Everett Quinton, left, Bianca Leigh and David Greenspan star in the Theater Askew production of 'Cornbury: The Queen's Governor' at the Hudson Guild Theater.
A Theater Askew presentation of a play in two acts by William M. Hoffman and Anthony Holland. Directed and choreographed by Tim Cusack.
Spinoza Dacosta - Ken Kilban
Edward Hyde - David Greenspan
Africa - Ashley Bryant
Pastor Cornelius
Van Dam - Everett Quinton
Rip Van Dam - Christian Pedersen
Margareta de Peyster - Bianca Leigh
Munsee - Eugene the Poogene
Anna Maria Bayard - Jenne Vath
Marie - Julia Campanelli
We could stand the wolf hunting, the senate seat selling and the prostitute traffic, but "Cornbury: The Queen's Governor" has gone too far with its portrayal of gubernatorial cross-dressing. David Greenspan is a perfect lady as the title character in Theater Askew's new production, but Tim Cusack's direction is hysterical in the worst possible way. William M. Hoffman and the late Anthony Holland may even have written a good play, who knows? It's impossible to understand a word of it here over the production's assaultive crassness.
Arguably the most frustrating thing about "Cornbury" is the potential for a very funny deconstruction of 18th-century restoration comedy, glimpsed every now and then in Greenspan's foppish perf and in Julia Campanelli's occasionally cute turn as his governor's klepto wife.
The play follows Viscount Cornbury, whose given name was Edward Hyde, through a remarkably inauspicious career as British governor of New York, during which time he apparently misappropriated vast sums of money and generally lived in such a way as to scandalize the strict Protestant populace.
Those are the historical facts, at least -- the play adds to them a racially mixed court of outcasts and sets up Cornbury as their leader, spreading justice and good taste wherever he sets his slippered foot. This is probably inaccurate, but that's no reason to object to it; Albert Camus' "Caligula" and Peter Weiss' "Marat/Sade" both recast famous bastards as liberators of mankind.
Greenspan lends a lot of credibility to Cornbury -- he daintily tastes the scenery on occasion, but he looks positively restrained next to the hammy antics of Everett Quinton and Bianca Leigh as the Dutch Puritans out to destroy him.
It's difficult to know what Cusack intended the play to look like, but after a few scenes, it's easy to believe he didn't actually have an overarching plan. Any time there's a sex act to be mimed or a religious prude to be mocked, Cusack is there with a distracting prank. Why? It certainly doesn't advance the narrative, in which almost none of these gags are written, and the repetitive sex jokes are barely funny once, let alone time after time.
The misguided production may simply be a case of another theater company with an artistic director skilled at putting together talented people and inept at actually helming a production. The technical aspects of "Cornbury" bear that thesis out: Mark Beard's interestingly 2-D set is beautiful, creating simple pictures with flats and drops that are far wittier than anything going on in front of them.
Hoffman, a professor at CUNY and writer of early AIDS play "As Is," has been gone from the legit scene for too long. Theater Askew's production provides him with a poor showcase, but the occasional flashes of insight suggest future stagings of his work might fare better with a surer hand at the helm.
Set, Mark Beard; costumes, Jeffrey Wallach; lighting, Deborah Constantine; original music, Jeff Domoto; fight direction, Nathan DeCoux; wigs, Isaac Davison; production stage manager, Karen Sweeney. Opened Jan. 28, 2009. Reviewed Jan. 26. Running time: 2 HOURS, 15 MIN.
With: Nomi Tichman, Tara Bast, Erik Sherr.
Contact Sam Thielman at
sam.thielman@variety.com
Date in print: Thu., Jan. 29, 2009