Word: caligari
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...actors do their part, pretending to speak their lines and offering appropriately comedic or horrific facial expressions, but ultimately they are only playing caricatures. The costumes are brightly colored and straight out of a carnival, making the mock terror of Caligari's Grand Guignol play seem ridiculously stylized...
Everything about the production design hints that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari does not seek the audience to make any deep emotional investment in the story or its characters. Instead, the production jars the theatergoer into a peculiar world, encouraging reflection on the many layers of theater and the violent and lewd tendencies of society...
...tradition of the Grand Guignol, because the production never explains why it bothers to resurrect these influences. There is some thing to be said for paying attention to pieces of theatrical history that many historians would like to sweep under the rug, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari exhibits postmodern tendencies by creating a Guignol play-within-a-play. But while the production has its own modernized aesthetic, it remains essentially a fragment of the past. Even with all its technical wizardry, this production doesn't add nearly enough contemporary insight to offer anything more than a colorful and inexplicable...
Moran's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seeks to unify these two influences in one wild story. Penny Price (Phoebe Jonas) is the owner of a penny arcade which has been struggling financially ever since her lover died years ago. At the height of her despair, Caligari (Alvin Epstein) and his dubious troupe blast into town, demanding to use the arcade as a setting for their show. Caligari tricks many of the townspeople into participating in his performance, and they all realize too late that they will not make it through Caligari's twisted and absurd variety act alive...
...film featuring the actors from the A.R.T. production, as well as other projections, are used throughout the show. Most of the projections are meant to provide commentary on the action of the play. In one scene, for example, a dollar sign is projected on the curtain as Penny accepts Caligari's payment for the arcade. More often, the projections just flash frantically. When Mr. Twiddle (Scott Ripley), the banker who agrees to perform in Caligari's variety show, is sentenced to death in one of the skits, a yellow swirl appears on the curtain along with words of despair...