Word: bsc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Instead of drawing out the comic possibilities of this lovely scenario, the BSC actors tend to remain in pointed and stiff positions throughout the show, producing an artificial and amateurish effect--though they relax somewhat by the third...
...food, "One has to be serious about something in life to be amused." As the intricate plot unravels and the couples happily unite, the laughter subsides and Finnegan declares, "We have now realized the vital importance of being earnest." Maybe he has, but it would have helped had the BSC taken a more earnest stab at this drama. Wilde wrote a charming satire that, besides entertaining, might stimulate some thought on the excessive concern of the aristocratic class with manners and decorum. Random male-female substitution does not add anything to the effectiveness of this endeavor, and overacting never does...
...scene and the production, work for a simple and well-precedented reason--lack of interference. In the last year or so the BSC has done a fair amount of experimenting with the different ways a director can mangle a script in the interests of originally; their director's Romeo and Juliet was set mysteriously and superfluously in modern-day Belfast, and Bill Coe's Memlet offered the truly creative line-reading "To be, or not?... To be!" But now the fever seems to have broken. Caesar, which will run repertory with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, demonstrates...
After an all-too-obvious identity crisis and a period of physical confusion--occasioned by the move this fall from near Symphony Hall to the wilds of St. Botolph Street--the BSC appears to have come home just in time to face a new adjustment. Peter Sellars '80, not hitherto known for sticking exactly to original milieus, will take over the company's directorship after the current season ends; whatever his plans, though, he is fortunate to be meeting up with a group whose feet, at long last, seem to have regained contact with the theatrical ground. The Tragedy...
Coupling the two shows is by no means unheard of, and one director recently combined the two into a six-hour marathon. It is still a winning combination, carried out smoothly by the BSC. Most of the cast is identical for the two shows, with the disappointing exception of Hamlet himself, and selected routines evoke one show in the midst of another--notably, the first entrance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet, in which the two, with more snap and individuality than such small parts would otherwise command, silently go through one of Stoppard's coin-flipping routines...