By FRANK SCHECK
Rating: 
Posted: 3:15 am
August 25, 2008
IT'S a pretty bold move for a modern author to feature William Shakespeare as a central character. Tom Stoppard pulled it off successfully with "Shakespeare in Love," but the late Canadian playwright Timothy Findley was unable to work similar magic in his "Elizabeth Rex," which also revolves around no less a major figure than Elizabeth I. This historical fantasy, being presented by the Center Stage, is both schematic and overly cluttered.
Set in a barn in which Shakespeare (Scott Nogi) and his troupe have retired after a command performance of "Much Ado About Nothing," the play announces its theme in this portentous piece of dialogue. It takes place between Elizabeth (Stephanie Barton-Farcas), grieving over the imminent beheading of her lover, the Earl of Essex, and Ned Lowenscroft (a compelling Michael DiGioia), the actor who played Shakespeare's major female roles and who is dying of syphilis (you can tell by the big zit on his forehead). "Teach me how to be a woman," the queen commands him, "and I will teach you how to be a man."
Unnecessarily structured as a flashback recounted by the dying Bard years later, the play freely incorporates passages from several of his other plays to explore gender and sexual issues, as well as such notions that his "Antony and Cleopatra" (which he is seen working on here) was inspired by Elizabeth's ill-fated romance.
It's all rather heavy-handed, with the contentious confrontations between the gay Lowenscroft and Elizabeth going on far too long. And would even someone who is dying talk to his monarch in such a dangerously contemptuous manner?
Not helping matters is the lugubrious direction by Joanne Ziplay, and an overly emphatic performance by Barton-Farcas that suggests an Elizabeth on steroids.
ELIZABETH REX
Center Stage Theater, 48 W. 21st St.; 866-811-4111. Through Sept. 6.
