Role:          Segismundo
Where:       Bailiwick Repertory
Playwright: Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Photo

Beautiful- they had just gotten a good translation that had been on Broadway. It's an old play by Calderon de la Barca known as the Spanish Shakespeare, and this is his Hamlet., about an astrologer king who, when his wife is pregnant, has signs from the stars that his new child will be a son, that the son will kill his mother and wreck his kingdom.  When the son is born, the wife dies in childbirth and the heavens rain red fire and blood and he locks his son away. He's raised in chains, his son, with a tutor that teaches him of the world. On the kid's eighteenth birthday, the father relents and lets him into the court, but the kid is an animal, being raised as an animal and he kills a man and tries to rape a woman and so the king locks him away again.  But the people, having realized that there's a rightful heir to the throne, and in order to escape the civil war that's ensued because the king has NOT had a rightful heir, break him out of prison and the kid has to forgive his father in order to heal his country and become himself and it's a beautiful play. And I had a looong wig.  Ohhh God.  I loved it but everybody thought it looked stupid.  It probably did look stupid.  JM.com 2007

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"As Segismundo, Marsters is the quintessence of the embattled hero. His superb command of Calderon's verse is matched by his classically sculpted face and graceful athleticism."  Hedy Weiss  · Chicago Sun-Times  · February 13, 1990

"The production's deepest flaw, however, is in its treatment of Segismundo. James Marsters, a handsome young actor, never appears or sounds remotely uncivilized, even in the crucial scene in which the near-bestial prince is supposed to be baffled and enraged by the behavior of the courtiers surrounding him. Consequently, there's little sense of contrast or redeeming transformation when Segismundo comes into his own."  -Richard Christensen · Chicago Tribune  · February 24, 1990

"James Marsters plays Segismundo as a baroque James Dean: cool and ironic, but with a sad vulnerability - a hurt - underneath. He sees the existential humor in what's happening to him, recognizes himself as the punchline, but can't quite bring himself to laugh along. The production's single most perfect moment comes when, having been freed by the common folks, Marsters's almost trippily bemused Segismundo gives one of them a little shove - a reality check, and a confirmation that it's all just too ridiculous. This is Calderon reimagined by Sartre... All in all, the only really successful element besides Marsters - who could nonetheless use a lot more savagery and a better wig - is the lovely, tapestry-like set by Gregory Musick."  - Anthony Adler · Chicago Reader  · March 2, 1990