"St. Crispin's Day" features a feast of laughs

Author: Grace Duggan

This Winter Term, Visiting Professor of Theatre Alex Draper '88 took a page from his own acting past - he chose to direct "St. Crispin's Day," a sharp and bitingly witty antiwar comedy in which he played Henry almost five years ago. On its most basic level, playwright Matt Pepper's "St. Crispin's Day" explores the effects of war on the psyches of its participants. Veiled by bawdy and clever dialogue and humorous sight gags, the work develops an antiwar message and raises serious questions as to the relationship between human nature and violence. The entire play takes place over the course of one night in rural France in 1415, hours before the Battle of Agincourt. The play's title refers to the feast day of Crispin (Oct. 25th), a Catholic saint. Pepper drew on the work of William Shakespeare, specifically "Henry IV, Part I," "Henry IV, Part II" and "Henry V," especially for forming the basis of multiple characters.

"I did quite a bit of research on all of the characters," said Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki '08, who received 700 credit for the production in his role as Nym. "Most were just small characters [in Shakespeare's works], but Pepper paid careful attention to them when creating his own versions. It was interesting to see what he changed and what he left the same to please any Shakespeare fanatics in the audience."

In the opening scene we meet Bardolph (Alec Strum '08), Nym (Tirrell-Wysocki) and Pistol (Peter Hoffman '10), a trio of hilariously asinine dolts who care more about placing added money in their pockets than in their allegiance to King Henry V (Will Damron '09). When Bardolph and Nym are not busy planning to loot a nearby church they occupy themselves by unleashing a steady stream of anti-Irish slurs directed at the brooding Irish conscript Will (John Glouchevitch '10.5) punctuated by pseudo-philosophical statements and crass sexual innuendos. Their views on the world clash with those of Tom (Jimmy Wong '09.5), a young na've soldier who falls for Maryanne (Stephanie Spencer '09), a French prostitute brought into the camp by Bardolph and Nym.

Along with Hoffman, Strum and Tirrell-Wysocki stole the show and quickly established themselves as the comedic backbones of the play. Their obvious enjoyment of the humor to be found through physical comedy along the lines of the Three Stooges and Monty Python as well as in Pepper's lines themselves proved fresh and magnetic throughout the night. No other moment of physical comedy in the play came even close to the scene during which Bardolph and Nym explained how to have sex to two French prostitutes (Martha Newman '10, Spencer) by vigorously pantomiming multiple positions.

"That sex gag that you saw in the show was basically how we did it the first time in rehearsal," said Strum. "We added one more position later on, I think, and the props gave us some extra stuff to play around with when we got them, but basically, we found that stuff pretty quickly. Pepper wrote the gag well."

Although the crux of the production rested on hitting the comedic marks, the cast also excelled at conveying its more serious elements. The night before the battle, Tom finds himself openly admitting his fears of war and discussing what it means to live as a soldier with his captain, Fluellen (Sasha Hirsch '10.5). After Fluellen likened Tom's skin to "a crisp summer peach" and provoked a sparring match, the scene took an extremely graphic turn with Fluellen attempting to rape Tom.

The play had added poignancy and relevance given the United States' controversial approach to foreign policy. Pepper, who actually came to Middlebury to see the performance as well as meet with the cast, alluded to this as a key motivation for writing "St. Crispin's Day."

Said Strum, "[Pepper] started writing the play right around the time we were getting ready to go into Iraq. He wanted to write a war play, but he said he knew it needed to be funny. He said something I agree with, which is that very few writers can get away with being serious and didactic. If you've got something heavy to say, you've got to say it with comedy, because otherwise nobody's going to listen." This approach to addressing a serious topic like war and violence allowed both the actors to create and the audience to enjoy this fun, lively and thought-provoking work.