Word: commedia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rules they will break and the indignities they will suffer in pursuit of romance. As rediscovery began a few years ago, European and avant-garde American stagings often emphasized the dark elements of his work. At the other extreme, some scholars saw only his fascination with Italian commedia dell'arte buffoonery. The premier Marivaux exponent Stephen Wadsworth, who directed his translation of Triumph at Berkeley and is staging his text of Changes of Heart at McCarter, thinks any successful production mingles both flavors: "Marivaux's plays all combine joy and ebullience with a savagely acute perception of how people operate...
Nothing changes in North Bath. This is true not just of the town's continuing decay but also of the author's approach to character, which is that of commedia dell'arte. He assigns an easily recognizable peculiarity to each actor in his masque, who then exhibits his oddity whenever he is in view...
...whole food chain is on display. The roustabouts wriggle like worms; some of the featured artistes are dressed as tigers or lizards. The clowns could be from a Greenwich Village Halloween parade: Munchkins and bathing beauties, Road Warriors and samurai. This is a circus even Madonna could love -- commedia dell'arte as restaged by surrealists in a birthday-party mood...