FRINGE REVIEW: NO SUCH ROSES

Perhaps only the love song has eclipsed the love poem as an expression of intense emotion. Shakespeare, in many of his plays, would have characters speak in poetry (specifically, in sonnets) to show the heightened emotions of the moment. Reviving that classic device, Michelle O'Connor and Akyiaa Wilson have developed a new play that has characters speak both modern dialogue and Shakespeare's sonnets, flowing between them as though the play were a musical, and the sonnets were songs.

Caught in romantic crises, eight characters try to sort out their relationship problems, slipping easily into and out of sonnets as they think and interact. Of course, Shakespeare's most famous sonnets ("Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day" and "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun") find their way into the script early, but are used to good effect, with the genuine emotion behind the words overpowering the risk of cliché. Once those two big ones are out of the way, other sonnets are embroidered into the dialogue, making the classical and the contemporary into one. The emotional impact of these poems has not changed in four hundred years, and their themes are just as true today as they were when Shakespeare first penned them. It's simply a new twist on an ancient style of playwriting, and it works remarkably well.

On the downside, O'Connor and Wilson do not seem to trust their script or their characters enough to let them develop gradually through both their own dialogue and Shakespeare's poetry. Nor do they trust their audience enough to follow the many skeins of the stories. The characters, who have titles like "Husband", "Fool," "Wife," and "Best Friend" instead of names, slowly grow beyond their labels into vivid people, but O'Connor and Wilson seem to lose faith in their own writing three-quarters of the way through. After having issues and dilemmas revealed gently in words both old and new, the characters suddenly line up and explicitly announce their problems to a consoling minister, destroying the subtlety of the play and the mystery of the characters. It's rather disappointing to have every knot untied for us, and leaves little to ponder.

The cast, which includes the playwrights, works very well together as an ensemble, keeping the energy high and a steady rhythm that serves both the poetry and prose, and director Anna McHugh deserves much praise for nicely blurring the lines between the classical and the contemporary. With some fine tuning, O'Connor and Wilson will have a delightful play that any lover of language can utterly enjoy.