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Tweaking the Bard’s legacy at SCR, a Briefcase



THE BEARD OF AVON

World premiere play by Amy Freed. Directed by David Emmes. On the South Coast Repertory Mainstage through July 1. Tickets are $28-$49. Call (714) 708-5555.

Amy Freed and SCR are at it again. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 1998 for her wacky and probing “Freedomland,” the SCR-commissioned play about a dysfunctional family’s reunion. Now she’s been signed up by SCR to delve into the great dysfunction of Western literature,the debate over who really wrote Shakespeare’s works. Freed takes on the challenge with her established zany brilliance, and with the zest and affection of an accomplished playwright for her craft’s ancient legends. The result is Elizabethan England come to life, with characters ranging from a besotted farmhand to a bird-in-a-cage Queen Elizabeth, tackling such timeless themes as art, ambition, class differences, good, evil, love and death. Students of The Bard will delight at the characters’ authentic-sounding dialogue, and howl at the spectacle of future masterpieces as works in progress, butchered in rehearsal by a crassly commercial theater company. Freed doesn’t bring new scholarship to the question of Shakespeare’s authorship, but she does bring a vivid imagination. The way she tells it, the great plays were a collaborative effort of a gifted aristocrat (Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford) and an inspired country bumpkin (Will Shakespeare), along with a little help from their friends. Not that either sees it that way at the start. The relationship between the libertine de Vere (wonderfully played by Mark Harelik) and the rustic Shakespeare (an appropriately enigmatic Douglas Weston) begins as a mere secret convenience for de Vere; it grudgingly, and hilariously, develops into something more. Freed’s script could hardly be in better hands than with SCR’s accomplished cast. A simple set is embellished by Walker Hicklin’s perfect period-piece costumes. The play is long, 2 hours and 40 minutes, but seems half that. “Beard” is likely to surpass “Freedomland” in acclaim and popularity. Three other venues are already waiting for it, but we happily have it first.

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