By Marshall Hunter
What a lot of fun!
Saturday night’s performance of “The Canterbury Tales” at Queensborough Community College seemed just what the audience was looking for. The New Vic Theatre of London offered a new look at Chaucer’s classic work but with the ribald humor intact.
The premise was a contest to choose the best from six of the stories: The Pardoner’s Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, The Wife of Bath Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, and the Nun’s Priest Tale.
The officiator of the contest was Rev. Barrington Pardoner — a quite liberal man of the cloth.
A different narrator told each story as the actors brought it to life.
Not that the play needed any comic relief, but Mickey O’Donoughue was the show’s fast-talking go-between for all the stories, telling bawdy jokes, clowning with the actors, even jumping into the audience.
One innocent woman found herself swept up in drapes and brought onto the stage to everyone’s — including her — laughing surprise.
this was a no-holds-barred approach to Chaucer (who wasn’t exactly very inhibited), but everything was in good, if not clean, taste, even the actors’ frequently exposed butts.
The winner? The most lascivious one, the Miller’s Tale, of course.
But the real winner was the audience, who was liberated from troubled times for two hours.
The New Vic Theatre plans to return to this side of the pond in the spring, with “Dracula” and “Robin Hood.” Qguide will keep you posted.
