The Love of Three Oranges Review

Jumping out of the SDSU theatre scene, I decided to see a play off-campus. Well, I didn’t merely decide to, I was excited to. My younger sister was in a production of The Love of Three Oranges at my old high school. (Grossmont High School) Her excitement of the production increased my own excitement to see it as the weeks of her rehearsals passed by. In this production, the play calls for improv. Copious amounts of improv. At first I was wary, since this was in fact a high school production, and saying that they can use improv in a production is putting a huge amount of trust in them. However, I found it worked extremely well and was very pleasantly surprised!

The show The Love of Three Oranges is essentially a comedic play that makes fun of the fact it’s a comedic play. The narrator frequently interrupts the actors giving back-story and making comments such as “It can’t be comfortable to hold that pose… *chortle*”. The story is essentially that of a two fairy tales in two acts with the same characters. The first act focuses on Prince Tartaglia and his case of “clinical hypochondria”. Essentially he had a spell cast on him by a witch and a meddling group headed by his cousin, Princess Clarice (whom my sister played), and the only way he can be cured is to make him laugh. Hilarity ensues with slow-motion swordfights, corny jokes, and silly costumes, and at the end of the first act, Tartaglia manages to laugh. However, in-turn the witch, Fata Morgana, casts another spell on him making him fall in love with three specific oranges.

The second act is essentially Prince Tartaglia’s quest to find the three oranges, and it is revealed that within the oranges are princesses that have been sealed there for ages. However, two of the princesses die due to their being released too early. The third princess and prince Tartaglia fall in love, and after many attempts to foil their marriage by Princess Clarice and her gang, the two end up living “happily ever after”.

Being a high school show, I didn’t have very high expectations for the level of skill in general. However two actors in particular impressed me a huge amount. I swear I’m not playing favorites at all when I say that Claudia Ethridge, who played Princess Clarice, was utterly hilarious. She played the sinister, demented, yet fashionable princess perfectly. She utilized her facial expressions very skillfully in order to reap comedic effect and characterization. Nothing she did was merely to get a laugh from the audience. You could tell that she really did her homework on her character and its levels and “ticks.”

In addition, I found the actor Sam Halgren to be very entertaining. Sam played Pantalone, the queen’s right hand man. Sam created an elaborate character for himself. I personally know Sam and his disposition off the stage, but onstage he was an extremely flamboyant manservant. In likeness to Claudia, Sam played the role with truth; he also never did anything just for laughs from the audience. Though he received them, you could tell that he wasn’t just trying to get a reaction from the audience.

Altogether I found the play to be extremely entertaining, and though some roles did fall flat, I never found myself simply laughing to make an actor feel good about themselves. I laughed with gusto and interest, and I’m truly proud of the cast for gracefully pulling off such an endeavor.