Riverside troupe mixing classic, contemporary comedies for outdoor festival

Shakespeare saw all the world as a stage, and Riverside Theatre is opening that Elizabethan globe to bring an American classic to the annual summer series bearing the Bard's name.

Eugene O'Neill's only comedy, “Ah, Wilderness!” will open Riverside's Shakespeare Festival on June 17 on the outdoor stage in Iowa City's Lower City Park. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Shakespeare's first comedy - and possibly his first play - takes to the festive stage fashioned after London's Globe Theatre on June 24, 2011.

The two shows will play in rotation through July 10, with each one having its own scenery.

It's not the first time the Riverside troupe has stepped out of Shakespeare's hallowed footsteps for the festival.

“About six years ago we did Moliere's ‘The Imaginary Invalid,' ” Ron Clark, Riverside's co-founder, says via email. “There are just too many great classics to limit the festival to Shakespeare. All Shakespeare festivals eventually get to other authors.”

The two comedies, written hundreds of years apart, dovetail nicely.

“The company demands are similar and they are wonderfully different comedies,” says Clark, 60, of Iowa City, who is directing “Two Gentlemen” and performing in “Ah, Wilderness!”

“They both deal with young love and the stress it puts on the young and the people who have to put up with them,” he says.

Riverside describes “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” as “a madcap romp where friendship and irresistible desire clash.”

Believed to have been written in 1590 or 1591, Shakespeare's love triangle takes on too many angles when best friends Proteus and Valentine desire the same woman, Silvia.

The plot thickens as Proteus decides to forsake his betrothed, Julia, and betray the unsuspecting Valentine. Disguises, outlaws and a dog play into the antics as the women teach Proteus lively life lessons in love in loyalty.

“It is very high energy and requires lots of stamina in both the actors and the costumes they wear,” Clark says, adding that it even includes “a great fight and one song/dance number for the outlaws.”

He's keeping the action in the Elizabethan era, and says his joy as a director comes from “finding the truth of an early work that resonates clearly today.”

He says audiences are in for “a rousing night of great humor, music and energy.”

“Ah, Wilderness” will launch the popular summer series in the 20th century.

Theodore Swetz, 58, of Kansas City, Mo., who directed last year's “Love's Labour's Lost,” is returning to Iowa City to direct his first O'Neill play. Head of acting in the University of Missouri-Kansas City's professional training program, he began his career with the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.

He's relishing this brush with O'Neill, acclaimed for such early 20th century dramas as “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day's Journey into Night.”

“I have studied his work over the years and I am thrilled to finally direct one of his plays, especially ‘Ah, Wilderness!' which I believe to be an American classic,” Swetz says via email.

Riverside describes the show as “a comedy about family and first love.” Written in 1933, the play is set on the Fourth of July, circa 1906, in a small Connecticut town, where Richard Miller, 17, is in the throes of teen angst. Spurned by his true love, he turns to “gin fizzes and a tart's kisses in a roadside dive,” testing his family's mettle.

“This is (O'Neill's) one-and-only comedy and he was very attached to it,” Swetz says. “O'Neill wrote this as a ‘recollection,' a recreation, an imaginative redefining of what he wanted his own young life to be like. He identifies himself with the Richard character and has stated that the play is an active wish of what would have been.

“It is a wonderful family where love is the true center. It is a place of acceptance, a safe haven before one embarked into the excitement of life - the unknown - ah, wilderness.”

Even though O'Neill is known for his dramas that delve into tragedy, he deftly injects this coming-of-age story with humor.

“The spine of the play is an individual earnestness and naive energy that infests everyone. O'Neill is a genius in capturing these individuals, their sadnesses and absurdities and we all connect as we remember our own formative years.”

It was written to reflect a simpler, happier time before The Depression.

“The acting challenges are to be not as ‘knowing' as we all are in 2011. Actors must give into a naive exuberance and embrace a simpler and ultimately deeper style,” he says.

“For me as a director, I must dig and find (the play's) deepest human moments - and the play is abundant with them. If one does not ‘dig,' then the piece will just seem quaint and that would be failing O'Neill and our audience.

“The play is a beautiful gift of sincerity and the power of love and commitment of family to hold each other up. And it should remind us all of a simpler time that we all long for.”

ARTS EXTRA

• What: Riverside Theatre's Shakespeare Festival: “Ah, Wilderness!” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”
• Where: Outdoor Festival Stage, Lower City Park, Iowa City
• When: June 17 to July 10, 2011; shows run in rotation
• Times: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays; 7 p.m. Family Nights June 28 and July 5
• Tickets: $17 to $39 at (319) 338-7672 and www.riversidetheatre.org/buytickets/
• Extras: Grounds open 90 minutes before show times for picnics; Green Show Stage performances start 60 minutes before show times
• Preview: Festival Intern Company previews the Green Show for “Ah, Wilderness!” at 12:10 p.m. Friday, June 17,  in the Ped Mall (near Washington Street), downtown Iowa City
• Information: www.riversidetheatre.org