Comedy Script For 2

'Verona' rocks Shakespeare's 'Two Gents'

This isn't your parents' "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." It isn't even Shakespeare's, nor is it meant to be. "The Verona Project," opening this week at California Shakespeare Theater, is not an adaptation, but a new work - written and composed by director Amanda Dehnert - "inspired by" Shakespeare's comedy.

That's right, composed. "Project," in Dehnert's conceit, is a kind of alternative rock concert by a young band performing its first concept album.

"Conceptually, I believe that the band made up the whole thing," she explains after a long day's rehearsal. "They created the songs and the story. Obviously, I'm projecting myself onto them but, like, those are the rules."

What Dehnert's band takes from Shakespeare includes most of the characters, some plot and, she says, some of the language - but probably not the play's song "Who Is Silvia?" That's because the person with whom one of Shakespeare's titular gentlemen falls in love isn't Silvia anymore. He's Silvio.

At 38, Dehnert has developed a national reputation for bold, new takes on classics, including quite a bit of Shakespeare. After a decade at Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory - where she rose from student to associate artistic director, then acting artistic director - she now lives in Chicago, where she teaches at Northwestern University. Lookingglass Theatre premiered her "Peter Pan: A Play." Her staging of "Julius Caesar" opened in March at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with Bay Area actress Vilma Silva in the title role.

"Two Gents" cries out for some shaking up. One of Shakespeare's earliest attempts at a comedy - "super-duper early," Dehnert remarks - it's famously problematic. Proteus, whom we're supposed to like, is in love with Julia until he leaves Verona to join best friend Valentine in Milan - where he falls for Valentine's beloved Silvia (er, Silvio), connives to get Valentine exiled and tries to rape Silvia.

The hardest part for modern audiences to accept is when Proteus gets caught by Valentine - and repents. At which Valentine forgives him and offers to let him have Silvia. It's all about friendship, you see.

"They're just kids," Dehnert says. "What do any of us know at that age?"

Not that she's using that to excuse everything. She's jettisoned the rape, the bandits in the forest (don't ask) and a bunch of characters - even the crowd-pleasing dog. It all started when Cal Shakes Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone saw her "All's Well That Ends Well" at Ashland two years ago, and they began talking about her doing "Two Gents" here.

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