The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Bard on the Beach to September 19, 2025

Tickets from $35 at 604-739-0559 or www.bardonthebeach.org

Posted June 23, 2025

Director Dean Paul Gibson is having his way with Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona on the BMO Mainstage at Bard on the Beach these evenings. Now set in the 1980s, the play is still a romantic comedy but with an undeniable feminist twist. I’m still processing the final scene which, traditionally, implies two weddings.

The plot, like most of Shakespeare’s comedies, is tangled and involves some cross-dressing disguise: Valentine (Matthew Ip Shaw) and Proteus (Jacob Leonard) are best buddies in Verona but when Valentine decides to relocate to bustling party-town Milan, Proteus stays behind because he is “wounded” by love for fair Julia (Tess Degenstein). Once in Milan, Valentine is immediately smitten with aristocratic, dark-haired, dark-eyed Silvia (Agnes Tong).

Cutting to the chase: Proteus is forced by his parents to move to Milan where he, too, falls for Silvia. Julia he now views as “a plain and wretched shrew.”  There are intrigues with a couple of rings, love letters sent and received, attacks by a gang of – well, I don’t know what they are. Bikers? Gangsters? They are armed with bats and cudgels; one wields, in the style of Elon Musk, a chainsaw. And in director Gibson’s vision, the outlaws ring down the curtain. It looks like the weddings might be off as the guys, unaware, go off in one direction – for a beer, maybe? – and  the women go off in another.

Set designer Pam Johnson puts everything in a multi-arched, Italianate setting. Gerald King sweeps the tent with coloured lights.  A beach party. Palm trees. An inflatable pool toy. Striped beach furniture. You can almost taste the margueritas.  Sound designer and composer Malcolm Dow provides an 80s playlist and Carmen Alatorre makes sure everyone looks the part: leisure suits, shoulder pads, white loafers, pedal pushers with a cinched belt, pastels.  It’s colourful and familiar if you were around back then.

As Proteus and Julia, Leonard and Degenstein make a good pair. In the opening lines, Degenstein is particularly funny (and impressively fit) as Julia works out and pines over Proteus while her character’s servant Lucetta (the always-excellent Steffanie Davis) watches and rolls her eyes at her mistress’s sighs. Leonard does a great job of Proteus’s rationalization of the betrayal his character is about to commit. His argument goes something like: if I don’t betray my friend Valentine, I betray myself. Somehow Leonard makes it make sense – to him, but not to us or to Valentine.

Shaw (channeling Tom Cruise) and Tong are the other couple. Shaw’s performance is energetic and dynamic; Tong begins as a rather unpleasant, haughty Silvia but ends up as feminist Silvia, firmly and ardently on the side of women. There’s more than a hint of “bromance” here and the women eventually seem more attracted to each other than to those guys.

Angus Yam is a sprightly Speed – always bursting onto the scene – and Craig Erickson makes a hilarious, bare-chested “ALLY”. You have to see it to believe it.

How many times over the last decades have I written how excellent a performer is Scott Bellis? Not nearly enough.  Bellis takes any role, polishes it and works magic on it. In Two Gents, he’s Launce, a wispy-haired old servant of Proteus’s family. Seated on the floor with a suitcase and Crab, played by  a real live yellow Lab named Mason, the two of them will charm the dog hairs off you. At one point on opening night, Crab/Mason slipped his collar – yikes – but Bellis continued non-plussed and Crab/Mason obediently followed him offstage, stopping to wag his tail and say hello to a few in the front row.

This is fun, accessible Shakespeare with plenty of introduced current language mixed in. Good example? Launce is later described as a “whoreson stoner” as he is always seen with a joint. This is not a Two Gentlemen of Verona  for those who like their Shakespeare straight up. But for those willing to go along with adapting, contemporizing and taking a lot of license, director Gibson takes you on a fun ride. It’s the whole Bard package: the setting, the tent, Artistic Director Christopher Gaze’s amiable intro, the double caramel popcorn, the sunset over English Bay and, oh yes, Shakespeare. It’s summertime, it’s Bardtime.