STAGE WEST: Loud Fridge Theatre Group's "Boy My Greatness"

Jacob Lopez (left) and Maybelle Shimizu in "Boy My Greatness."                            Photo by Ben Handley

            It’s generally known that in the early 17th century when William Shakespeare’s plays were being produced at the Globe Theatre in London the female character parts were performed by male actors. In her research for preparing “Boy My Greatness” for the stage, playwright Zoe Senese-Grossberg discovered that these actors ranged anywhere in age from 12 to 22.
            Both ends of the spectrum are represented in “Boy My Greatness,” which is making its San Diego premiere courtesy of Loud Fridge Theatre Group. The character of Thomas Reade (Jacob Lopez) is old enough that, at least in the mind of his company leader John Sharpe (Michael Rodriguez), he has “aged out” of female roles and must resign himself either to retirement or to portraying men. At the same time, precocious 12-year-old Robin Howard (August Nickoli) is just getting started but is showing so much promise – and is being mentored by Sharpe – that he’s pushing the likes of Tom Reade practically out the Globe Theatre door.
            Playwright Senese-Grossberg has much more to say about the lives of these males-playing-females in Shakespearean works than this. At stake are their personal, sexual and gender identities, part of the offstage dramas that cut more deeply than any sword wielded in a production of The Bard’s could. These are young men who grew up together not just as boy actors but as boys. Their conceptions of male and female were and are complicated. Their futures are uncertain as they become men and struggle to define what that means.
            “Boy My Greatness,” set in the summer of 1606, doesn’t stop there. Hanging over rehearsals for productions of “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Twelfth Night” like a very dark cloud is an outbreak of the bubonic plague, which already had been terrifying and killing Londoners for more than half a century. And there’s the intrusion of a former player, Samuel Clark (Maybelle Shimizu), who’s become a moralizing, theater-decrying Puritan and to whom males playing females is high on his list of outrages.
            All the action takes place in a rehearsal room at the Globe, created by Christy Reid at Moxie Theatre, which is hosting this Loud Fridge engagement. The various interpersonal crises ensuing are manifested in uneasy relationships between the theater players: Harry (Jaysten Merced Ares) and Hal (Phoenix Velona) are normally playful lovers who seem to be fraying apart. Tom Reade and Sam Clark share a history that the early acrimony (and exchanged violence) between them cannot hide. John Sharpe is trying to protect his mentee Robin from what he fears will be the sexual predation of a viscount who’s taken an interest in the young boy/acting as a girl.
            This is fodder for two plays, let alone one, and “Boy My Greatness” runs nearly two and a half hours as is. Under the direction of Lee Engelman, the production is tense and magnetic, however, and rarely lags. Recorded music here and there coordinated by William BJ Robinson is effective for backdrop as are the recitations of actual passages from the two Shakespearean plays being produced.
            The meatiest parts belong to Lopez as Reade and Shimizu as Sam. Through their respective fates the essence of what Senses-Grossberg is trying to say about these individuals in their time in history crystallizes. Like Shakespeare’s canon itself, in part tragically.
            In the end the great enemy of these conflicted but dedicated actors is not moral indignation but time, which as they say is undefeated. It will turn the dreams of boys into the stark realities of men and the freedom of pretend into the captivity of judgment and doubt.
            A drawn out but admirable Loud Fridge production, “Boy My Greatness” is an examination of early Shakespearean theater that most have never thought about. That it’s much more than that is reason to see it before it closes July 19.
            “Boy My Greatness” runs through July 19 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando.