Pater Familias » Theater

ADAPTING GATSBY.

Philip — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:21:10 +0000

ADAPTING GATSBY. I posted here about Gatz, an adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY in which one of the characters reads aloud all of THE GREAT GATSBY. It’s a wonderful experience, and it is now having a second run at the Public Theater. Barbara Chai interviewed John Collins, the director of Gatz, in the Wall Street Journal (May 8),and asked him about Baz Luhrmann’s coming adaptation of the book. Collins is curious about it, after having spent so much time with Fitzgerald’s words. He volunteered that the risk in adapting the book is in adding material rather than leaving things out (of course, Gatz leaves nothing out). He says: “That’s some of what Fizgerald does best in this book—the way he writes around certain important events and details.”

OLIVIER’S INSIGHT ON IAGO’S MOTIVATION.

Philip — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:32:15 +0000

OLIVIER’S INSIGHT ON IAGO’S MOTIVATION. I can’t find it using Google, but long ago I read an interview with Olivier about Iago’s motivation. Olivier said that when he was young, he had trouble playing Iago because he could not understand Iago’s motivation. Then he had an insight during his service in World War II. Another man got an assignment that Olivier had coveted, and Olivier found himself consumed by rage against the person who had beaten him out. He then realized that the primary motive that Shakespeare ascribes to Iago was plausible, and said that he never had a problem with understanding Iago thereafter.

IAGO AS A SEDUCER.

Philip — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:31:45 +0000

IAGO AS A SEDUCER. The digital view of Othello also raises the possibility that Iago can be played as literally an attempted seducer with a homosexual attachment to Othello. The wikipedia article on Iago says that some critics thought that Kenneth Branagh played Iago as homosexual. Branagh’s response was that: “I had no consciousness of doing that at all, but I did play as though he loved Othello. But I don’t mean in a sexual sense.” And this review by Christopher Bray of terry Coleman’s biography OLIVIER retells a theater story: “Researching the part of Iago, Olivier had a chat with Freud’s biographer, Dr Ernest Jones, who told him he was playing a homosexual. At the next rehearsal, Olivier surprised Ralph Richardson’s Othello by kissing him on the lips.”

IAGO AS A COURTIER.

Philip — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 01:30:51 +0000

IAGO AS A COURTIER. The digital analysis of Othello that sees Iago’s dealings with Othello as “like the language of courtship but it’s really a perverse seduction of Othello by his lieutenant” has two aspects. That Iago is Othello’s lieutenant recalls plays where a subordinate manipulates and comments on his master. Courtiers deploy the skills of a courtier—flattery and gossip, and theater often mocks them or their masters. This wikipedia article on Iago says that the role is thought to have been created by Robert Armin who specialized in playing intelligent clowns and created the roles of Touchstone, Feste, and the Fool in Lear.

“THE JOKER IN THE PACK”.

Philip — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:13:23 +0000

“THE JOKER IN THE PACK”. Before the age of digital analysis, W.H. Auden had a view of the comic mechanisms which underlie the tragedy of Othello. In THE DYER’S HAND, he called Iago “The Joker in the Pack.” Auden acknowledges that one can’t call Othello a comedy, but that if it is a tragedy, “it is tragic in a peculiar way.” Auden recognizes how Iago is like a comic figure, with the difference that his goals are evil. He says: “When we first see Iago and Roderigo together, the situation is like that in a Ben Jonson comedy—a clever rascal is gulling a rich fool…” But, Auden observes, Iago’s goal is Roderigo’s moral corruption. Auden concludes that: “What Shakespeare gives us in Iago is a portrait of a practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind….”

‘WHY CAN’T WE HAVE NEW PLAYS LIKE THIS ON BROADWAY?”

Philip — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:53:28 +0000

“WHY CAN’T WE HAVE NEW PLAYS LIKE THIS ON BROADWAY?” If a play by a revered writer like Edward Albee could be forced by harsh reviews to close after 12 performances, the financial risks for all other productions of new plays are increased. Terry Teachout follows his review of The Lady From Dubuque with a one paragraph rave review of Nina Raine’s play Tribes, which has opened Off Broadway. Teachout’s last sentence about Tribes can be taken as a comment on what happened to Albee: “Why can’t we have new plays like this on Broadway?”

A PLAY KILLED BY THE CRITICS.

