Goldwyn apparently got inspired by period Comedia del Arte plays (Italian Rennaissance), and created a couple of 'scripted Comedias' (the period style is really improvisational, with each actor always protraying the same character, and the cast being given a scenario to act out ...). Goldwyn did a pretty good job of capturing the essences of the characters he used in the two Comedias he has done. This play (and its successor) went over really well with the audiences.

Synopsis: Pantalone, the father of Isabella, plans to marry her off to a rich Captain (Capitano) -- little does he know that Capitano is only interested in the dowry .... Isabella is not thrilled with this idea, because she wants to marry her boyfriend (Leandro). Leandro, in the meantime is not only seeing Isabella, but he's also seeing a local courtesan (Zinadia). As it all turns out, Zinadia is already married to Capitano! Leandro, Isabella, Columbina (Isabella's servant) and Zinadia all cook up a plot to spoil the father's plans, and get Capitano and Zinadia back together; marry Leandro and Isabella; and so on. Sounds a bit like a soap opera ... hmmm ...

Incidents: The week before performance, the person cast as Leandro (Beorhtwulf), who was mundanely a college student studying theatre, decided he had taken on too much. Luckily for us, we managed to get hold of Wulfric, who not only memorized the part in one week, with only one or two rehearsals with the cast, but did an astounding job with the role.

This one had the only appearance of "The Gorilla of the Mists" -- Jared of Castlewood (Na'arah's husband) was a stagehand, and he actually did a t-shirt with "Gorillas of the Mists, Inc." on it ... it shows up in the video, sort of ... he's moving just enough it's hard to read.

The Mel Gibson comment about Arlecchino in the program/cast list is based on the prologue -- I (Hirsch) came out and did a bit about how we had tried to get Mel Gibson to do the part of Arlecchino, but he couldn't make it, so we did the best we could, and got Patrick Stuart. Of course, the show doesn't actually have a character named Arlecchino, so the crew's in-joke was that the "ubiquitous bench" (which appears in most of our productions after this one -- it was made by William of the Merlands for us) was named Arlecchino. We still call it that ... (we had originally planned on having a photo of Patrick Stuart taped to the bottom of the bench, so that if anyone asked where Patrick Stuart was, we could turn the bench over ... good thing no one asked -- in all the prep for the show, we forgot!)

Somewhere in here the actors started asking about when they were going to get paid ... <sigh>

Video Tape: Yes. Two, actually. The first was close to the middle of the house, the second is off to stage right a bit too much, so you can see backstage.

DVD: Now available as part of the "Arlecchino Plays" (includes Arlecchino and the Cup of Love), contact Hirsch for details (probably $5-10, just to cover the cost of the discs, the case, etc. and any postage would need to be tacked on).

Photos: We have photographs by Hal Ravn at the West Kingdom History web site: Arlecchino's Surprise.

The Script:
Arlecchino's Surprise: Acrobat

The Cast: