At one point in the first act of Austin Shakespeare’s Friday night performance of El Cid, an audience member on stage left started to unwrap a loud snack. The crinkling of the plastic paused, then continued. Paused, then continued. Heads turned from the stage towards the sound. Crinkle, crinkle. A woman a few rows in front of me stood up and looked in their direction. The sound stopped, the woman sat down, the audience turned back to the stage. It was one of the more thrilling moments that would happen in the Rollins Theater that night.

Bad community theater holds an important place in the culture of every American city. We’ve all seen it, we’ve all done it. Community theater is at its heart a place to play. It gives artists a place to hone their craft, hobbyists a place to build confidence, friends and families a place to spend some money and prove how supportive they are. Bad local theater is perhaps more than accepted; in some ways, it’s expected and celebrated. What’s not expected is when the bad community theater comes from a company with the history and reputation that Austin Shakespeare has – residence in a beautiful space in the Long Center right on the lake, a director with a full page of credits, multiple pages of donors and supporters! How can a company apparently so blessed with resources still produce a show that comes across so amateur?

Putting on a bilingual El Cid in Texas is a great idea in theory. Unfortunately, under the direction of Ann Ciccolella, Austin Shakes seems to lack either the resources, or maybe just energy, to pull it off. Some cast members are clearly Spanish speakers (though with a number of wildly different accents), while others are clearly not. Michael Meigs’ script is a new translation, but it makes no attempt to be a modern translation. It seems like it must be close to word-for-word from the original 17th century French; there is no rhythm to any of it, sentences are oddly phrased, words feel unnatural and old-fashioned. Occasionally and randomly, we are treated to a rhyming couplet. And then the only intention behind the Spanish in the script appeared to be…to add Spanish to the script. Sometimes a full conversation occurs in Spanish; other times there is only a ¡Dios mío! to begin an English line.

And the script was just the beginning of El Cid‘s troubles. Perhaps because of a lack of direction, or perhaps because they were preoccupied with the bilingual script, most actors gave energetic but largely empty performances. The central conflict involves an offense by Don Gormès (Nolan Muña) against Don Diego (Ev Lunning). The faceoff wherein the offense occurs was so lackluster that by the time the second act rolled around, I had forgotten what the offense even was. The scenes between their children, Ximèna (Veronica Kraemer) and Rodrigo (Sebastián Vitale), could be intensely dramatic and heart-rending, or comedic and sensual. Instead they are somehow both boring and confusing; Kraemer and Vitale change their minds at the speed of light with seemingly no reason, leaving the audience wondering what just happened as the lights fade. The Princess (Eliza Renner) struggles with her desire for Rodrigo and attempts a plot against Ximèna, I think? I’m glad I skimmed the Wikipedia article for the play the day before; otherwise, some of the finer points of the plot would have been nearly indecipherable.

The set (designed by Patrick W. Anthony) is, throughout all of this, very good. It is not, unfortunately, used to its full advantage. Instead of roaming the large stage and playing with the space and levels, most scenes are relegated to one particular spot on the stage. The lighting design (also Anthony) detracts more than adds to the blocking. A number of scenes feature gobos directed across the entire stage, casting odd, large shadows and making it difficult for actors to find their light.

Additionally, the costumes (designed by Cecelia Gay) appear extremely low-budget. They give us no idea as to time, place, or class, and there is no consistency in them. Every man wears boots tucked into their slacks, but some are knee-high, some are Ropers, and some are Chelsea boots. Some dons wear long coats that appear to be Baroque-inspired, while others wear Renaissance doublets, and then Rodrigo himself appears in a completely modern formal vest in the last act. The dresses worn by Ximèna and the Princess give us no more information than the men’s costumes and, as if to annoy me personally, neither wear tights under their dresses, which becomes obvious each time they hike their skirts up to their knees to move at a speed faster than a slow walk. The ladies-in-waiting characters get the worst of the costuming mess, in mismatched, laced-up overdresses on top of black jeans and white tees. One is draped with half a yard of stiff white lace in what might be a poor imitation of a mantilla.

There are a few bright spots: the set, as mentioned before; also, some of the smaller characters (Joaquin Gonzalez, Joseph Paz) make the most of their limited time and lines. Don Sáncho (Pablo Muñoz-Evers) is one of the few men who seems to truly care about Ximèna, and his nobleness in giving up his own desire for her hand was a moment of real authenticity near the end. The sword fight between Rodrigo and Gormès (choreographed by Tobie Minor) is professional and clean.

Ultimately, the whole production falls flat. It’s disappointing, as it ought to be an opportunity for a revival of a rarely-produced show with a diverse cast. Austin Shakespeare employ Equity members and refer to themselves as “professional”; why then have I seen unpaid, un-unionized community theater with more care and effort than this production? It’s hard to help but wonder at what point this production started to go wrong and at what point it might have been saved – if anyone wanted to.

Photo: Bret Brookshire

El Cid runs through November 26 in the Rollins Theater at the Long Center for the Performing Arts. For more details, click here.