‘Cymbeline’ Is Challenge for A Noise Within

“Shakespeare for Dummies” rates “Cymbeline” as the Bard’s most complicated play. That’s one way to put it. But only a dope would confuse “complicated” with “complex.” And only the brave need tackle this vexing, tortured folk tale, set among ancient quarreling Britons and Romans, featuring the single dullest king in the entire canon.

Some scholars contend Shakespeare cranked out this play after a year-and-a-half-long streak that produced “King Lear,” “Macbeth” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” If so, “Cymbeline” is a near-sociopathic coda to that streak, a briar patch of Shakespearean motifs and archetypes.

It’s worth trying, to be sure. That much was proven by (among other productions) the recent, antic Old Globe Theatre staging in San Diego. What does the current “Cymbeline” at A Noise Within prove? Not enough. It proves that theater-makers must make more and better decisions about tone, rhythm, colliding sensibilities and a million other things in order to activate this text.

It proves that time, a subject so dear to Shakespeare that he turned it into a character in “A Winter’s Tale,” is many things, among them relative. In this enervating staging, 2 1/2 hours feels like quite the chunk.

Everything about this A Noise Within production, a rare flub for this generally consistent ensemble, bespeaks three words: Just Do It. The cast, flummoxed by language so thick you could build chimneys with it, substitutes volume for intensity. Imogen (Gail Shapiro) cries rivers of tears, ineffectually, perching her speaking voice on the break between “normal” and “cracking” throughout. Only Robertson Dean’s Iachimo keeps his head--and his voice; he’s Mr. Final Consonants--above the overall suffocating averageness.

Michael C. Smith’s unit set, which must suggest everything from Roman baths to a cave in Wales, is dominated by five clear-glass rectangular monoliths, inside of which are clumps of leafless branches. This kingdom, we see straight off, needs some regeneration. The production doesn’t offer it.

If, as literary scholar Harold Bloom contends, “Cymbeline” reveals a “sickness of spirit” unparalleled in all of Shakespeare, surely that sickness can lead to more vivid fever-dreams than this.

* “Cymbeline,” A Noise Within, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A., 5151 State University Drive. Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m.; May 19, 8 p.m.; May 20, 2 and 8 p.m.; June 7, 8 p.m.; June 8, 8 p.m.; June 17, 8 p.m.; June 18, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends June 18. $22 to $30. (323) 224-6420. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

William Dennis Hunt: Cymbeline

Richard Soto: Cloten

Michael Louden: Posthumous

Jay Bell: Belarius

Robertson Dean: Iachimo

Gail Shapiro: Imogen

Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Art Manke. Scenic design by Michael C. Smith. Costumes by Brenda K. Plakans. Lighting by James Taylor. Music by Norman L. Berman. Stage manager Peter Feldman.