Lope de Vega was a prolific Spanish playwright during Spain’s Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and nearly five hundred plays are attributed to him. One is La dama boba written in 1613. This play has been loosely translated as The Lady Simpleton or The Lady-Fool or Lady Nitwit. Staging the Daffy Dame is a modern consideration of how to present this work in the #hashtag era.
The original play is not simply the silly exploits of a daffy woman or two. The main characters seem to fall under the spell of potential suitors. Their father is strict. Is that to protect or control them? In a world dominated by men, what role do these women play in order to adapt themselves to their time? Can daffy be an intelligent strategy to manipulate the world to their advantage?
That is a premise worthy of study. Staging the Daffy Dame has been written by faculty member Anne García-Romero and was presented by the Notre Dame Film, Television and Theatre Department. The idea is great but the plot has been grossly overstuffed with nearly every possible hot topic of the moment.
Lupe Sanchez (Natalia Cuevas) is a college professor. Her vision is to stage The Daffy Dame with colorblind casting. Latino and Latina actors covet these roles. Why should they have to share them? After an overextended sequence about calling them Latinx now, there is an interesting but unanswered question. Shouldn’t Latinx actors train on Spanish classics like English actors train on Shakespeare?
This story about putting on a play falls into the trap of soap opera plotting. Twists and turns are not really established. Felicia Alvarado (Ana Wolfermann) will be playing the lead opposite Luis Gonzalez (Jake Berney). In the third scene, she announces that she cannot act with him. I couldn’t see how that was established. When he suggests they try to rehearse in the play’s native Spanish, she says, “I’m experiencing a hostile environment.”
Felicia, it turns out, is an undocumented immigrant and does not speak Spanish. Both leads are in the midst of the DACA cycle. He outs her to the cast. The director is criticized for creating a hostile environment where such behavior could happen. The term “safe space” is tossed into the mix. A cast member who suggests rehearsing in the play’s native language is treated as horrific and insulting. If this is what the intellectual give and take of college campuses are now, I’m very glad to be well past this period in my life.
As you might imagine, there are lots of side dramas and relationships. Susan Harrison is “attracted to smart, woke, interesting men or women depending on the person.” In the best, most complete performance, James Cullinane plays the jock type. While the character of Jeff Hollister has to utter “bro” and “dude” more times than a frathouse on Friday night, he manages to fill out the role and shade it nicely into a fully developed real person. He even manages to make the “homoerotic friendship” rehearsal scene work with Mr. Berney.
The best scene in this production, by far, is the one between the jock and the bisexual young lady. Mr. Cullinane and Ms. Barron brought nice depth and interpersonal chemistry to the moment. The playwright added some nice imagery about birds crashing into windows, leading to conversations about one’s soul and healing.
The professors and the stage crew are fairly underdeveloped stereotypes. One stagehand is gay, the other wants to remain a virgin. Being a professor of the arts as a person of color is hard. “Don’t pull that card with me,” screams the other teacher. I found the mounting cliches too much to bear.
When the play finally gets to the point where the cast is Staging the Daffy Dame, I was engaged. The costumes (Richard E. Donnelly) were particularly good. Director Kevin Dreyer did not amp up the antics far enough to demonstrate that this was corral de comedias typical of the period. After all of the woke lecturing and many mini-dramas, an over-the-top flamboyant style might have made all the previous plodding worthwhile.
University theater departments should be pushing their students to take on culturally relevant topics. They also should be exploring the classics and bringing lesser know plays and playwrights into the theatrical discussion. The attempt to combine the two ideas was commendable. The result, however, seemed more like a teaching exercise rather than an explosion of intellectual debate about women and immigrants in today’s society.