Word: brook
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David Wheeler's production departs from Brook where it shouldn't and follows it where it must. This is inevitable, since the play really doesn't exist apart from its interpretation. Wheeler substitutes a broad cineramic "happening" stage for Brook's deep proscenium, paralyzing the underlings and thrusting the chorus in our laps. This is fine, for he makes good use of vertical poses (pyramids, piggy-backs, tableaux) at the expense of marching scenes and horas. But there are other problems. Kimball and Kimbrough, while excellent, are all too evidently acting toward their roles from their personalities (which shouldn...
...scheme of those who created it (abbreviate Weiss/Brook). Sired by Brecht, Artaud, Genet and Pirandello, conceived by the German filmmaker and novelist Peter Weiss, translated by Geoffrey Skelton, set to music by R. C. Peaslee, and delivered in London and New York by the Royal Shakespeare Company's Peter Brook, the play is not one man's play open to interpretation by other men. It is an anthology of the century's predominant dramatic modes, and arrived at the Touraine interpreted and orchestrated, and largely choreographed and staged, by the above corporation...
...play's success depends on the rhythm and fluidity of the action it presents. Brook's production never lagged, but kept things moving almost frenetically by means of sudden racket from the periphery, the rhythmic scurrying of the patients, mime, song, dance, a plentiful use of props, masks, and brilliant physical gadgetry -- and above all, a sheer sense of pace that never allowed either the leads or the audience to breathe or reflect. David Wheeler's Boston version inherits most of Weiss/Brook's inspiration and contributes a little of its own. The play "breathes." Marat (Clinton Kimbrough) hunkers...
...excitement is relentless. Jacques Roux (Robert Fields), the mad priest of the insurrection, bursts in straitjacketed and has to be crushed. Deperret (Joseph Hindy), an "erotomaniac" whom Brook equipped with a perpetual erection, urges Charlotte to return to Caen; he forgets himself and nearly rapes her. Sade is whipped -- in London and New York with Corday's flowing hair, since the decency laws forbade public flagellation -- and here with a lash of six flat leather tails. Marat sinks into darkness and confronts the ghosts of his past, who slander his childhood, and Voltaire and Lavoisier, who mock his scientific achievements...
...draft board not only that he is "conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form," but also that he believes in a "Supreme Being." Many belong to the "peace churches," which sprang up after the Reformation and which, though their explanations are often more complex, in effect brook no compromise with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." One faith, Jehovah's Witnesses, deems it a sin to have anything to do with conscription on grounds that each of its members is a minister and would be barred by national service from preaching; approximately 5,000 Witnesses went...