Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company's 'The Lion in Winter,' by James Goldman

Medieval table tennis

The play offers much more in terms of family dynamics and the personal nature of politics. When performed like a chess match, it approaches profound and poetic insight; when played as ping pong, it scores only easy laughs.

In Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company’s revival, the drama is more checkers than chess, and when Joshua Browns’s production gives in to ping pong, it plays like one of those basement games where errant shots send the ball skittering behind the water heater.

It's confounding, because the cast seems more than capable. John Lopes makes a virile, passionate King Henry, matched in wit and feistiness by Megan Bellwoar as his imprisoned queen Eleanor. However, Sean Quinn's form-fitting red dress seems too young for the character, and looks as though it was designed for an evil cartoon witch.

Needy children

Their three sons, vying for favor in a country with no system for the succession of power (as we know from King Lear, which is referenced), generally fit what's said about them in the script. Still, David Pica's Richard (historically, Richard the Lionhearted, later King Richard I) hardly seems like a consummate warrior. Instead, Pica makes Richard twitchy and psychotic, a fresh insight that works in Goldman's revisionist history. Harry Watermeier is suitably immature as young John, Henry's favorite as the play opens, and the future King John (catch Revolution Shakespeare’s production of that history play in this year’s Fringe Festival). Robert DaPonte plays enigmatic Geoffrey, who rightfully complains of being overlooked. Will Henry choose one to be king, try to split his riches among them, or hatch some other plan?

France is represented by its young King Phillip, played with mischievous aplomb by Andrew Carroll, and his sister Alais, made so resolutely mopey by Lena Mucchetti that she barely registers, leaving a hole in the play where there should be a more humane, less ambitious presence.

The invisible castle

Production elements provide little support. Charlie Gallagher's vague scenic design doesn't suggest a medieval castle, and fails the script's dependency on carefully timed entrances and exits from small rooms. The final scene's dungeon might as well be a sunny field, or it would be if J. Dominic Chacon's lighting wasn't so peculiarly awful.

Characters wander through a forest of blotchy shadows; the only person consistently lit clearly sat in the house left section's front row. Quinn's costumes appear made on the cheap, with distractingly modern shoes (or were blue suede Oxfords big in 1183?) — except when characters in an English castle in winter are barefoot — and there are no details that help define characters. Much is said about Alais's beauty, but her dowdy costumes defy it. The music choices mix medieval church choirs in this decidedly unreligious play with bursts of modern noise that provide no insight.

The lackadaisical approach seems contrary to CCTC's aims and history. Though they sometimes bend the definition of "classic," they usually share respectful insights that make their choices rewarding. However, much of The Lion in Winter seems like ping pong, and performing it that way is like watching the company play chess with paddles.