American Players Theatre Presents The Two Gentlemen of Verona — Ever Hear Southern Shakespeare?

Allie Bugasjki, Allie and the After Party

TLDR: Taking Shakespeare down South, our cast delivers the original text of The Two Gentlemen of Verona with a Southern drawl adding a new atmosphere to the production. The cast delivers on the comedy and all the trimmings of what it feels like to be young and in love.

Well, Howdy Y’all

Underneath the setting sun and bathed in warm light, a string of lights hang from a wooden porch that houses the band tuning up their strings. They start to play informally, listening and improving with each other in a little jam session. A man wearing a bowler hat plays checkers with a dog. Others mill about, enjoying the mild summer night, occasionally laughing or sitting contentedly in the rocking chair looking in on the game. A large, wooden billboard stands high above the stage with a giant Cupid aiming his arrow straight out over everyone’s heads.

The fiddle player steps down off the porch with a strum of their bow across the strings and everyone stands to attention. Our host of this fine fete, Nate Burger, welcomes us and the cast sings us a song about love and everything that comes with it, opening The Two Gentlemen of Verona.The twist to this production is that we’re taking Shakespeare down to the South. Still in the original text, the production has changed the accents from traditional English to a Southern drawl. This simple change of the setting creates a new atmosphere to the work.

We’ve Got The Ups…

The band stays on stage and not only adds a backing soundtrack to the work, but also become characters themselves. When it becomes clear our fiddle player (Elleon Dobias) will give a nice “ba-dum-tss” sting after a good one liner, our characters then take it upon themselves to hit joke after joke trying to get that successful ding.

They act silly like they’re in on all the jokes of the play themselves. Brian Mani and Casey Hoekstra as the Duke and Thurio, look stumped until Proteus (Jonathan Gardner) delivers his own well set-up solution to their problem. James Ridge and David Daniel as the two servants have been around the block once or twice and even though their charges are higher station than them, they still know how to keep them humble with a little gambling.

And what cast wouldn’t love to have the shapeshifting Elizabeth Ledo as Crab the dog, expressive and charming as Ridge’s faithful companion. Though she doesn’t say much, she jumps for joy all over Daniel until he pays her attention or growls at those she doesn’t like.

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