‘Androcles and the Lion’ brings the wisdom of Aesop to Russell Auditorium

   The opening act of “Androcles and the Lion” plays out like a Three Stooges sketch. Two guys come bumbling merrily onto the stage, run in to one another, scoff and start to fight. They wear bright colored cloths that flow whenever they move. They make the falls look less painful. Then the two of them find instruments and begin to play. The music is not funny though. It’s pretty.
    The play was performed in Russell Auditorium on Nov. 15-18, in Hawkinsville’s Old Opera House on Nov. 21 and is scheduled to play at the Georgia Children’s Museum on Dec. 1st and 2nd. This makes it the longest running show produced at GCSU this year and with good reason because the showings last week played for audiences of up to nine hundred children and families.
    “Androcles and the Lion” is a whimsical telling of Aesop’s original fable which combines blunt humor with subtle comments on morality. As the young slave Androcles says in his squeaky voice, “Every man must be free to be.” Director Kathleen McGeever said that her first experience with fables was when she was a child.
    “I have always loved the simple stories and zany slapstick comedy, so when the department set out to select a children’s or family piece to produce this season, I was drawn to the classic fable retold by Aurand Harris.”
    McGeever directed the play in the energetic style of Commedia dell’Arte’, where the players wear exaggerated costumes and facemasks to “emphasize the absurdity of all human behavior.”
    GCSU Senior and Lead Actor Taylor Roy said “its basically a two and a half hour Looney Toone.”
    He also said it was the most “high energy” performance he’s ever done. Although physically exhausted after so many shows, Roy was grateful to play a role that “really let me cut loose in a way.”
    The story tells of a young slave, Androcles, (played by freshman Nick Mason) who struggles to free two young lovers (Kara Cox and Jeremy Skidmore) from the clutches of the villains, Pantalone and Capitano (Taylor Roy and Lauren Boyd). During his quest to help the lovers, Androcles befriends a lion (Brooke Faulkner) who later frees him. The moral of the story is optimistic. Good things come to those that do good for others, or as the program guide says ‘what you give is what you will get in return’.
    The play’s uplifting absurdity lent the actors to play with technique more than method acting.
    Roy said, “If you’re too much in your own head, like ‘I’m acting for me’, then you’re not letting the audience in.”
    Since the characters speak their entire thought processes and exaggerate their actions, physical action takes priority over mental, emotional response.
    “You have to find a balance between technique and method acting,” Roy said.
    Even the props are overblown and silly. Coins are the size of hockey pucks, notes are huge rolled up foam pads and swords are made of squared off planks of wood. Actors play trees and walls and water to make them come alive for the audience, and new settings spring out of cleverly designed boxes, as though the entire world could fit as easily into a small wooden crate as it does on the stage.   

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Dec 1 2006. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry