26 cast and crew members, 3 weddings, 42 blackouts, 16 fouette turns, and one Elvis.
Upon arriving at Links Hall for Innervation Dance Cooperative (IDC)’s The Bard Unravelled (showing through Sunday), no parking spots remained. Equal parts audience and cast joined together for what turned out to be a long and exhausting journey. Inspired by three works of Shakespeare, The Bard Unravelled missed many opportunities, despite its extraordinary length. Rather than using the plays as raw source material, IDC attempted to fully recreate Twelfth Night, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing in dance form, with each scene (42 in total) as its own discreet 3-ish minute dance set to popular music. Each little dance/scene was divided by full blackouts, applause, and scenery changes, contributing to The Bard Unravelled’s “Shakespearean” three-hour length and choppy plot development.
The more clever elements employed in each play—a Vegas style Elvis wedding in Twelfth Night, well-executed fight choreography in Hamlet, quirky gestures set to Big Band music in Much Ado—were yearning for exploitation, but IDC’s strict adherence to one dance per recorded (mostly unedited) song restricted ideas from reaching their full potential. Rather than allowing each scene to unfold naturally, the cooperative team of choreographers allowed song choices to dictate the development of each dance (or lack thereof). Doing so would have pushed the length of this show even further, begging the question: why three plays in one evening?Shakespeare is an onerous beast, even for the best of theater actors. Many feel that Shakespeare must be done right, or not at all. That's not to say that adaptations, retellings, and dance versions can't be done (West Side Story being the most obvious example), but IDC could have, and perhaps should have, paid much more attention to the intricacies of these highly complex, beloved plays. To gloss over the many nuances with excessive use of double pirouettes, slides to the splits, and high kicks verges on disrespectful.
The Bard Unravelled is not without good qualities. Though uneven and inconsistent, the huge cast’s dancing is inspired and demonstrates technique and (obviously) stamina. IDC founder Michael Sherman is adorable and endearing on stage, giving the two comedies presented a charming musical theater-esque quality. Cat Wilson’s lighting built on the standard plot of Links Hall’s white space by adding colors to the back wall and interesting gobo effects that provide a highly appropriate complexity to the visual environment. Amy Carlson’s flattering costuming is quite exquisite, particularly her Steam Punk-inspired apparel for the all-female cast of Hamlet. Together, lights and costume provide layers of context that are mostly lacking in the choreography. Kudos must be awarded, above all, to Stage Manager Stephanie Hurovitz, and her uncanny ability to direct scene changes and countless costume changes at expert speed. If not for that, we could have been there all night.
This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
(Lord Polonius in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act 2, scene 2.)