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A distant mirror in the Middle East
"Nathan the Wise' at People's Light (1st review)
Give People's Light & Theatre Company credit for imagination and courage. Instead of merely drawing from the current Broadway fare, the Malvern troupe opened its season with Nathan the Wise, a 200-year-old German Enlightenment fable about religious tolerance.
Gotthold Lessing's original 1779 play is long and dense, but Edward Kemp's translation, created for England's Chichester Festival Theatre in 2003, renders it accessible to modern audiences. The play's theme of respect for religious diversity couldn't be more relevant, and the People's Light production is charming.
Nathan the Wise is set in Jerusalem in 1192, just after the end of the Third Crusade. Richard the Lionhearted and his Christian army have departed, leaving the Holy Land in the hands of the Muslim sultan Saladin. The city is a shaky melting pot in which Jews, Muslims and Christians live uneasily side-by-side.
Nathan (played by the noted stage and screen actor David Strathairn) is a wealthy Jewish merchant known for his philanthropy toward people of all faiths. He returns from a business trip to Babylon to learn that his daughter, Rachel (Saige Thompson), has been saved from a fire by one of the Knights Templar (Luigi Sottile). Rachel has fallen in love with the knight, who had recently been spared from execution by Saladin (Stephen Novelli) because the sultan was moved by the young man's striking resemblance to Saladin's late brother. The sultan is cash-strapped and has designs on some of Nathan's wealth. Meanwhile, the Patriarch (Peter DeLaurier), the city's tyrannical Christian prelate, develops sinister suspicions about Nathan and his daughter.
As with Fielding, Dickens and much other literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries, the various plot strands gradually dovetail, revealing long-held secrets about parentage and motivation.
Strathairn makes Nathan a charismatic everyman and an unflappable man of faith. Even when things seem to be falling apart for his character, Strathairn lends him an air of serenity.
Novelli's Saladin is at turns imperious and vulnerable, and the acclaimed off-Broadway actress Roslyn Ruff is fun to watch as Saladin's Machiavellian sister. Sottile makes an appropriately stalwart knight; Thompson is a lovely Rachel; and DeLaurier does well in his brief turn as the hateful bishop.
Director Abigail Adams keeps the production moving briskly and seamlessly. The costumes by Marla J. Jurglanis are colorful and attractive, and set Designer Wilson Chin's re-creation of medieval Jerusalem, with its explosion of domes and arches, is stunningly evocative. He captures the feel of this incredible city by the desert so thoroughly that you can almost feel the sand in your shoes.♦
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
Gotthold Lessing's original 1779 play is long and dense, but Edward Kemp's translation, created for England's Chichester Festival Theatre in 2003, renders it accessible to modern audiences. The play's theme of respect for religious diversity couldn't be more relevant, and the People's Light production is charming.
Nathan the Wise is set in Jerusalem in 1192, just after the end of the Third Crusade. Richard the Lionhearted and his Christian army have departed, leaving the Holy Land in the hands of the Muslim sultan Saladin. The city is a shaky melting pot in which Jews, Muslims and Christians live uneasily side-by-side.
Nathan (played by the noted stage and screen actor David Strathairn) is a wealthy Jewish merchant known for his philanthropy toward people of all faiths. He returns from a business trip to Babylon to learn that his daughter, Rachel (Saige Thompson), has been saved from a fire by one of the Knights Templar (Luigi Sottile). Rachel has fallen in love with the knight, who had recently been spared from execution by Saladin (Stephen Novelli) because the sultan was moved by the young man's striking resemblance to Saladin's late brother. The sultan is cash-strapped and has designs on some of Nathan's wealth. Meanwhile, the Patriarch (Peter DeLaurier), the city's tyrannical Christian prelate, develops sinister suspicions about Nathan and his daughter.
As with Fielding, Dickens and much other literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries, the various plot strands gradually dovetail, revealing long-held secrets about parentage and motivation.
Strathairn makes Nathan a charismatic everyman and an unflappable man of faith. Even when things seem to be falling apart for his character, Strathairn lends him an air of serenity.
Novelli's Saladin is at turns imperious and vulnerable, and the acclaimed off-Broadway actress Roslyn Ruff is fun to watch as Saladin's Machiavellian sister. Sottile makes an appropriately stalwart knight; Thompson is a lovely Rachel; and DeLaurier does well in his brief turn as the hateful bishop.
Director Abigail Adams keeps the production moving briskly and seamlessly. The costumes by Marla J. Jurglanis are colorful and attractive, and set Designer Wilson Chin's re-creation of medieval Jerusalem, with its explosion of domes and arches, is stunningly evocative. He captures the feel of this incredible city by the desert so thoroughly that you can almost feel the sand in your shoes.♦
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
What, When, Where
Nathan the Wise. By Gotthold Lessing; translation by Edward Kemp; directed by Abigail Adams. Through October 11, 2009 at People’s Light & Theatre Company, 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, Pa. (610) 644-3500 or www.peopleslight.org.
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