Summary 
Extravagantly produced and modernized to the early twentieth century, with ragtime music enhancing fraternity horseplay and country club hijinx. With its star performer in a neck-and-back brace, there is Speed on roller blades, a champagne picnic, a pillow fight, and a ballroom dance. Superb entertainment with a cheerfully happy ending.
Design
Directed by Penny Metropulos. Set by William Bloodgood. Costumes by Deborah Dryden. Lights by Anne Militello. Sound by Jeremy Lee. Original music by Alaric Jans.
Cast
Brian Vaughn (Valentine), Timothy Gregory (Proteus), Scott Parkinson (Speed), Kate Fry (Julia), Oksana Fedunyszyn (Lucetta), Roderick Peeples (Antonio), Brad Armacost (Panthino), Eddie Jemison (Launce), Laura Lamson (Silvia), Larry Yando (Duke), James Harms (Eglamour).
Analysis
Penny Metropulos of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival directs this superb Chicago production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Metropulos sets the production in the early twentieth century, incorporating an original ragtime piano score and musicians wearing bowlers, vests, and bow ties to enhance the adolescent mistakes made in friendship and in "the chameleon love."
The setting hearkens to a less worrisome time, and Proteus and Valentine present themselves as callow college graduates just beginning their lives. The two friends may have emerged from The Great Gatsby as they bound onstage in sweaters and berets. They carry golf clubs and flash cameras, and along with a handful of compatriots, break from their fraternity horseplay for freeze-framed snapshots. They duel with each other as if their golf clubs are rapiers and share a crossed-finger salute to indicate the depth of their friendship and loyalty before the group hoists Valentine up on their shoulders.
A piano player, accompanied by reeds and a stand-up bass, occupies stage left, with bar stools and parlor chairs nearby. A circular metal staircase winds to an iron-railed balcony upstage right. An overhead sign proclaims the town of "Verona."
Timothy Gregory, in the spirit of "the show must go on," plays Proteus in a neck and back brace due to an injury suffered in a preview performance. Gregory, handsome and earnest, portrays Proteus with confidence as a wealthy young rake naturally pursuing what he desires: his best friend's girlfriend. His selfish passion takes precedence over his loyalty to Valentine and his own relationship with Julia, and despite the fact his feelings for Silvia are not reciprocated.
A gum-chomping Speed cruises the stage on roller-blades, a mandolin over his back, making wry commentary on the rapacious events around him. His pants and sleeves rolled high, he wears hat, bow tie, and suspenders, at times plunking chords on the mandolin to punctuate his punch-lines. His tortured explanation of Silvia's love for Valentine is a comic highlight, as Speed pants and fans himself with his hat as he describes her passion, and he falls face forward with an "alleluia!" when his dim-witted master finally grasps his meaning.
Launce and his dog Crab - "the sourest-natur'd dog that lives" - nearly steal the show. Proteus' valet resembles and sounds like Lou Costello with his earnest idiocies, and the scruffy mutt is unpredictable, circling his master, extending his leash, or pausing to sniff himself until Launce swats at him with his yellow bowler in bemused embarrassment. When joined by Speed, their 3.1 exchange is spot lit as if a comedy-club routine, and they apologize for corny jokes - "we didn't write this stuff!" - and take credit for big laughs: "we did write that one."
The love interests are portrayed with the same surface appeal as the men, but with more inner strength. Julia, usually attired in scarlet and white, seems madly in love with Proteus, running in circles as Lucetta plays 1.2 keep-away with one of his letters, or engaging with Lucetta in a 2.7 pillow fight in disagreement over "love's hot fire." In an endearing sequence, Julia recalls Proteus' love letters with such wistful abandon that the letters unfurl from the fly space above in long banners. She then twirls with delight across the stage, dancing around and through the draping banner "love letters."
The gorgeous Silvia, always elegantly dressed as if for a ballroom dance, literally becomes a bird in a cage when forcibly engaged to Thurio rather than her beloved Valentine. Standing within a narrow gold-barred enclosure as if imprisoned, her protests go unheard and she is left alone onstage after 4.2. She turns to the omnipresent piano player for assistance, but when he throws up his arms, she resourcefully drops her feet out the bottom of the cage and baby-steps the cage offstage. More than a mere object of affection, although Proteus and Valentine stare at her for uncomfortably long spans, Silvia has thoughts and feelings that are more than window-display beauty.
Metropulos' refined production features a 2.4 champagne picnic with sugared strawberries, then a lavishly costumed ballroom dance beneath a glittering chandelier. The contrast between societal elevation and moral immaturity becomes clear as Fry's Julia appears in the balcony dressed like a young man, and the production pauses for intermission.
The second act begins with Proteus and Valentine circling Silvia as the piano player plays jaunty music. The Duke is played with a middle-aged vanity that perfectly fits with Metropulos' conception of the characters. Attired in robe and slippers and bristling with eye rolls at comments at his "timeless" age, he resorts to yoga and working out with a medicine ball. Throughout 3.2 he stretches, flexes, and bends, at one point discoursing profundity while absurdly flat on his back, his legs spread wide, rolling his ankles. And Eglamour is portrayed as if Fred Astaire, crooning love songs for Proteus from the balcony or arriving onstage upon a three-wheeled bicycle laden with flowers.
Metropulos infuses the show with delightful moments: set changers tango with mannequins; Proteus and Julia share a passionate 2.2 kiss while sinking with clumsy fumbles to the floor; a pompous Antonio putts golf balls across the stage while Panthino moves a glass tumbler so the putts "fall"; Panthino's bag-pipe playing induces Crab to woefully howl; and a terrified Speed attempts to bribe the Outlaws with crackerjack. The finale includes a Keystone Kops chase sequence performed to a thumping bass riff, but the chase concludes with a jarring slow-motion assault on Silvia by Proteus.
Metropulos handles the difficult 5.4 conclusion well, and the characters' actions flow naturally from the performances. Valentine offers his beloved Silvia to Proteus, but with sarcasm, disgustedly showing him the cross-fingered salute of loyalty and friendship. Gregory's Proteus then seems to emerge from a trance, sitting down with a drawn out "oh" when faced with his betrayal of Julia. When he rises, he and Julia circle each other - he seems renewed but she remains wary - and their chemistry seems natural so their reunion plays plausibly. The ending is cheerful - "one mutual happiness" - the lovers reunited and matured, and each pair shares a loving kiss, even the dog Crab and his master Launce.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona represents a breezy and feather-light entertainment, smartly conceived and extravagantly produced, a crowd-pleasing season-opening success upon Chicago's vibrant Navy Pier.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.19, No.3, Summer 2001.