Jane Anger
If you, like me, find the full title of this play absurdly compelling, a pleasurable treat awaits! The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard.
The year is 1606. The plague is raging and people are “freaking out”. Social distancing is de rigueur. A pony length is the safe distance for this era. Of course that requires the play’s characters to do “the pony” now and again. Silliness rules and laughs are abundant.
Jane arrives wearing a 17th century medical beak. Her audience learns that this is a great time to be a cunning woman. She used to be a whore but is “now more ambitious”. Jane will eventually make her way to visit William Shakespeare in London. He is currently isolated amidst the death carts picking up bodies in the street. The two share a past which inspired some of the Bard’s love sonnets.
Apparently the plague is causing Willy distress resulting in writer’s block. This “voice of all people” is a raging egomaniac telling us that he is “famous and timeless” and has “universal appeal”. Going into quarantine “I’m expected to be more prolific and timely than the last time”. His contemporaries like Thomas Middleton are ridiculed: “they think it is provocative to break genre”.
The Francis of the title is an aspiring actor who pretends to be sixteen and strongly desires a role as an ingenue in one of Willy’s works. An Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” interchange using the word Sir is hilarious. A renamed Frankie has a pamphlet of a play called King Leir. A bit of thievery might be the cure for writer’s block. King Lear effusively flows from the pen.
The plot exists as a mechanism to deliver a multitude of verbal and physical hijinks. Chamber pots and sexual organs. The sporting of a very cool earring and rapier wit. A very sticky pudding. Jane Anger revels in sophomoric cleverness and the actors chew the scenery. One of them quite literally.
Jane arrives to help Willy get his proverbial shit together. They negotiate a deal. Jane Anger is a writer from history who was the first women to publish a full length defense of her sex in English. This play is a farcical jumble bashing male superiority through the wide eyed lens of a feminist rant.
Willy’s wife Anne Hathaway emerges from her historical obscurity to join the merriment. Willy describes her as sickening but she is immune from the plague. She caught and survived it when caring for their now dead son Hamnet. The ridiculous amusements are non-stop.
Michael Urie is a smashingly unhinged Shakespeare enveloped in a cloak of mancave realness. Amelia Workman is a strong and confident Jane but do not mess with her. The same can be said for Anne Hathaway (playwright Talene Monahon). This Anne knows she is insufferable and everyone hates her (like another similarly named woman from a more modern era).
Last, and most certainly not least, is the magnificent clown Ryan Spahn who portrays Francis. If Mr. Urie is unhinged then Mr. Spahn must be classified as deranged. All four performers are excellent and this show is gleeful fun. The ending was a trifle anticlimactic after all the proceeding lunacy but that’s a quibble.
If you want to go to the theater and have a great time, make haste to see Jane Anger. Ms. Monahon’s wildly enjoyable comedy revises the notion that revenge is a dish best served cold. This one brings the heat and mercilessly wounds its intended victims, also know as men.
Jane Anger is playing at the New Ohio Theatre in Greenwich Village through March 26, 2022.