Word: bianca
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...plot, like most of Shakespeare's comedies, revolves around a double courtship. The two daughters of the rich Baptista, Katherina and Bianca, are up for grabs; but the beautiful Bianca cannot marry until her sharp-tongued older sister is suitably bethrothed. The three suitors for Bianca's hand, Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio, stake the gold-digging fool Petruchio into marrying Katherina and clearing the path to wed Bianca. While Petruchio engages in verbal duels with Kate, Lucentio and Hortensio disguise themselves and woo Bianca in secret...
...becomes the baggy pants petty bourgeois proprietor of the theatre. Played by Jim Kaufman, he is the very model of an alcoholic crud. Hortensio as done by director McDonough becomes a pseudo Mafioso a proto-Don Corleone complete with big blue suit and loud tie, Lucentio (Kevin Fennessy) and Bianca (Marianne Adams) are the very models of squeaky clean 30s youth...
...points, backlit actors pantomime the offstage action of the play, alleviating the inevitable boredom of this regrettable Elizabethean convention. But McDonough cannot stop with this modest tactic; he has to include pantomimed metaphor's of the onstage action. Of many egregious examples, the backstage portrayal of a catfight during Bianca's and Katherina's second-act sparring manages to be as insulting as it is cliched...
There are some moment's when the conceits and the text fall into sync. The little softshoe Latin lesson the disguised Lucentio imparts upon the eager Bianca is such a gem that the eyes dazzle for the next two scenes. Cue cards with handy translations of Key but obscure Shakespearean terms works so well they would be a welcome addition to very would be a welcome addition to every future production at the ART. But if the flourishes are brilliant, the total picture is murky...
...Though the parents have not married, they did not want to shuck all tradition, and gathered grandparents for a christening two weeks ago in London. "I'm loving every minute of being Dad again," says Jagger, 40, who has two other daughters: Jade, 13 (by ex-wife Bianca), and Karis, 13 (by American Singer Marsha Hunt). The baby, he adds, has "Jerry's sweet disposition and my extravagant good looks...