Review: A Revival of The Knight of the Burning Pestle Offers Music, Laughs, and a Few Yawns

You can see that the actors are having a great time onstage in Fiasco and Red Bull Theater’s new off-Broadway revival of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Francis Beaumont’s 1607 satire about class, taste, and the theater. It’s the first time in over 50 years that this play has appeared on a New York stage (it’s now running at the Lucille Lortel), and there’s good reason for that: It’s not an easy play to make work without going full hog on the buffoonery and generously cutting the script to eliminate some of the dated humor and windy Jacobean speeches.

In the buffoonery department, the production’s acting troupe has done right: This Burning Pestle is completely kooky, with nonstop antics, over-the-top emoting, nonsensical songs, and pratfalls aplenty. This is what Fiasco, one of New York’s most innovative off-Broadway companies, does really well. Directed by Noah Brody and Emily Young, the cast of 10 keeps the stage in a state of nonstop movement and comical chaos.

But that can only last so long before the audience starts feeling a little worn out by it all, and the laughs dwindle to chuckles. Beaumont’s zany three-tiered story begins with a troupe of actors announcing their play’s title, The London Merchant, and then being immediately interrupted by an incensed merchant (Darius Pierce) and his wife (Jessie Austrian), who run up from the audience, take seats on the stage, and demand that the players put on something more to their liking, maybe something with a knight. Talk about a breach of theater etiquette.

This is the first of many stumbling scenes in a play that often has us thinking, “OK, get on with it.” It takes a while before it does with the introduction of the merchant’s apprentice, Rafe (Paco Tolson), who plays a Don Quixote-like character, the titular knight wearing dress shirt and suspenders (costumes by Yvonne Miranda) and wielding a large, phallic-shaped pestle (props by Samantha Shoffner). If you catch the double meaning of “burning pestle” in Beaumont’s jokey title, clap your hands.

While the knight is fighting giants with his pestle and righting wrongs throughout the land, another unrelated story unfolds, that of the young lovers Jasper (Devin E. Haqq) and Luce (Teresa Avia Lim). Luce’s mother (Tina Chilip) is against their match, and Jasper’s mother (Tatiana Wechsler) has disowned him. To prevent herself from having to marry the middle-aged Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey), Luce elopes with Jasper into the forest (set designers Christopher Swader and Justin Swader achieve a quick scene change with a curtain in the shape of a tree). Mishaps and misunderstandings ensue and separate the couple (Reza Behjat’s subdued lighting reflects the temporary changes in mood) before they are inevitably reunited.

That is not a spoiler. The storylines that make up The Knight of the Burning Pestle are as predictable as rhyming couplets, which are blessed few in Beaumont’s verse. Thankfully, the strong cast makes us forget the play’s loosey-goosey structure and generates laughs where Beaumont never planned them. When she’s not playing a small guitar and singing beautifully, Royer Bockus gets big yuks in the role of the knight’s trusty steed, who falls in love with a stable boy (Ben Steinfeld in one of several roles). Their outrageous kiss is by far the funniest moment of the evening.

There are some unique bright spots. In Fiasco fashion, many of the cast members play instruments to accompany Bockus, Steinfeld, and others in short musical numbers inserted throughout, including Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” There’s a welcoming, improvisational quality to these performances that draws us into the actors’ company more than the play itself does.

That’s because Beaumont’s script needs a good bit of trimming to keep it taut. The production’s two hours and 15 minutes feels overlong for a comedy this nonsensical, and it’s hard to stifle the yawn we feel coming as we hit the 90-minute mark. Still, the cast’s energy doesn’t flag (toward the end, Tolson gives a lengthy but hilarious death scene), and a final joyous singalong closes the show, sending us out of the theater with a smile.