Theater Reviews : British Wit, Greek Woe : Timberlake Wertenbaker’s ‘Nightingale’ at Vanguard Balances Tragedy, Humor With Feminist Spin

When British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker decided to write a feminist play, she went whole hog.

In “The Love of the Nightingale,” at the Vanguard Theatre, she goes back to an ancient Greek myth in which Tereus, the young King of Thrace, has come to the aid of the King of Athens in a war, and as a reward is given the King’s daughter Procne’s hand in marriage.

After she bears his son, Tereus loses interest in Procne, who wants her sister Philomele brought from Athens to keep her company. On the way back to Thrace, Tereus tells Philomele that Procne is dead, makes his play for her and, when she refuses, he brutally rapes her and cuts out her tongue so she can’t tell the world what he’s done.

If this all sounds as if it must be very heavy and very Greek, you don’t know Wertenbaker’s way with a play. There is much humor here, as a place-setting for the tragedy, and a typically Greek happy ending from which the title comes, and whose surprise won’t be ruined here.

Director Elizabeth Swenson is as easy with the play’s wit as with its woes. She knows where the lightness is and lets it glimmer, and when the going gets heavy, she lets it drop with the force of a sledgehammer.

The anachronistic modern dialogue is perfect to place the play’s intent in no set time, and to give the characters an added richness, both in their emotional complexity and their mythic simplicity.

The leads and a few members of the supporting cast are on to the conceit and carry it off beautifully. Jill Cary Martin’s Procne is a full-blooded, intelligent woman, at home in any era, and Martin’s sense of majesty mixed with warmth couldn’t be more right.

*

Cheryl Etzel’s Philomele, bubbling with girlish naivete at first, grows with fine, emerging power as the mute beggar Tereus has made of her.

None of it might work as well without Robert Shaun Kilburn’s eccentric performance as Tereus. Totally confused by Athens, its powerful drama and, above all, by its words, uncommunicative Tereus is, in any period, a cluck.

Kilburn plays Tereus when he’s being bad like a little boy thinking quickly to make up an excuse, when he’s horny like a bumbling, impatient high-school jock. He catches the humor, and the irony, with ease.

If Procne’s Thracian ladies-in-waiting seem confused by the multifaceted writing, Joyce Eriksen appreciates the fun in the play; as the Queen of Athens, she describes a staging of the tragedy of Phaedra as though it were a soap opera. In a small role as a dense Thracian soldier, Jeff Schlosser also has a few very funny moments.

Robin Dunne finely delineates the complex shadings in Philomele’s nurse Niobe, both humorous and very serious, particularly in her long speech during a beautifully modulated moment when Philomele is being raped offstage and Niobe bemoans her charge’s fighting against fate.

* “The Love of the Nightingale,” Vanguard Theatre, College Business Park, 699A S. Stage College Blvd., Fullerton. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., matinees Sunday and May 22, 5 p.m. Ends June 4. $12-$14. (714) 526-8007. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. Robert Shaun Kilburn: Tereus

Jill Cary Martin: Procne

Cheryl Etzel; Philomele

Robin Dunne: Niobe

Joyce Eriksen: Queen of Athens

Jeff Schlosser: 2nd Soldier/Theseus

A Vanguard Theatre production of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play, produced by Christie D’Zurilla. Directed by Elizabeth Swenson. Scenic design: Bob Pearce. Choreography: Caprice Spencer Rothe. Mask design: Jeff Rochford. Costumes design: Mimi Swenson. Music direction: Kerstin Swenson. Stage manager: Steve Najarro.