In Las Meninas ("Ladies in Waiting"), Lynn Nottage makes a case for there having been a love affair that produced a child of Queen Marie Marie-Therese and her African dwarf-fool, Nabo, 1664 in the French court of her husband Louis XIV. Nottage explores the truth of this through Louise Marie-Therese, a novice on the eve of permanent vow-taking in 1695 in the Moret convent where she grew up. She also wants to substantiate herself as the royal black child, yearning for freedom just as the parents did. As she narrates evidence she's received piecemeal through the years, she reveals a yearning for freedom, just as her parents had done.
Because the narrative is so split up between past and present, the novice telling as well as acting, there is a confusion about what's plot and what's subplot. Emotional impact is drained.
In the court scenes, humorous touches (like a doctor confirming the Queen's pregnancy by outlandish observations) are more involving than dramatic ones (such as Nabo bemoaning a choice that led to his slavery).
As often happens at Asolo Rep, the staging outdoes what is staged. Terrific art projections include wonderful scenes of the Versailles palace and rows of detailed but mysterious portraits. There's also a stunning tableau adaptation of Velasquez's painting, titled like this play, that shows Louis XIV's court figures posed to recall (though not imitate) Valasquez's rendering of a scene in his studio. It highlights the Infanta Margarita but includes Phillip IV of Spain, his wife, court members and the artist himself.
Performances are what gain the rating stars, particularly the affecting Will Little as Nabo and spunky Lindsay Marie Tierce as the miserable, pitiable but sometimes peevish Queen. Little makes us believe he's short as Nabo and spirited, though his accent can get in the way of clarity. The latter can be true at times of Tierce too, though it may be the author's fault, if her text (which dictates strange pronunciations) is being followed.
There's no way most can see the Queen's bad teeth that the script makes so much of, and Tierce would seem pretty enough to keep some of her husband's interest. So it counts that very beautiful Kate Hampton plays Louis' sly mistress. As for the King, Jud Williford shows him to be characterless, capricious, a real "royal pain." He must have been funny in a scene set in a side box, but he couldn't be seen by anyone sitting house right on opening night.
David Breitbarth hilariously provides nonsense as the doctor cited above. In an underwritten role as court artist, Douglas Jones keeps a presence and makes pithy observations about ugly royalty and how he sometimes gets even with them (a device some artists actually used).
Barbara Redmond stands out as the Queen Mother, who has found freedom by bearing two sons and then happily gone her own way. Redmond also acquits herself well as the somewhat ghoulish Mother Superior of Louise Marie-Therese's convent. The black nun gets better treatment from sincere, accomplished Devereau Chumrau than from the playwright.
Without the soon-to-be graduates of FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training strutting their stuff with ease, there'd be no court attendants. They add to director Michael Donald Edwards' sumptuous production, ten years after he debuted it in California, of a disappointing, still-immature play.
