“In this thinking farce from 1784 (the inspiration for Mozart's masterpiece), Pierre Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais explores a still-dangerous contrast between unearned privilege and wily merit. The complicated plot demonstrates the mental and moral superiority of the Spanish valet Figaro over his master, the Count Almaviva, a nobleman who lusts after Figaro's fiance Susannah and who intends to invoke his feudal privilege to sleep with her.

By implying a natural superiority that transcends rank, "Figaro" amounts to social subversion, anticipating, if not predicting, the French Revolution."Figaro" opens Sunday in a staging by Bryan White based on an adaptation by ensemble member Megan Powell, who intends to keep the play as dangerous as when it debuted: "I've moved it to a similarly closed world. We set it on a 1930s ocean liner, a gilded and regimented world where Figaro works as First Officer to Almaviva's captain. It also suits the screwball comedy style of that era, films like `My Man Godfrey' where opposites attract and where quick wit can outfox power and even life's odds". Lawrence Bommer, Chicago Tribune 11/07/2003



“Adapter Megan Powell sets Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais' subversive 1784 love comedy--the "follies of a day"--on the SS Seville, a 1930s ocean liner. Wily servant Figaro is the first officer, and his ungrateful master, Count Almaviva, the lecherous, unfaithful captain. Director Bryan White, unafraid to resort to slapstick and mugging, treats like vintage screwball comedy: mannered deliveries and fashionable posing merely disguise the passions that lurk beneath the surface. About one inch beneath.

That tack mostly works despite Powell's overabundance of nautical imagery and Depression-era slang. With everyone literally in the same boat, it's easy to explain the constant invasions of privacy that keep the mayhem mounting. The new setting also allows Benjamin Morphis as the captain to do a smooth Clark Gable imitation--he's a matinee idol constantly tricked by his own libido. Likewise Kerri Van Auken as his neglected wife suffers from the vapors as she seems to search for her diffusion-lens close-up. Molly Meehan's pert Suzanne conveys Joan Blondell's sassy spirit. And Eric Ciak's pratfalling Figaro recalls a Raymond Chandler gumshoe at his hardest-boiled. The purely comic characters, however, still seek their inspiration. What comes through, perhaps with more difficulty than it should, is Beaumarchais' bitter truth: to triumph over undeserved privilege, natural virtue requires unnatural cunning. All the scheming seems almost more trouble than it's worth”. Chicago Reader 11/21/2003