Phillyist Reviews... Wittenberg

Two literary characters and a historical figure walk into a bar...

It's not a joke – it's the basic premise of Wittenberg, a world premiere play currently running at the Arden Theatre. Wittenberg is a play for smart people, full of historical and literary references used, often, in very funny ways. Not well-versed on your Elizabethan drama or your Sixteenth Century religious history? Well, you can still enjoy the play, but you won't get why the audience is tittering at every other line.

Because Wittenberg is a new play, it's not without its faults. While the dialogue between Faustus (Scott Greer) and Luther (Greg Wood) progresses at a good, funny clip, sometimes it seems as if jokes are thrown in for the sake of getting laughs. It doesn't come across as pandering, exactly – but perhaps a bit gratuitous. Playwright David Davalos clearly had fun trying on different styles and blurring the line between fact and fiction, and he researched his play well. But almost every time Hamlet (Shawn Fagan) took the stage, his blank-verse soliloquies made one wonder if Davalos hadn't researched his play too well. They feel a bit unwieldy and slow the pace of the play considerably, losing the audience when Hamlet begins to talk about his dream of standing on the edge of an abyss. Ultimately, though, these are all small problems that could be fixed with a little more workshopping and a red pen-happy editor.

Despite the play's minor faults, Wittenberg is a solid, enjoyable, two-hour comedy with strong performances by Greer, Wood, Fagan, and Kate Udall (as The Eternal Feminine, meaning she plays every female role in the play). Greer's star shines especially bright on Michael Philippi's versatile set, doing all the things he does best, specifically playing music and making people laugh. His Faustus, unlike Marlowe's (the Faustus for whom this role seems to be most modeled), is a complex man of many levels that go beyond writing and directing (although J.R. Sullivan did an admirable job of it): his snappy delivery of his comedic lines was matched in sharpness by his more serious ones, resulting in a perfectly consistent performance. Wood had less to work with, but was frighteningly believable as a sermon-delivering friar. Fagan stumbled over his less coherent monologues admirably and made up for anything he may have lacked (through no fault of his own) in the play's tennis scene. And Udall was a charming waitress in a biergarten, haunting as the figure in Hamlet's dreams, and sexy as Faustus's lover. Whatever improvement was needed on the script, the cast did an admirable job of trying to make up for it, and everyone in the audience—myself included—ended up enjoying Wittenberg immensely.

Greg Wood as Dr. Martin Luther, Shawn Fagan as Hamlet and Scott Greer as Dr. John Faustus in Arden Theatre Company’s production of Wittenberg, running through March 16. Photo by Mark Garvin.