Love's Fire takes place on a revolving stage to one side backed by a screen for projections (mainly of places) and with room in front for a compartment-filled cage and/or furniture. On the other side, a scrim-screen (behind which a pianist will play music from classical to pop or painting will be highlighted) before other levels. (At one point a stream of water will fall between levels.) In between lies the space for varying props. Is there any doubt what will take place will be either a contemporary production or something classic (probably by Shakespeare) brought "up to date" by someone with a vision (probably a director)? Let any doubt be dispelled by the second year students at the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training wending their ways (impressively) around all of the above. As training, the exercise probably deserves four stars. As achievement, read on.
The major problem is that the students have not all learned oral interpretation (as opposed to acting) of poetry, and their methods of delivery differ in style and substance. It's a real distraction in a series of plays based on Shakespearean sonnets, and not the best known at that, which are here embedded in the modern texts. Possibly the presentations would have been better without using Shakespeare's words at all, which may have been a problem to some of the modern writers as well as the actors. Tony Kushner, for instance, seems to have really strained to get his take on the difficulties of loving and being loved by the right persons. Set in the house of a psychiatrist (Natasha Staley in authoritative mode), his piece a nutty stretch into anal humor that would be less funny without a talent such as Ross Boehringer (the patient).
Eric Bogosian's Bitter Sauce is surprisingly simplistic, showing a woman who needs both consummate but gentle loving (John Long, so sweet) and rough sex (Brit Whittle, upsetting as a biker from hell). Mariam Habib struggles as the "torn" lover but is obviously acting. Rounds of explicit sex take place at Marsha Norman's 140, where Darlene Horne, Bryan Crossan and Lesslie Crane make convincing marrieds and lover who then "branch out." There's more Restoration than Shakespearean comedy in Wendy Wasserstein's Waiting for Phillip Glass, which perfectly catches a sophisticated mixture of sex, fashion, and finance in high society. John Long stands out as the man of wealthy mode. Costumes in this one seem to be right off the runway, and in them, Nora Sweeney, Natasha Staley, and Lesslie Crane are stunning.
Painting You by William Finn reveals Ross Boehringer's fine voice as The Artist sings to his male nude model. John Guare's play both begins and ends the performance in a play that features the actors as students pondering the meaning of the text. Good thing, that division, since the whole seems to go on forever, even broken up. Perhaps that's to be expected from an episodic history of humankind. Though childish, it does have a few memorable moments, thanks largely to nice-voiced Darlene Horne's believable Sheba and Ross Boehringer's insistent God.
With her humongous, self-flapping golden archangel's wings, Natasha Staley won't be forgotten. The same might be said, though from different points of view, of this production of Love's Fire.
