Et Cetera Opens Home With "Lady"

The Et Cetera Theater, founded by the popular actor Alexander Kalyagin, has been drifting in and out of focus since 1993. Its first foray was a run-of-the-mill version of Anton Chekhov’s "Uncle Vanya" and it followed that with several equally tepid dramas and comedies based on writers ranging from Eugene O’Neill to Molière.

The homeless troupe performed infrequently, usually renting out other theater’s stages for a few days every couple of months.

Finally the Et Cetera’s wandering days are over. Kalyagin and his crew recently held a coming-out party for their own new stage, a nicely appointed spread on the second floor of one of those drab, boxy high-rises on Novy Arbat. The means of celebration was the premiere of a new show, George Bernard Shaw’s one-act play, "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets," and there were plenty of cognoscenti on hand to help celebrate.

What was lacking was a sign that the Et Cetera has grown artistically along with its repertoire. Instead, "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets" is another in the venue’s unwavering line of professional, undistinguished outings.

Kalyagin is a fine actor. He is natural and he has charisma. I suspect he could jump up out of a dead sleep and flawlessly pull off a comic routine. As Shaw’s version of Shakespeare in the story of an unexpected nocturnal meeting between the Bard and Queen Elizabeth, Kalyagin goes beyond that, but not by much.

Frankly, there wasn’t much farther for him to go.

Shaw’s playlet, written in 1910, is a piece of social do-gooding that was intended to drum up support for the British national theater. It tells the tale of Shakespeare convincing a simpleton sentry (Igor Zolotovitsky) to let him meet with his lover and muse, the “Dark Lady” (Yekaterina Rednikova), winding up instead in the embraces of the Queen (Tatyana Vladimirova). After some haughty bantering and posing, the two titans get down to philosophy and agree that culture deserves the state’s support.

"Dark Lady" displays reflections of the usual Shavian wit, as the writer greedy for eloquent locutions copies down in his notebook every felicitous phrase his interlocutors utter. But there is no getting around it; this is a play of minor importance. I can imagine a makeshift performance coming off perfectly as a lead-in to the keynote address at a theater society convention. As the vehicle launching the Et Cetera’s new home, it was a strange choice.

The irony grows when you consider that the theater originally began as a private house, but fell back under the protection of the city budget two years ago. (During the curtain calls Mayor Luzhkov got the requisite “thank you” for helping the theater acquire the new stage.)

Director Roman Kozak sought to enliven the trifling piece, but came up short. Using a small platform at the far stage-left end of the auditorium, he added a farcical prologue from Shakespeare’s "Much Ado About Nothing" of Benedick (Kalyagin) and Beatrice (Vladimirova) in the throes of a knockabout love battle. The episode shows off Maria Danilova’s colorful 17th-century costumes well, although it never seems more than an appendage crudely grafted onto the central play.

The cast generally acquits itself well, but there is no lift, no buoyancy, no real purpose to this gathering. That is also apparent in Yekaterina Kuznetsova’s pleasantly functional set: an Astroturf covered courtyard with a blooming tree and a working fountain against a backdrop of the Queen’s arched, elevated walkway.