SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS
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Now, more than 200 years later, we are grateful to Goldoni for having preserved on paper a quintessential example of an ephemeral style. And in this season of theatrical openings in which results have fallen so short of expectations–in which so many productions have sunk under the weight of their own intended importance–we can say: thanks to Lifeline Theatre for a show full of exuberant fun and delightful stylishness.
Lifeline’s Servant–conceived, directed, and largely designed by, commedia specialist John Szostek–has its flaws, but for the most part it has the same high-energy appeal found in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Like Roger’s home, Toontown, the Venice of Servant is a make-believe, anything-goes place. Waiters at an inn careen about the dining room tossing plates at each other, as the pasta flies off the dishes and back onto them again. A naughty servant, being berated by his boss, backs up until he’s bent over backward at an impossible angle, then springs right back up again the moment the storm has passed. Like the improbably curvaceous but still cartoonish Jessica in the Roger Rabbit movie, the lecherous old fool Pantalone romps around with an overstuffed codpiece, at once absurd and erotic, while the much-chased-after maidservant Smeraldina telegraphs her lustiness with a series of hip bumps that transform real-life sexuality into daffy exaggeration. Indeed, exaggeration is the keynote of commedia, a comic style based on the excesses–physical, verbal, and emotional–of human behavior.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Suzanne N. Plunkett.
