Bard and Fast
Callie Kimball's Quick Adaptation of 'Rape of Lucrece'

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Actress-playwright Callie Kimball doesn't kid around when she takes on a project. Adapt an epic poem by Shakespeare for the stage in three marathon writing days? No biggie.

And so it has come to pass that Washington Shakespeare Company, on very short notice (having canceled its "King Lear" due to a cast member's health scare), is presenting Kimball's brand-new adaptation of "The Rape of Lucrece" at the Clark Street Playhouse through March 11.

Over the course of one long weekend last month, Kimball dove into the 1594 poem and wrote a first draft, which then had a read-through at Washington Shakespeare. She made changes just as quickly, and the rehearsal script was ready. Kimball was surprised it took her three days to get that first draft out.

"I completely underestimated how long it would take to craft and tend the verse . . . pruning things away and nurturing the things you want to keep," she says. A longtime dabbler in iambic pentameter, Kimball found it easier to create her own additions to the Bard's work, "because I do write quickly and I knew the scenes I wanted to write that were just pure invention on my part." Although she didn't try to match Shakespeare's seven-line stanzas, Kimball says, she used "a lot of internal rhyme and rhyming couplets" so the additions wouldn't be jarring.

Lucretia, whose tale has been told or commented upon by Livy, Ovid, Augustine, Chaucer and many others, was a Roman aristocrat, circa 510 B.C. The son of Rome's tyrant ruler insinuated himself into her home and raped her. Lucretia told her husband and father of the outrage, then killed herself as a matter of honor.

"I had to sort of get my arms around that" and set aside modern views about rape victims, Kimball says. She came to admire Lucretia's pure heart -- "an honorable woman, known for her virtue and her standing in society . . . The choices became to just tell the story and take it on faith that she was exactly what she seems to be -- just a wonderful, wonderful woman."

A self-avowed Shakespeare freak, Kimball says working with Shakespeare made her feel "really special. I felt like he and I were in on some kind of game together and it was a really cool feeling."

Sarah Denhardt has directed "The Rape of Lucrece," and three of the seven cast members come from the canceled "Lear." Artistic Director Christopher Henley had been desperate to fill the company's suddenly empty winter slot with something meaningful rather than "just grabbing some play that was easy to cast," or throwing together an evening of favorite Shakespeare scenes.

Most of all, he wanted WSC to be in the swim during these early days of the six-month-long Shakespeare in Washington festival, along with such current shows as the Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Richard III," the Classical Theatre of Harlem's "Lear" at the Folger, Synetic's wordless "Macbeth" and Keegan's "Tempest," plus Rorschach's "Tempest"-tossed "Rough Magic."

WSC, says Henley, is "taking one of the few Shakespeare pieces that aren't well known and forging a theatrical evening out of it . . . so it ended up being a really nice kind of thing to offer the festival [and] as elegant as possible a solution to a really difficult dilemma."

Honorable Mentions

On Monday, the Helen Hayes organization trumpeted the nominations for its 2007 awards to area theaters and performers. But its list of 132 artists and productions in 24 categories inevitably left out some shows that linger in Backstage's memory. They may have missed the judges' cut by a hair's breadth or a mile; we'll never know. But in keeping with our annual tradition, we offer a fanfare to artists and shows the Hayes judges overlooked and that are still winners in our book:

Ford's Theatre's fine productions of "Shenandoah" and "State of the Union."

Zelda Fichandler's full-blooded revival of Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing!" at Arena Stage.

Signature's loverly "My Fair Lady," with Andrew Long's pip of a Henry Higgins, and the flawed but wonderfully creepy "Nevermore," both staged by Eric Schaeffer.

Studio's heart-rending staging of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig," with Kate Debelack in the lead.

 Studio Secondstage's riveting, if bloody-minded, "Crestfall."

 Brigid Cleary's deliciously disillusioned society matron in "Bal Masque."

Among the plays and performers on smaller stages, we would nod to:

Theater Alliance's harsh but fantastic "The Monument," with scary-good turns by Jennifer Mendenhall and Alexander Strain.

African Continuum's consistently fine season leading up to "A Raisin in the Sun," with Lanford Wilson's "The Gingham Dog" and Tracey Scott Wilson's tale of a morally tone-deaf reporter, "The Story."

Forum Theatre & Dance's droll, clockwork production of Vaclav Havel's "The Memorandum."

 Brian Hemmingsen's fine Willy Loman for Keegan Theatre.

 An exhilaratingly angry "No End of Blame" at Olney, marking that theater's final summer with the politically edgy Potomac Theatre Project.

 Maura McGinn as a college "diversity" administrator and Cesar A. Guadamuz as an unhappy student -- both terrific in Journeymen Theater's "Spinning Into Butter."

Susan Lynskey's priceless wise child in "Girl in the Goldfish Bowl" at MetroStage.

That ridiculously funny "Monkeyboy" by Charter Theatre's Keith Bridges, Chris Stezin and Richard Washer.

Not a bad year, 2006, theaterwise.

Follow Spots

Two corrections to yesterday's coverage of the Helen Hayes Awards nominations: "The Faculty Room" by Bridget Carpenter will be removed from the list of nominees for the Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding new play or musical because the Woolly Mammoth production was not a world premiere, as the organization had assumed, Hayes Executive Director Linda Levy Grossman wrote in an e-mail. Also, Synetic Theater received a total of 10 nominations, not 8. It shares two nods with Theater J for the co-production of "The Dybbuk."

Winter of his discontent: Ailing Geraint Wyn Davies, star of the Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Richard III," missed last night's performance and three shows last weekend. His understudy, Jeff Allin, has assumed the hump in his stead. Theater spokeswoman Liza Lorenz says the Shakespeare hopes Wyn Davies will resume the role this week.

Catalyst Theater is doing the honors this week for dramatist Suzan-Lori Parks's "365 Days/365 Plays" festival of short works. The company will present this week's free plays on Saturday after the 2 p.m. performance of "We Are Not These Hands" at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. (The mainstage show is $10.) Visit http://www.catalysttheater.org/. Next week's installment by Georgetown University's Black Theatre Ensemble is on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. in Poulton Hall, 37th and P streets NW. Visit http://www.georgetownarts.org/.