Following the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the British Parliament abolished the monarchy, and Oliver Cromwell set up a republic that barely lasted 11 years. The British monarchy was restored in 1660, ushering in an era known as The Restoration, in which theater and opera flourished. In 1696, English author and playwright Mary Pix wrote a farcical, satirical comedy called “The Spanish Wives” that became rather popular in its day. Dr. Mick Sokol, Drury University professor of theater (and self-admitted “theater-history nerd”), has revived this relatively unknown work for a production by the Drury Theater Department Wednesday through Saturday, February 28-March 2 in Drury’s Wilhoit Theater. Dr. Sokol joined us on KSMU’s “Arts News” to discuss the production, along with one of his student actors, Olivia Kucsic.
Dr. Sokol agreed with me that “The Spanish Wives” generally depicts the ongoing power struggle between men and women. The play depicts the jolly Governor of Barcelona and the jealous Marquis of Moncada, who treat their wives very differently. The jealous one, said Dr. Sokol, “keeps his wife under lock and key so no male can get at her, and the other treats his wife like a regular human being, where she’s allowed to function and be social and whatnot. So we see the differences in how their relationships unfold. Of course, it is a comedy, so wackiness ensues and all that good stuff!”
Mary Dix was a popular playwright in the late 1600s and early 1700s, but is basically unknown today, as are her works, according to Mick Sokol. “Plays tend to be passed down to us, some more emphasized than others. And largely because she’s a female playwright, you don’t find her plays in anthologies nearly as often as you will a lot of the other playwrights. Everybody’s like, ‘Which play are you doing—"Spanish Wives?"’ Most people haven’t heard of it. But it’s a solid, fun comedy with cool, fun characters.”
Dr. Sokol admitted to trimming the play down quite a bit. “As often with Restoration theater, they expected a pretty full evening back then.” But in Sokol’s edited version, the first act is 40 minutes, the second act 30 minutes, making for what he calls a “normal 2024-sized piece of theater entertainment.” He cut about 40% of the original script, he said.
The Governor of Barcelona allows his wife a wide range of freedom in order to “discourage” her from engaging in adultery, because “she’ll have enough freedom to enjoy life”—treating her, in other words, as a person rather than “a piece of property,” as Dr. Sokol described the Marquis’s treatment of his wife, who was tricked into leaving the man she loved, “and is kept under eleven locks! They have to find a way to spring her, as it were”—“they” being the servants, who provide many of the plot devices and twists in the story through various intrigues and disguises. “It’s very much in the commedia (dell’arte) tradition that the tricky servants are the ones who know all the things that are going on.”
Drury theater student Olivia Kucsic plays one of the wily, tricky servants of the Governor, who helps with the plot to free Eleanor, the wife of the Marquis. She said she finds it “interesting to work with Dr. Sokol, because he has a vast understanding of what was happening then.” She hastened to add, “Not because he’s old, but because he’s very knowledgeable of theater history!”
Dr. Sokol said he was only too happy to help his students understand the Restoration period. “Of course, I’m a theater-history nerd! But for them to understand the context of the play—because it’s an English playwright, who sets the play in Spain. Well, England and Spain are DEADLY enemies in this period. So naturally, the Spanish are shown as rather foolish, and of course there’s the great English people coming in. It’s fascinating in that regard.
“Also, there’s the religious, Catholic/Protestant aspects,” he continued. “There’s a friar in the play, a Catholic priest. He’s actually Italian—he came from Italy to help spring the woman because he’s into things like pimping and cuckoldum. He’s like the Worst Priest Ever, but he’s a really funny character. So there are all these different layers of social intrigue that are interwoven into the play, because of the ‘rivalry’, if you want to call it that, between Spain and England at the time. So I think that’s a lot of what Olivia is referring to, understanding the context of why a character is written in a certain way, and how each character fits in.”
Commenting on the cuts he made to the material, Dr. Sokol said “Again, in that period, there’s something to understand about the theater in the period: the stage was lit the same as the audience. People went to the theater to be seen as much as see. It was a social atmosphere, you know, everyone was talking, some people paid more attention to the play than others. So playwrights put things in two or three times, in case someone missed it. So it’s easy to trim out the ‘fat’… well, I don’t know about ‘easy!’ But it can be done. I enjoy modernizing it, but keeping as much of the spirit of the original as possible. I modernize some of the language as well. With Shakespeare plays as well. It’s part of the process, when you’re producing something that is older than our own time, both in terms of our college students—if they don’t know what they’re saying, the audience sure ain’t gonna get it!—but also our audiences. It just helps them digest it readily. It’s going to play like, more or less, a regular 21st-century comedy, just with a little bit of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’. And there’s a lot of physical comedy which translates (into) all languages.”
Asked if she has any physical bits of comedy business to execute, Olivia Kucsic said, “Yes! We referred to that tricky friar earlier. My job is to pull him in. And the man we have cast, a wonderful actor, is a rather large man, and I’m a rather small woman. And so I drag him by his wrist, and throw him on the ground! And I think that’s very funny… but whether HE thinks it’s funny remains to be seen!”
"The Spanish Wives " by Mary Pix, will be presented by Drury University Theater Wednesday through Saturday February 28 through March 2 in Wilhoit Theatre, located in the south end of the Breech School of Business Administration building on the corner of Drury Lane and Central Street. Performances are at 7:30 PM Wednesday through Saturday, and 2:00 PM Sunday. Tickets range from $3 to $14, and are available by calling the Wilhoit box office at 417-873-7255 or visiting www.drury.edu/theatre and clicking on “box office.” The Wilhoit box office is open Monday through Friday from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.
