Funnie: The Lamentable Tragedy of Jane the Fool

Or: The Boot

Imagine a boot, stamping on a human face, forever. But, you know, in a constructive way, a boot not so much for your teeth as for your conscience. And now imagine that boot honks like a clown shoe with every kick. That’s Funnie, the Lamentable Tragedy of Jane the Fool by Jessica Moss. And if an appeal to Orwell is not perhaps the most enticing entreaty to see the play: well the experience, well dear reader, its only the truth. And you know, the jokes are good.

Jane (Rachel Fichtman), is a lady in waiting in the court of that most reasonable and eivenkeeled of Monarchs Henry VIII (Sasha Allen-Grieve). Besties with new Queen Anne Boleyn (Noel Nelson), Jane wishes to use her natural talents for comedy to get into the high art of fooling, perhaps one day even becoming a proper court Jester (which no woman has ever attempted). Unfortunately her meeting with famed Jester Carl “The Funny One” (Franscio Negrón) follows a tale as old as time. Now Jane must fight by het wit and her fury to expose Carl, win her place in the court, and stand up for so many of her fellows, playthings of the powerful.

The madcap Elizabethan times are greased by two “ ‘And Maidens” to the Queen, Bessie (Tiffany Eller) and Lucy (Jessie Carlson), wide grinning bunglers with a love of jokes and slapstick, who nonetheless carry rivers of trauma within them, waiting to burst. Moss’s script flips from broad strokes satire, to the worst kind of farce, to a haunting peon to all the suffering felt by the world for the privileged right of the few. For this insane trolly ride it is Eller and Carlson are at the switches and they throw them at the exact right time. Their deep sorrow, and knowledge that as interchangeable narrators they speak for millions of women, yet remain their own perfect souls, is one of the most heartbreaking things in an evening of gut punches. But, you know, with jokes.

Allen-Grieve is a hysterical man-child, going to the max in gesture and volatility. Unlike the other men who prey on Jane’s peace King Henry’s is all the more terrifying because there’s no hint of maliciousness, it’s all the truer and all the more frighting to be just the arrogant avarice of an idiot who is convinced he is divinely ordained for leadership and could not be less suited to it (and it’s not until after he stalks off you realize he reminds you of another, more contemporary world leader).

Fichtman swims against the weight Moss has put on her, not only undone by one man specifically, and her society at large but also by her own internalized self-loathing: which is unfortunately accurate for so many women in all sorts of times and places but staples her feet when she ought to soar. Still when the wind is in her sails, Fichtman takes the stage with the presence of a master comic and grounds herself with a possession, refining her truth like a diamond in the dross. She’s nicely set up against Negrón’s elegant fakery as Carl, the most modern acting, and modern dressed member, the Plutonic Ideal of the Horrendous Comedian, his face a careful psychopaths blank.

Amid all these fine performances the one who combines, humor, commentary, whimsy and spunk is the dark horse of Anne Boleyn. Nelson’s Queen is a honest, earnest, careless person. With Jane she is driving, pinching, prying, with Henry she tries to match his freak and cater to his will (until of course, she doesn’t), but with herself she is full of doubts and strivings. Their performance is one of such subtle intensity, pressed against the bars but still smiling, that amid all the tragedy and farce, Nelson reminds us, so long as you have laughter to share, we will last longer than the boot.