A science fiction presented as if historical drama, Wonder of Our Stage has received a full production as The Players 2018 New Play Festival winner. The plot’s divided in two: how Tudor scientist-necromancer Dr. Dee created an Automaton for Queen Elizabeth to accept as a perfect husband and how Automaton turned into a human William Shakespeare. Director Candace Artim adroitly manages more detailed staging than for most Players’ Backstage, or even typical Elizabethan sets. Dr. Dee’s study with his desk-table and props on it and wall are relatively elaborate, as is a curtained corner used only to reveal Automaton. Otherwise, two side-stage doors, an upstage red-curtained entrance, and Matt Neier’s sophisticated lighting design allow for entrances, exits, and action in a constantly changing, movie-like variety of scenes. Costumes, especially for Dee and Elizabeth, draw inspiration from historical paintings. The Queen’s is wonderfully sumptuous, as is her wig, but as she ages nothing changes. With only five actors in the cast, it’s strange that the player of Shakespeare has a low brow (a high one being in the only near-period scholarly recognized likenesses from his bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, to the posthumous First Folio Frontispiece) and the actor of star Richard Burbage (a rousing Rik Robertson) seems too tall to accurately portray him. His girth also overwhelms, and he looks and seems nothing like his older brother Cuthbert (good Glenn Schudel). The perfect dark costume for Dee almost conceals his being played by a woman (Jan Wallace, quite competent, especially in discontent), but for what reason is the part so cast? Zachary Hanna performs well as Automaton who becomes the great writer with a fancifully chosen name, considering that the cause of his doing so is hardly substantiated. Theater fans may love it, though, and even think his first “to be or not to be” is different because it’s from an ur Hamlet. Such a text has yet to be found, although sources are available and there even exists an early effort to fully construct the original. The speech in the present play seems to have one of these as a referent. A more appropriate soliloquy at this point in the play would begin “What a piece of work is man” because Automaton is concerned with being one, not committing suicide or retreating into a dream-world. Playwright Cross’s use of realistic dialogue between characters as well as rhetorical speeches to the audience may well be Elizabethan in practice. It helps keep one of the two spotlights on Dr. Dee and his disappointments that turn out to be positive for Automaton. Any play about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays that doesn’t attribute them to Marlowe, a persistent fad, has my appreciation. I also enjoyed the little dig at Greene, who probably was a bit jealous of a young Shakespeare’s popularity. Of course, he may have been ticked off at Shakespeare using some of his work, though what writers at the time didn’t snatch from others? But that’s another possible play, and it should be interesting if Monica Cross would apply her interests and talent to writing it.
