Word: bsc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...BSC Supervisor...
...Cain's King Lear creates ironies like that; the production staggers like blind Gloucester between a formal, tradition-ridden interpretation and a self-consciously innovative approach, until it topples over a Dover cliff of its own creation into farce. Too many serious lines receive laughs, or worse, snickers, from BSC's audience; the incongruities in Cain's direction must take the blame...
...BSC's Lear leaves you with a lot of questions about the place of innovation on the Shakespearean stage. No one would argue for a theater of sterility, shunning all new ideas as "deviations from the author's intentions." But when you have a competent group of performers, and at least one actor of stature and brilliance who can use a play like Lear as a personal vehicle, it seems a cheat to squander the resources on half-baked ideas, directorial interpretations that aren't followed through, and "innovations" that clash with each other. Cain should either have moved...
Only once does the BSC seize the play's dark side and expose it to the audience. As Pompey the whoremaster (Mark Cartier) gives the audience a tour of the riff-raff in the prison, he opens trapdoors in the stage floor which serve as cell doors--and long arms reach out, grabbing for him, trying to drag him down. It's a good bit of stage business, and it's also an eerie picture of the starved world of Measure for Measure, sucking its inhabitants into the abyss...
...BSC's Measure for Measure is technically smooth and well-directed--see it for its good spirits and evenness. But it lacks that overall sense of control which can guide an audience to new thoughts about old questions. The scenes between Angelo and Isabella hint that the company could pull this off and Measure for Measure will still be waiting when they're ready...