The Emperor of the Moon is a boisterous bit of family friendly late-afternoon entertainment under Shakespeare & Company’s Rose Footprint Tent.

The Emperor of the Moon by Aphra Behn. Directed and adapted by Jenna Ware. Presented by Shakespeare & Company, Lenox MA, through August 20.

Concetta Russo and Ashton Muñiz in the Shakespeare & Company production of “The Emperor of the Moon.” Shakespeare & Company 2016. Photo: Ava G. Lindenmaier.

By Ian Thal

Aphra Behn (1640?-1689) is known as the first female dramatist working in the English language who was able to make a living as a professional, former serving as a spy in the service of Charles II. Despite theses feminist creds, Restoration-era comedy isn’t of much interest to American theater goers and artistic directors, so her works are rarely visited outside of a theater history class. (Her works are revived far more often in England.) The Emperor of the Moon, the last of her plays to premiere during her lifetime (two more plays were staged after her death), was among her biggest hits. Behn adapted it from a French farce, Arlequin Empereur dans la Lune by the Bolognese actor-playwright Giuseppe Domenico Biancolleli who, in turn, adapted it from a semi-improvised commedia dell’arte scenario performed by his troupe during their long residency in Paris.

In Naples, Doctor Balliardo (Lori Evans in a “pants role”), a natural philosopher, moralist, mystic and stargazer, decides to have his daughter Elaria (Caroline Calkins) and niece Bellemante (Zoë Laiz) locked up in the house. Their chastity must be protected – not an atypical farce plot. The twist is that too much moon-gazing has addled the pate of the Doctor: he concludes that only the inhabitants of lunar surface are good enough to marry the girls under his roof. His researches have led him to believe that the moon is the home of a utopian republic of philosophers. These deep thinkers are connected to the period’s various secret societies that saw themselves as reviving ancient thought (Behn’s 1687 script mentions the Rosicrucians and Cabala). The intellectual arena of 17th century Europe was fiercely syncretic, freely mixing ‘revolutionary’ scientific ideas with occultism. Behn scholars may speculate as they may about the writer’s beliefs (her published works include a translation of a volume on astronomy), but even by the flexible standards of the age the good Doctor Balliardo is a lunatic.

In response to this madness, Don Cinthio (Conor Seamus Moroney) and his more poetic friend Don Charmante (Colin Gold) hatch an elaborate plan to acquire Elaria and Bellemante’s hands in marriage. They stage a masquerade: their servants Ferdinand (Ashton Muñiz) and Florinda (Concetta Russo) are sent, in the guise of philosopher-ambassadors from the moon, to persuade the gullible Balliardo and his assistant, Peter (Kaileela Hobby), that Izredozor, the Emperor of the Moon (Cinthio), and his companion, the Prince of Thunderland (Charmante), have fallen in love with Elaria and Bellemante respectively. Eventually, every servant in each of the three households takes part in the fabrication. Meanwhile, there is a subplot in which Scaramouch (Gregory Boover) and Harlequin (Marcus Kearns) compete for the hand of Mopsophil (Caitlin Kraft), the governess to the two girls. As with any good farce, lovers hide in closets, misunderstandings abound, and everyone is committed, without question, to the idea that elaborate deceptions will make things right.

Jenna Ware, whose affection for commedia has in recent years led her to translate and adapt the 18th century playwright Carlo Goldoni’s The Venetian Twins and The Servant of Two Masters to entertaining effect, freely adapts plot elements from Behn’s original while retaining a surprisingly hefty amount of Behn’s language. Allusions to the hopelessly esoteric Hermeticism are understandably downplayed (it must have been all the rage in the 17th century), but what remains is still quite funny. The production is a delightful bit of family friendly late-afternoon entertainment under Shakespeare & Company’s Rose Footprint Tent.

Muñiz and Russo are hilarious as the faux-lunar ambassadors, voguing strange postures, their arms often up in the air. They speak haltingly, as if they are flabbergasted that the Doctor is buying the ridiculous dialogue their masters have written for them. Russo’s sing-song delivery is particularly amusing. Dara Silverman is charming as a silent bearer of signs that announce the changes of locale; she generates a tent full of laughs when she feigns being plunged into a pitch-dark room despite the late-afternoon sunlight.

The best remembered commedia-inspired plays proffer uniquely ingenious plots, but it is clowning that ensured the genre’s popularity over the centuries. In this case, the subplot of the love-triangle between Scaramouch, Harlequin, and Mopsophil provides some of the more over-the-top comic antics (though I wish Kraft had more to do as Mopsophil). Fight choreographer Jonathan Croy gives Boover and Kearns two sword fights: one with lightweight rapiers that emphasizes both cowardice and intimidation by way of showiness rather than efficiency; another with heavy broadswords that highlights the ineptitude of the two zanni. But Boover and Kearns also have extended semi-improvised lazzi: one is a dance-off (Kearns also serves as dance choreographer for the show) the second on a drawing competition in which the two rivals trade insulting portraits (which also allows for the insertion of topical humor). Unfortunately for Mopsophil, her only other suitors are disguises used by the first set of rivals.

Costume designer Brianna Wells dresses the cast in the bright storybook-like colors that Ware generally prefers for her commedia shows. Wells’ tendency is to pair characters in, if not almost matching outfits, complementary ones: Doctor Belliardo and Peter are dressed in austerely stiff blue double-breasted lab outfits with lozenge designs; the otherwise matching aqua and fuchsia skirts and sleeves of the flower and feather festooned frocks of Elaria and Bellemante. Against this riot of colors, the false moon people are clad in a black and white wardrobe that combines stripes, checkerboard, and polka dot patterns – incorporating masks that hide one side of the face (Ware generally eschews the use of masks in her approach to commedia.)

Antiquarians curious about the thought of the early modern era may wished for an adaptation that paid a little more attention to the intellectual climate in which Belliardo loses his bearings, but when it comes to whipping up an entertaining comedy boasting first-rate clowning, Ware, as usual, delivers the hilarious goods.

Ian Thal is a playwright, performer, and theater educator specializing in mime, commedia dell’arte, and puppetry, and has been known to act on Boston area stages from time to time, sometimes with Teatro delle Maschere. He has performed his one-man show, Arlecchino Am Ravenous, in numerous venues in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. One of his as-of-yet unproduced full-length plays was picketed by a Hamas supporter during a staged reading. He is looking for a home for his latest play, The Conversos of Venice, which is a thematic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Formerly the community editor at The Jewish Advocate, he blogs irregularly at the unimaginatively entitled The Journals of Ian Thal, and writes the “Nothing But Trouble” column for The Clyde Fitch Report.