Word: caligari
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...American Repertory Theatre production of John Moran's new multi-media the-artical creation The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a unique and disorienting event. Theatergoers find themselves literally surrounded by a strange, stylized world full of colorful, clownish costumes, creepy music and sound effects and a good measure of farcical blood and gore. Drawing upon several esoteric influences, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a lushly imagined theatrical piece, but its seventy minutes of bewildering entertainment is a mostly unpleasant experience with little lasting impact on the audience...
Some background on the show's sources helps explain its weirdness. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is based on a silent 1920 German Expressionist film of the same name about a mysterious hypnotist who enters a German town and causes all manner of horror and havoc. The film, in turn, draws upon the work of a curious theater of the time based in Paris called the Grand Guignol. For over six decades, the Guignol produced plays resembling a grotesque puppet show, but with live actors. Real-life crime and bawdiness were brought to the stage for elite audiences craving campy...
...other element of any earlier film. If you are a pretentious critic, your references should be as obscure or as foreign as possible. For example: "The moody tone of the film was evocative of the German Expressionist style of the 1920s, best expressed in 'The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari." If you are a populist critic tie it in to the season's big hit: "This was another "Jurassic Park," Only without the dinosaurs...