Photo Source: Joan Marcus
Set against the Great Papal Schism of 1378, which saw dueling popes battling for leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, “Medieval Play” follows the quest of two French knights, the sensitive Sir Ralph and the cloddish Sir Alfred, for redemption. After a career as marauding mercenaries—members of a pack that travels across France pillaging towns, raping and murdering their inhabitants, then burning everything to the ground—Sir Ralph has an epiphany. He’s in a state of grace due to the blanket absolution for his crimes provided him by Pope Gregory XI, who has hired the band to put down a rebellion in the Italian countryside. If he doesn’t sin again, he can quit. The two men strike out on their own in search of a way to live a moral life, encountering all sorts of characters and temptations along the way. It is, of course, a hopeless quest, and Lonergan brings the curtain down on Sir Ralph and Sir Alfred, now serving different masters, bashing away at each other while trading apologies and lamely hoping that “someday things will be better.”
Lonergan’s chief modus operandi is to alternate among three modes of dialogue: contemporary slacker-dude speech peppered with anachronisms and casual profanities, flowery flights of period knightspeak full of “prithees” and “betwixts,” and fast-paced recondite philosophizing about history, religion, and politics infused with a 21st-century perspective. Depressingly, it’s the profanities that generate the most laughter, which recedes alarmingly as the evening progresses despite the strenuous ministrations of a talented eight-person cast. Josh Hamilton keeps his eyes wide and ladles every ounce of charm he can on his boyishly metrosexual Sir Ralph, while Tate Donovan strides manfully about as the cheerfully amoral Sir Alfred, the quintessential guy’s guy. (The two men winningly negotiate one of the few highpoints, a sequence in which Sir Alfred strains to understand Sir Ralph’s explanation of the concept of empathy.)
The remaining actors—C.J. Wilson, Kevin Geer, John Pankow, Anthony Arkin, Heather Burns, and Halley Feiffer—play myriad roles in what I expect is supposed to be giddily anarchic style but ends up feeling awfully laborious. The two women fare best. As the mystic Catherine of Siena (she’s the patron saint of Italy alongside Francis of Assisi), Burns is furiously foulmouthed, is full of attitude, and stands her ground delivering reams of arcane narration with manic determination (though when the other characters start threatening to kill Catherine if she doesn’t cease, because “nobody can follow it and nobody cares,” the comment cuts awfully close to home for Lonergan). Feiffer finds some humor in the sex-starved Lady Margery, camping outrageously as the noblewoman flirts with Sir Ralph under the nose of her dimwitted husband. But even Feiffer is defeated by a tedious sequence in which Lady Margery explains to her indifferent guests the primitive rules of 14th-century table manners, considering them the height of sophistication.
Walt Spangler’s candy-colored cutout set pieces glide in and out with abandon under Jason Lyons’ comic-book lighting as Michael Krass’ bright robes and dresses, fanciful headgear, and weather-beaten armor parade by, some costumes making only the briefest of appearances. Nevertheless, as with the play, the ultimate impression is one of effort.
Lonergan’s point seems to be something along the lines of mankind hasn’t matured as much as we think we have. That’s hardly an original thought, and it certainly can’t support such an elaborate and scattershot expression.
Presented by and at Signature Theatre, 480 W. 42nd St., NYC. June 7–24. Tue.–Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 244-7529 or www.signaturetheatre.org. Casting by Telsey + Company/Will Cantler.
