Certainly the mix of laughter and tears feels right for the ridiculous but touching tale of a ragtag group of theatrical journeymen and has-beens who, unable to find work in New York and hearing rumors of Gold Rush riches, form a stage troupe and head west. The opening scenes in New York, which have the actors gathering in a tavern and trading stories of shows they've endured - from playing third banana to a pair of screeching child stars doing bad Shakespeare to carrying out schemes for P.T. Barnum - are both hilarious and based, more or less loosely, in historical fact.
Funny as they are, they also make it clear just why these people are desperate enough to strike off into the wilderness, leaving everything but their vague dreams of stardom behind. The New York theater scene of the 1840s that Nelson paints so vividly is a free-for-all, and perhaps no less a wilderness than the one they're headed to. Besides, the actors have heard that the California miners - a more educated group than you'd expect - are starved for Shakespeare, another surprising but fact-based piece of the plot.
These early scenes introduce the play's central structural device, which is a key part of its charm. All the characters take turns serving as narrator, sometimes interrupting or correcting or embellishing each other's stories, and as one recalls an incident, others act it out. This makes for a vivid and truly playful atmosphere onstage, one that celebrates the imaginative power of acting by - well, by acting.
What's most rewarding about "How Shakespeare Won the West" is the lively collaborative spirit that this structure creates. We're getting to know Nelson's characters through their stories, which they're at once telling and living. An added pleasure is the interweaving of scenes from Shakespeare, played both for directly dramatic and for hilariously parodic effect. The characters, like their creator, draw inspiration and vitality from Shakespeare's language and stories, and they share that energy with their audiences - both the imagined miners onstage and the living people sitting in the Huntington's seats.
