Theatre in Review: In Acting Shakespeare (Pearl Theatre Company)

	Photo: Jacob J. Goldberg

It has happened to everyone who works in the theatre, and to anyone who simply loves it: that moment when a performance shakes you to the core, leaving you changed forever. For James DeVita, it happened in 1984, when he saw Ian McKellen's one-man show, Acting Shakespeare. What makes DeVita's experience especially striking is that he was a Long Islander who filleted fish for a living, was on his third try at college, and was almost totally unversed in the ways of the stage. But when the thunderbolt is hurled, there's no evading it. "I remember understanding Shakespeare for the first time," he says, with wonderment, early on in this thoroughly winning entertainment. Suddenly, a heretofore aimless young man had a purpose: to be a great Shakespearean actor.

Not that the young DeVita showed the slightest bit of promise; even in community college, nobody seemed to feel he was up to the challenge of actually speaking lines. (One frustrated teacher tied his hands behind his back in order to stop the young man from sawing the air with his limbs while he spoke.) In one of the many amusingly self-deprecating moments to be found in In Acting Shakespeare, he gives a bit of his college-era approach to Hotspur, sounding rather like Stanley Kowalski, if he had had just a bit of his frontal lobe sliced off. But even disasters like these helped to hone his ambition: "I kind of wanted to be the Gene Kelly of Shakespeare," he says -- a comment that shows that, even if his technique was wanting, his instincts were spot-on. Already, he understood that grand, actorish gestures are no good if you cannot convey the sense of Shakespeare's words, the elegant line of thought with which each of his characters are gifted. DeVita wanted to make Shakespeare accessible to anyone with a heart and a brain.

On the evidence here, he achieved his goal, and then some. In Acting Shakespeare contains some of the most lucid readings of the Bard's verse that I have heard in years. The actor's technique appears to be simple; the results are anything but. Picking up a walking stick, he immediately turns into crookback Richard III, taking us into his confidence as, in Henry VI, Part III, he plots his future. ("And yet I know not how to get the crown/For many lives stand between me and home.") Wittily noting that Hamlet's advice to the players can just as profitably be considered "Shakespeare's advice to the Hamlets," he becomes a contemporary director, anxiously trying to get a decent performance out of his recalcitrant cast. Lest you think In Acting Shakespeare is merely an evening of Old Will's greatest hits, he offers a quietly heartbreaking Lady Constance, from King John, mourning the loss of her son. ("I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine/My name is Constance. I was Geffrey's wife/Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost.") Though King John is usually dismissed as a minor work, DeVita's reading is so powerful you find yourself thinking that maybe it's time to pick up the play again.

There are three strands to In Acting Shakespeare: DeVita's freely imagined episodes from Shakespeare's life, his account of his halting progress toward competency, and passages from the plays, all three woven into a seamless whole. Born into a working-class family that was distinctly bemused by his ambitions, DeVita portrays himself and his idol as traveling similar paths, exploring the mystery of how the middle-class son of a glovemaker poured out reams of dramatic verse of such glittering wit and perception. (In one of the show's many fun facts, we learn that Shakespeare's vocabulary was many times large than the average, and when this store of words failed him, he simply made them up.) DeVita's facility with the verse is so complete that it may be a minute or two before you realize he has slipped into Elizabethan mode.

What really makes In Acting Shakespeare work is DeVita's vivid imagination. A passage describing his life on the fishing boats is packed with harrowing details. He spares himself nothing in detailing his ham-handed early efforts, especially his struggle to escape his nasal regional accent. (Finally managing to do so, he says, "I was like Helen Keller with the water.") And when he describes the experience of landing at the American Players Theatre, an outdoor stage in Spring Green, Wisconsin, which has been his artistic home, his profound sense of satisfaction is palpable.

In Acting Shakespeare began as an attempt at performing Ian McKellen's show, a quixotic effort that, even with the British actor's official blessing, proved unworkable. Instead, Devita, using McKellen's script as a template, created a marvelously intimate entertainment that provides penetrating insights into the core of great acting. Other contributors include Jason Fassl, whose lighting cues can transform the stage as quickly as DeVita can slip into a character, and Fitz Patton, who has provided a parade of sound effects, including horse's hooves on cobblestones, bits of John Williams' score from Jaws, traffic sounds, and the voice of John Gielgud, speaking the opening of Henry V ("O for muse of fire...").

It's hard to imagine any theatre lover wouldn't be touched and delighted by In Acting Shakespeare, but young actors, especially those currently studying the craft, will likely find themselves riveted. For the rest of us, there's plenty to like as well. As for DeVita -- the next production at the Pearl is Henry IV, Part I -- may one hope? It would be lovely to know that he has gotten the role of Hotspur down at last. --David Barbour