Action Theatre III: “HMS Barnacle” and “Catalan Grand,” R&D Choreography’s Fight Shop Stage Combat Studio, at Chase Park, and Dirk and Guido: The Swordsmen!, Noble Fool Theater Company. War is in the air–and on the boards. Richard Gilbert and David Bareford, the gurus behind R&D Choreography, have created a 75-minute sign-interpreted showcase of their “violence design”; original one-acts provide narration and context. Easily the more playful and entertaining, “HMS Barnacle” is a tongue-in-cheek action-packed romance as full of puns as punches. In this mating swashbuckler, the sword fights, pistol duels, and other pyrotechnics are anchored in the droll antics of an intrepid captain (Brad Wadle) in search of the beautiful Treasure Chest (Dawn Waters).
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Clad in Elizabethan doublets, boots, gloves, and “the tights of justice,” foppish Dirk Perfect (Douglas R. Mumaw) and idealizing lover Guido Crescendo (David Woolley) have perfected over 14 summers the kind of hilarious partnership that shows in a thousand good-hearted ways: they effortlessly switch from offering male audience members lessons in macho swagger, elegant laughter, and friction-free courtship to conducting a poetry slam that ends with a rapier-and-dagger fight. Dirk and Guido skirt the salacious, but there’s still plenty of horseplay amid the swordplay.
