and empty food containers are what Charlie has been living in since he stopped leaving the front door. Suffering from congestive heart failure due to his massive stature, Charlie won’t live through the next week, but he is determined to make amends with his 17-year old daughter, Ellie.

Liz, Charlie’s only friend who doubles as a hospice nurse, takes care of him. She brings his groceries, checks his blood pressure, begs him to go to the hospital, and delivers buckets of fried chicken at his request. She is also Alan’s sister, Alan being Charlie’s partner who passed away long before the play takes place. Charlie left his wife, Mary, to be with Alan, and throughout the play the audience finds out little details about their relationship.

It is uncommon for any character in a show to be overweight, let alone the main character. Samuel D. Hunter took an interesting spin on an emotional rollercoaster of teen angst and medical emergencies. His writing is full of metaphors of whales and the ocean, notably Moby Dick and Jonah and the Whale, seemingly fitting considering the sheer size of Charlie. Transitions between scenes feature the sound of waves crashing to shore which are supposed to be how Charlie’s wheezing is beginning to sound.

Hunter writes about characters struggling to get closure after a great loss. Each character is figuring out how to fill the deep void of sadness over a harrowing event in their own ways. Liz takes care of Charlie while Charlie is eating himself into oblivion. Elder Thomas desperately wants to save somebody. Ellie is spiraling with the absence of her father, while Mary drinks away the reminder that her husband left her for another man.

While the characters are so inherently different, they are all vastly similar. To me, they also seemed very over the top and extravagant in the most average ways. Obviously, Charlie is extremely obese, declaring himself on multiple different occasions “disgusting”, but we see the blown out of proportion characterization even in Elder Thomas who is viewed as a quiet character. He wants to help somebody so badly that he quite literally will fight someone for it, which we find out he actually did during a halfway heart-to-heart with Ellie.

There was also the need for wanting more information from them. Only little pieces of each members’ lives were given, making readers want to dive deeper into the past. Ellie talks about how her father was not the only one that had screwed her over, but we never hear about who else caused her grief. Mary says she isn’t working, but where was she working before?

Often it gets a little hard to read when Ellie is in the scene. She is so brash and insensitive that it can hurt your own heart hearing what she has to say. It’s not until the very end that we see a glimmer of hope in her that she might actually have feelings and care for her father.

With the cutthroat nature of the teenager and the heavy subject matter of The Whale, it is hard to find humor in what is being written. What I personally have found from traumatic events is that sometimes you just have to make a joke out of it with the knowledge that some people aren’t going to find it funny. The crass humor in the play doesn’t stick out unless you are reading it in just the right tone, and I found myself cracking a smile every now and then, but most readers might not find it a comedy.

The Whale is a beautiful play that ends with not everyone getting being happy, what they had all been looking for. That being said, all the characters learned something and opened up by the last scene where Charlie is wheezing away while Ellie reads his favorite essay on Moby Dick. The lights go out and the audience is left to their own imagination of what happened to the little family onstage.

Sources Referenced:

Hunter, Samuel D. The Whale.

Isherwood, Charles. “The Enormity of a Man’s Problems, and Vice Versa.” The New York Times. Web.

Jones, Chris. “Review: ‘The Whale’ at Victory Gardens Theater.” Chicago Tribune. 16 Apr. 2013. Web.

Liner, Elaine. “Think You’re Fat? Go See The Whale, a Play about XXXL Life.” Dallas Observer. 20 Oct. 2015. Web.

Monoghan, John. “Review: Difficult ‘Whale’ Gets Beached at Ringwald.” Detroit Free Press. 7 Oct. 2015. Web.

“She just heard you gained weight. She doesn’t know you’re a monster.”

Charlie is huge. 550 to 600 pounds to be exact. He is surrounded by his own filth in a tiny apartment in northern Idaho. A laptop, a sagging couch, and empty food containers are what Charlie has been living in since he stopped leaving the front door. Suffering from congestive heart failure due to his massive stature, Charlie won’t live through the next week, but he is determined to make amends with his 17-year old daughter, Ellie.

Liz, Charlie’s only friend who doubles as a hospice nurse, takes care of him. She brings his groceries, checks his blood pressure, begs him to go to the hospital, and delivers buckets of fried chicken at his request. She is also Alan’s sister, Alan being Charlie’s partner who passed away long before the play takes place. Charlie left his wife, Mary, to be with Alan, and throughout the play the audience finds out little details about their relationship.

Elder Thomas, a Mormon missionary stumbles upon the dump of an apartment in his attempts to help someone- anyone. This is where the show opens, to Charlie making an announcement to his students that he teaches online English to, and Elder Thomas knocking on his door shortly after.

It is uncommon for any character in a show to be overweight, let alone the main character. Samuel D. Hunter took an interesting spin on an emotional rollercoaster of teen angst and medical emergencies. His writing is full of metaphors of whales and the ocean, notably Moby Dick and Jonah and the Whale, seemingly fitting considering the sheer size of Charlie. Transitions between scenes feature the sound of waves crashing to shore which are supposed to be how Charlie’s wheezing is beginning to sound.

Hunter writes about characters struggling to get closure after a great loss. Charlie and Liz lost Alan. Mary and Ellie lost Charlie. Elder Thomas lost his family. Each character is figuring out how to fill the deep void of sadness over a harrowing event in their own ways. Liz takes care of Charlie while Charlie is eating himself into oblivion. Elder Thomas desperately wants to save somebody. Ellie is spiraling with the absence of her father, while Mary drinks away the reminder that her husband left her for another man.

While the characters are so inherently different, they are all vastly similar. To me, they also seemed very over the top. Obviously, Charlie is extremely obese, declaring himself on multiple different occasions “disgusting”, but we see the blown out of proportion characterization even in Elder Thomas who is viewed as a quiet character. He wants to help somebody so badly that he quite literally will fight someone for it, which we find out he actually did during a halfway heart-to-heart with Ellie.

There was also the need for wanting more information from them. Only little pieces of each members’ lives were given, making readers want to dive deeper into the past. Ellie talks about how her father was not the only one that had screwed her over, but we never hear about who else caused her grief. Mary says she isn’t working, but where was she working before?

Often it gets a little hard to read when Ellie is in the scene. She is so brash and insensitive that it can hurt your own heart hearing what she has to say. It’s not until the very end that we see a glimmer of hope in her that she might actually have feelings and care for her father.

With the cutthroat nature of the teenager and the heavy subject matter of The Whale, it is hard to find humor in what is being written. What I personally have found from traumatic events is that sometimes you just have to make a joke out of it with the knowledge that some people aren’t going to find it funny. The crass humor in the play doesn’t stick out unless you are reading it in just the right tone, and I found myself cracking a smile every now and then, but most readers might not find it a comedy.

The Whale is a beautiful play that ends with not everyone getting being happy, what they had all been looking for. That being said, all the characters learned something and opened up by the last scene where Charlie is wheezing away while Ellie reads his favorite essay on Moby Dick. The lights go out and the audience is left to their own imagination of what happened to the little family onstage.

Sources Referenced

Isherwood, Charles. “The Enormity of a Man’s Problems, and Vice Versa.” The New York Times. Web.

Hunter, Samuel D. The Whale.

Here’s your pep talk.