Word: beckets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eliot presents the oft-dramatized story of Becket as a morality play, a lesson in the nature of martyrdom, and eschews all the possible theatrics in the tale. He manipulates a sparse collection of performers--Becket, three priests, four tempters, four knights, and a chorus of women--through a ritual that both plumbs the deep seas of Christian theology and plunders pagan mythology for parallels and a natural background. The mutable verse form, with irregular rhymes and cyclical repetition, can hypnotically enthrall you even if you don't quite catch Eliot's meaning...
...problem, for directors, performers and audiences alike, is that virtually nothing happens onstage. The soul-wrenching self-examination Becket undergoes--to tell whether he's sacrificing himself to God's will or just seeking glory in martrydom--makes for good poetry but not much drama. Eliot's static script and musical writing summon a comparison, oddly, with opera--voices and not bodies must bring Murder in the Cathedral to life...
...eight women in the chorus. they plod like cows and wail like banshees. Eliot wrote lengthy parts for the chorus, to make it the passive, fearful substratum of the play, somewhere between mankind and nature. Its members understand even less than the audience what's happening to Becket, but they too participate in a small way in the miracle of Becket's martyrdom and learn something as the play progresses. You wouldn't know it from the actresses at Currier, who maintain the same unbearable level of high-pitched, uncomprehending moaning from start to finish--until the Te Deum they...
...many eulogies last week, the brutal murder at the altar was even compared with that of Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered by courtiers of King Henry II in the 12th century. "Barbaric!" exclaimed Pope John Paul II in Rome. "It is not only his archdiocese but the whole church which suffers from such iniquitous violence...
...second act. The tensions are there--the plotted crime, as well as growing differences between Teach and Donny, mostly concerning Bobby, but also inspired by Teach's self-assured abrasiveness. But nothing really happens until the end of the second act. Instead, Mamet gives us his version of Becket, perhaps entitled "En Attendant Fletcher." The act limps by as the characters wait for the arrival of their accomplice, and the tensions between them continue to build. Mamet, it seems, wanted to show the ultimate powerlessness and futility of his characters, like Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, but without...