Word: atkinsons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Northerners inclined to dismiss the case as the atavistic behavior of a small Southern town should keep in mind the murder of 30-year-old William Atkinson in Boston last spring. Atkinson, a maintenance worker, was with a friend when the two were attacked by a gang of bottle-throwing white men, who chased Atkinson into the Savin Hill T station. As he fled down the tracks in terror, Atkinson was struck and killed by an oncoming train...
...their preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh draw the playwright's satire. But unlike with Shakespeare's plays, a modern-day director is hard-pressed to give the vengeance play's intentionally superficial characters any meaning for a modern-day audience. The result, under the direction of Andrew Atkinson, is an exaggerated performance by pasteboard characters...
...Atkinson attempts modernization, but his efforts lack consistency. Lacoste shirts for the virile sons of the Duke and frumpy Talbot's dresses for the more matronly characters, while externally updating the actors, do not make them any more believable down deep. The use of popular music at climactic scenes is likewise questionable: in the final scene, when vengeance is pounding recklessly towards fulfillment, the Talking Heads' "Psycho-Killer" erupts out of nowhere as servants sprinkle the grappling bodies with red glitter. The ploy only adds a dash of Saturday Night Fever to an already macabre event. And the updating...
...Though Atkinson does not fit the play to the demands of a modern audience, he tailors it well to Leverett House's theater. The oak beams and wooden panelling of the stage provide the perfect backdrop for a play of this vintage. The choreography, which distributes the action over several different locations and levels, sustains the audience's attention, turning the playwright's flouting of the era's "unity of place" rule into an asset. Soliloquies from the ledges of the room's high-set windows, for example, make good use of the unusual features of the library. The audience...
...annexing off-Broadway and the U.S. regional theater. In the past three weeks, Top Girls and Skirmishes opened off-Broadway and Quartermaine's Terms at New Haven's Long Wharf Theater. Interestingly enough, counting Nell Dunn's Steaming, already running at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theater, three out of four new British entries are by women, possibly because Britain's feminist consciousness is just now peaking. Top Girls displays some postfeminist tristesse; only Steaming seems earnest in its feminist polemics, ironically garnished with pre-fig leaf nudity...