Alongside the two popular William Shakespeare plays rotating in repertory at Santa Cruz Shakespeare this summer is a rare thing — the 8-year-old company’s first world premiere (which wouldn’t quite be true of its predecessor, Shakespeare Santa Cruz).
Kathryn Chetkovich’s new play “The Formula” is very, very loosely inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The plot doesn’t particularly parallel Shakespeare’s comedy, but it borrows one key element: the love drug that makes everyone fall in love with the wrong people.
Scientists Dean and Suzy have been working on a formula that chemically, irresistibly simulates the experience of instant infatuation with the first person you make eye contact with. When somebody mistakes the formula for bug spray at Suzy’s wedding, everything goes awry very quickly.
It’s a very funny play with wonderfully witty dialogue nicely brought to life in director Ellen Maguire’s lively staging, which makes full use of Dipu Gupta’s spacious set of a wide multilevel patio and the lovely view from the company’s outdoor stage in DeLaveaga Park.
One of the clever things about Chetkovich’s script is that relatively few of the misadventures and ill-advised wedding hookups have anything to do with the love drug. Even those made under the influence are by no means clear cut. It’s a play about all the uncertainty that goes into romantic relationships, not knowing if they can ever last.
Allie Pratt’s fretful Suzy worries about pretty much everything but is starry-eyed in love with her fiancé Patrick, played by Christopher Silvestri as upbeat and untroubled and not really someone who thinks things through. Dean, who’s also Patrick’s brother, calls him “the human equivalent of a Golden retriever.” M.L. Roberts’ straitlaced and comically literal-minded Dean is passionate about his research but entirely unconcerned with its ethical ramifications.
Suzy’s parents are constant reminders of how wrong love can go. A fuming Maggie Bofill as Mother Miranda is still bitter about ex-husband Jack and keeps cautioning Suzy that she’ll regret getting married. And indeed, Dion Graham’s shifty Jack is evasive and commitment-phobic even with his new girlfriend Gina, played with cynical self-assurance by Paige Lindsey White. Ward Duffy is hilariously hearty and boisterous as Patrick and Dean’s widowed father, Francis, who also muses about romantic roads not taken.
A few of the same actors are in the company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” just as both casts will overlap with “The Tempest,” which opens July 28 and runs alongside the others through August. White is a hilariously severe Malvolio, the puritanical steward, while Roberts is a smooth and swaggering Duke Orsino, decked out like a 1930s gangster. Silvestri is a sly prankster as Fabian, one of the servants.
“Twelfth Night” is one of Shakespeare’s most durable comedies, reliably funny and adaptable to a multitude of settings. It combines two of the playwright’s favorite tropes: a woman disguised as a man and shipwreck-separated twins mistaken for each other.
In the guise of young man Cesario, Viola becomes a servant of Orsino and his go-between in wooing Countess Olivia, who has no interest in Orsino but becomes enamored with Cesario, while Viola falls in love with Orsino. Meanwhile, Olivia’s maid Maria concocts a scheme to humiliate arrogant steward Malvolio.
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Safiya Harris is a cheeky, confident Viola, nicely paralleled by Joshua Lewis’ mild-mannered and bewildered Sebastian, her brother. Jennie Greenberry’s elegant Olivia is sharp-witted in verbal sparring and giddy in infatuation. Patty Gallagher sparkles as fun-loving maid Maria, and the comedic pair of drunken Sir Toby Belch and dim-witted fop Sir Andrew Aguecheek are hysterically portrayed by the outgoing and incoming artistic directors, Mike Ryan and Charles Pasternak (who’ll take over after the 2023 season).
All in all, it’s a great time to check in with Santa Cruz Shakespeare. No matter which show you see right now, you’re in for some hilarity.
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.
SANTA CRUZ SHAKESPEARE“The Formula”: By Kathryn Chetkovich, through Aug. 28; 2 hours and 10 minutes, one intermission
“Twelfth Night”: By William Shakespeare, through: Aug. 28; 2 hours and 30 minutes, one intermission
Where: The Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz
Tickets: $24-$64; 831-460-6399, www.santacruzshakespeare.org