Philip — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:52:53 +0000

A PLAY KILLED BY THE CRITICS. In his review of the new production of Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque, Terry Teachout says that the premiere of the play in 1980 was “one of those soul-shriveling disasters that can blight a whole career.” There were harsh reviews, and the play closed after 12 performances. Ben Brantley in his review of the new production says that the reception of the play “no doubt hastened Mr. Albee’s decade-long exile from the commercial New York theater.” Both Teachout and Brantley give the play favorable reviews and Teachout says: “I find it hard to understand how the critics who wrote about ‘The Lady From Dubuque’ in 1980 could have been so far off the mark.”

I can speculate that one factor may be that Albee was a tempting target because of his prestige. Teachout quotes one critic from 1980, John Simon, who called the play: “one of the worst plays about anything, ever”. John Simon’s critical stance was that only a very few plays met his exacting standards. Disliking an Albee play would be an opportunity to demonstrate this.

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA.

Philip — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:51:51 +0000

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA. The audience watching The Phantom of the Opera may well think that there are elements of fantasy in the story. However, as Neil Shea points out: “Beneath the Paris Opera House, for example, sits a large reservoir, sometimes called a lake. The lake figures into the story of the Phantom of the Opera.” I mentioned the lake to Annalisa, who is a big fan of the Phantom of the Opera, and she already knew all about it. In fact, she pointed out that there are catfish in the lake.

COUNTING AND COMEDY.

Philip — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:06:21 +0000

COUNTING AND COMEDY. I posted here about how Jim Dale learned to count his pauses in years of working in British music halls. There was a count that would make a joke work and over time audience reactions would tell you what the right count was for each joke. Jana Prikryl had an article in the New York Review of Books (June 9) about Buster Keaton, and Buster Keaton had similar training and experience. Keaton had a salary in the family’s vaudeville act at the age of 4 and was the headliner of the Three Keatons at 5. When he was 7 or 8, one of the routines involved his father giving him a kick in the pants. Keaton reminisced: Now a strange thing developed.” An immediate “ouch”— no laughs. No reaction at all—no laughs. His father taught him to count to ten slowly and then scream—huge laughs. Keaton’s theory of why this worked was; “Audiences love The Slow Thinker.”

DO CRITICS KNOW BETTER THAN PLAYWRIGHTS?

Philip — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:23:09 +0000

DO CRITICS KNOW BETTER THAN PLAYWRIGHTS? It’s tempting to make the argument that Tony Kushner and Shakespeare know what they’re doing more than critics do. Kushner seems to like “lengthy digressions and superfluous subplots.” Shakespeare’s subplots seem always to be important; in Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare chose to make the Beatrice/Benedick story a subplot. Yet critics can help playwrights, and the out-of-town tryouts for Broadway plays back in the day permitted comments by critics that previews do not. Neil Simon gave credit to the Boston critic Elliot Norton’s advice for fixing the third act of The Odd Couple. Norton’s suggestion: Bring back the Pigeon sisters. Simon says here: “Brought back the Pigeon sisters, and the play worked.”

IS 1700 THE CUTOFF DATE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?

Philip — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:28:19 +0000

IS 1700 THE CUTOFF DATE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE? As a linguist, John McWhorter points out that language change is “a gradual process with no discrete boundaries.” Yet, he says, Congreve writing in 1700 is readily understandable by a modern audience, but that the English of 1600, when Shakespeare was writing, “has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but in the very meaning of thousands of basic words and in scores of fundamental sentence structures.” It seems to me an important question. When did the English language become the one we use? McWhorter is probably right. The answer is likely 1700; it is not 1600.

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH?

Philip — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:40:16 +0000

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH? My friend Joe Foley has long contended that Shakespeare’s language is inaccessible to modern audiences. John McWhorter argues in this essay that for theatrical performance Shakespeare should be translated into modern English. What Seamus Heaney did for Beowulf should be done for Shakespeare’s plays. McWhorter says that the audiences for Shakespeare would be greatly increased—that “Shakespeare in the original would play to critical huzzahs but half-empty houses, while people would be lining up around the block to see Shakespeare in English the way Russians do to see an Uncle Vanya.” I don’t agree with McWhorter in his claim that Shakespeare in the original text is hard to enjoy. The popular success of outdoor Shakespeare in our area shows that the plays work for a lot of people even when the acoustics are imperfect.