THE MAYOR OF ZALAMEA
Dolphinback Theatre Company
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Pedro Calderon de la Barca was not quite a contemporary of Shakespeare (who died in 1616, when Calderon would have been a youth), but the plays of both reflect the secular intellectualism and humanitarianism of the Renaissance. Spain being Spain, however, the dominant theme in many of Calderon’s plays is honor and its maintenance. The 1640 Mayor of Zalamea is revolutionary, not only in the choice of a commoner, Pedro Crespo, as the true man of honor but in its championing of human values over the strictures (and hypocrisies) that formerly defined the ways of honor. Thus Crespo comforts his daughter when she has been raped and abandoned by a handsome captain and refuses to allow her brother to do violence to her or her assailant; instead he adheres to the law. Indeed, the two most noble and chivalrous men turn out to be the humble Crespo and the rough-and-ready Don Lope, the captain’s superior officer–their innate dignity and wisdom contrast sharply with the false gentility of the highborn but venal captain and the ludicrous Don Mendo, whose lofty title hides the penury of a street beggar.
The perfectly chosen cast play their melodramatic characters with a seriousness and conviction as impenetrable as the armor of El Cid. Anchoring the action are the heroic performances of Ray Wild as Crespo and Stephen Ommerle as Lope (a master fight director himself whose flashy swordplay alone is worth the price of admission). Katie Dawson, one of Chicago’s most intelligent ingenues, breaks with traditionally passive female heroines as Isabel, Crespo’s daughter. She proves a feisty match for Mochel, cast against type as the bullying captain: his handling of the potentially shocking rape scene makes clear it’s a combat atrocity, devoid of eroticism. Other noteworthy performances include Steve Herson as the sad sack Rebolledo, Kozlowski as the avuncular platoon sergeant, and Dale Goulding (covered with a mass of cosmetic and prosthetic deformities) as the crippled servant Nuno.
These roles are virtually impossible to overact though Christopher Kubasik as the news hound and Melanie Dix as Byron’s mistress Claire Clairemont come close. Director Kelly Ann Corcoran seems to have made a valiant effort to keep her cast reined in, and the result is a vigorous, enthusiastic production that only rarely spills over into juvenile excess (though the audience seemed bent on pushing the show in that direction–with friends like this, who needs hecklers?). Ian Christopher is a suitably cherubic Shelley, even managing to make the poet’s mannered verse sound like ordinary speech, and Tom Gottlieb is a suitably jocular Byron (albeit with an odd Eastern European accent). The only fully realized performance, however, is Beth Stephenson’s as Mary Shelley: she emerges as the welcome voice of common sense in a drama that revels in adolescent irresponsibility.
