'Beauty' takes time

It boggles the mind that Jeffrey Hatcher's "Compleat Female Stage Beauty" has never been performed locally. Hatcher, the best known and most prolific playwright in the Twin Cities, wrote the show in 1999. There have been dozens of productions nationwide, and a film adaptation (retitled "Stage Beauty") in 2004 starred Billy Crudup and Claire Danes.

Walking Shadow Theatre Company is rectifying that situation, giving the regional premiere to Hatcher's play Friday at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage. Wade Vaughn heads a 14-person cast as he portrays Edward Kynaston, one of the last actors to play women's roles on the English Restoration stage. Kynaston's rocky efforts to portray male characters on stage provide an entree into the quicksilver malleability of masculine and feminine traits in all genders.

Walking Shadow is completing a season of three shows that deal with idealization and gender. "Reasons to Be Pretty" last fall got to arguments about self-image; "An Ideal Husband" tarnished the idea of perfection in marriage. "Compleat Female Stage Beauty" explodes an actor's understanding of himself as a purveyor of truth.

"It wasn't really intentional," said director John Heimbuch of the season lineup. "It was more a happy coincidence."

Heimbuch had wanted to stage "Compleat Female Stage Beauty" for several years and asked Hatcher about the possibility. Not only did the playwright agree, but he made some suggested edits in the published script. If Hatcher likes what he sees in the Walking Shadow production, he might codify those changes. But this is getting ahead of ourselves.

Vaughn had read the play and loved the movie, so when he heard that Walking Shadow had the play on a short list, he expressed his interest to Heimbuch.

"I didn't imagine I'd be offered the role, but I wanted to be involved," he said.

Kynaston was praised for the precision of his portrayals of women -- particularly in gesture and affect. He preferred playing women because he felt they acted more beautifully than men. A specialty was Desdemona in "Othello."

Once restrictions on female actors were relaxed during the 17th century, Kynaston's bread and butter was no longer assured. Hatcher uses that historic reality as a jumping-off point for exploring gender. In the play, Kynaston stumbles in trying to make the transition to playing men because he has portrayed women so effectively. He begins to question his own sexuality (which reportedly was ambiguous) and how his learned physical performance had changed him internally.

"Kynaston knows what he wants to do, but he can't," Vaughn said. "He has to change, but he has to do it on his own terms."

In real life, Kynaston made the transition successfully. Four years after his last female role in 1661, he was a leading actor at Covent Garden. He continued until 1699, when his memory began to fail.

Vaughn has distinguished himself for more than a decade on the small-theater scene. Twice, he has played tragic Ibsen characters ("Ghosts" and "Hedda Gabler") and he showed great sensitivity in "The Cripple of Inishmaan" in 2000 at Theatre in the Round. More recently, he portrayed Joe Orton in a fanciful work about a meeting between the playwright and Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and he gave life to Larry, the gay roommate, in Gremlin Theatre's 2010 staging of "Burn This."

"It's scary in a good way," Vaughn said of the role. "I can't get comfortable with my actor's trick box."

Ultimately, of course, the journey needs to lead to the actor.