Buckle your swashes (or swash your buckles?)! Assume, knees permitting, your en garde stance! Fancy swordplay and groaner fun puns have invaded the Wells, courtesy of a made-in-heaven ongoing partnership between Youth (Norfolk State University Theatre’s well-trained student actors and alums) and Experience (Virginia Stage Company’s nonresident professional actors and designers). Welcome to 1625 Gascony, Paris, even England.
If you stand with the three current good guy musketeers — Aramis (covert female NSU actor Brooklynn Jacobs), Porthos (NSU’s very funny Brandon Bradley) and Athos (VSC pro hire Shad Ramsey) — your mission is “to defend the king and protect the queen.” It’s because, as young D’Artagnan (impossibly athletic and charming NSU junior Adam E. Moskowitz) notes, “the cardinal is their enemy.” He means, of course, evil genius Richelieu (suitably sleazy local Equity pro Scott Wichmann). Richelieu is aided and abetted by one of the meanest chicks in world lit: Milady (also an Equity professional, Meg Rodgers), played in Richard Lester’s marvelous 1973 and 1974 film versions by Faye Dunaway.
The director of this stage production, Tom Quaintance (also the producing artistic director of VSC), readily admits his fondness for the Lester film version, in both its irreverence and manic pacing. But the actual author of “The Three Musketeers,” initially a serialized novel, is, of course, Alexandre Dumas (père), 1802-70, not to be confused with his writer offspring Alexandre Dumas (forever to be labeled fils, or son).
Aside from the father/son confusion, opportunities for musketeer mix-ups are rife, given that nearly 100 adaptations of “The Three Musketeers” now exist. The last scholarly count, by Hervé Dumont, was 91, but that was back in 1997 (cited by scholar Roxane Petit-Rasselle). It’s hard for anyone to keep up when spinoffs include such “classics” as “Zorro and the Three Musketeers” (1963). There’s even, I swear it, a “Barbie and the Three Musketeers” (2008 video).
In short, these long swords have been clicking since the earliest days of film (1911 and 1921 shorts, and a 1914 full-length version). And we haven’t even mentioned the Mouseketeers, the video game or the candy bars.
Credit for our NSU-VSC script (published in 2006) goes, however, to Ken Ludwig, best known for his megahit comedy, “Lend Me a Tenor” (1986). Presumably as an odd nod to contemporary feminist feelings, Ludwig has given D’Artagnan a sword-fighting sister named Sabine (delightfully rendered by NSU senior Lauren Wilkerson). Ludwig is also responsible for the play’s breakneck pacing usually seen in film.
Director Quaintance pulls off the constant scene changes by avoiding blackouts and working on a handsome uniset (designed by Shane K. Stelly) that serves for all geographic locations. A balcony stage right also enables the first impossible gymnastic feat by young D’Artagnan (Moskowitz): a full-body handstand, flip and drop over the second-story-high railing. Later, Moskowitz climbs down a rope anchored in a high theater box, then casually leaps his full height from the floor of the Wells to the stage. This young man (character and actor) richly deserves his initiation into the Three Musketeers at play’s end. Add in sister Sabine, and we’re potentially up to Five Musketeers.
The exact number of musketeers and their individual characteristics as heroes have long been topics of discussion for scholars, as have Dumas’ characterizations of royalty and women. The novel and play are based on two conflicting sides or, in modern parlance, “teams.” Team Church can also be called Team Richelieu; Team State is Team (King) Louis.
Richelieu, as we know, and his followers are bad to the bone. The predations of his favorite covert agent Milady include casual murder by poison and/or stabbing. (One of her poisonings gone awry leads to a great comically overwrought death scene by the Innkeeper — NSU junior Gabriel Mensah.) Richelieu’s minions also include Rochefort (Jason Paul Tate), Ravanche (Joey Cassella) and others. Team Louis XIII includes the king himself (played by pro Jeff Davis); the Musketeers themselves, led by Treville (NSU alum and Equity pro Christopher Marquis Lindsay); and, of course, Queen Anne (Meredith Noël, also Spartan-trained and now an Equity pro). Noël shows her usual versatility, triple cast as the queen, mother superior and Adele. She’s been in half a dozen VSC shows but works nationally at other regional theaters.
Queen Anne’s character leads to one of the play’s moral dilemmas. Though one of the “good” people (Team Louis), Anne is, after all, also an adulteress, having messed around with England’s Duke of Buckingham (NSU’s Derion Felton) and foolishly given him a priceless necklace as a souvenir. This sets up the frantic efforts of D’Artagnan and musketeers to get it back in time to fool the cuckolded king. Louis’ lack of appeal for his wife appears to be his slow wit and/or his appetite. It’s to the credit of Noël as Anne that we forgive her indiscretion and accept her return to the straight and narrow (at least French style). The queen’s servant and confidante Constance (well and sweetly rendered by NSU’s Chandler Alston) is D’Artagnan’s love interest, though all does not necessarily end well there, either.
Athos (Ramsey), Porthos (Bradley) and Aramis (Jacobs) don’t have time to distinguish their own personalities very effectively. Porthos is roguish; Athos is a dark-spirited drinker; Aramis is torn between a religious spirit and desires of the flesh. D’Artagnan, their apprentice figure, is good-hearted but just learning. Critic Petit-Rasselle believes none of the musketeers alone makes a complete hero, but combined they make “un héros quadricéphal complexe” (“a four-headed complex hero”). The combination of NSU young talent and VSC professional expertise likewise creates a kind of two-headed complex theater entity.
This production has minor flaws: Audience confusion caused by double-casting could be mitigated by more distinctive costuming or wigs for folks like Christopher Lindsay in his two similar roles, and a dialect coach might help with pronunciation of the occasional French words. But, sometimes, two theaters (a two-headed entity) really can be better than one.
Monsieur Dumas put the phenomenon more memorably:
“All for one, and one for all.”
Cue the sound of raised swords clicking.
Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu
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If you go
When: Various dates through March 24
Where: Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk
Tickets: Start at $15
Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org
