Corsets, flames, and swordfights. Oh yeah.
This is The Illusion, the latest production from the Guilford College Theatre Studies department.
Jack Zerbe directs the play, written in 17th century France and adapted in 1994 by Tony Kushner. With it, Guilford abandons the more politically conscious plays of seasons past in favor of a tragicomic soap opera.
Despite Kushner’s witty adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s original script, the play is the weakest part of the production. Quite frankly, it sucks.
The production, however, does not suck. Under no circumstances. It is unquestionably a good time and a far better way to spend an evening than Guilford students usually do.
It opens with an aging father (Jack Hilley), searching for the son he disowned 15 years before. Desperate, he goes to the cave of the magician Alcandre, where he is shown scenes from his son’s (Eduard Ferrer) life.
Vita Generalova stars as the magician Alcandre, the weaver of the play’s illusions, and her commanding voice and presence is responsible for much of the success of the illusion. Ferrer and Samantha Kittle, the play’s lovers, also perform admirably, especially as hormone-driven teenagers in the early scenes.
It is, however, the supporting actors who pull the whole play off.
Rebecca Czarnecki is hilarious in the role of Matamore, a cowardly general with a handlebar mustache and ridiculous accent, whose nonsensical profusions of love are matched only by Hilary Horne’s barrage of one-liners.
Horne plays the sly and whorish maid Elicia, resplendent in both cleavage and comedy. She, as well as Paul Masters (Ferrer’s effeminate rival), are particularly engaging and audience-friendly.
Funny though they were, it was Rachel Gordon that impressed me most. Her performance as Amanuensis, the magician’s servant, is chilling.
The magnificent lighting and sets (designed by Bob Elderkin and April Soroko, respectively) enhance this unnerving aspect. The production, amazing in all technical aspects, opens with a distinctly unsettling set: a matte black room, hung with a tattered spidery curtain and lit with a single bare bulb. Bluish fog pours in from both sides of the stage, drifting among audience members like a web.
Thus The Illusion begins. In its course, it confronts love, lust, and greed, cut always with humor. According to Zerbe, it is “part comic burlesque, part tragic satire … Ultimately it is a love-letter to the theatre that celebrates the capacity of the arts to heal a broken heart and transcend the limits of reality.”
It did not, unfortunately, heal my heart. But, damn. I had fun.