Word: conklins
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This time there are indeed trees, but they create the wrong effect. This play and this production are fine examples of the vital importance attaching to set design and color. Here Kahn presumably settled on the concept and the gifted John Conklin fashioned his scenery accordingly. The first act presents the discordant environment of the "envious court" and "the foul body of th' infected world." For this Conklin has provided barren brown trees. No complaint here...
...best help of all, of course, comes from good productions. Using the same somewhat trimmed text as last summer, Michael Kahn has kept his directorial operations almost intact. His concept, John Conklin's effective scenery, Jane Greenwood's stunning costumes, and John McLain's lighting convey with clarity the play's shape. Shakespeare's emphasis on the cyclicism of the seasons and of human life is reflected in the unchanging raised circular platform and in the large round clockface that is lowered periodically (on the drive home I was reminded of this when the car radio suddenly came forth with...
...with a triple knot. Kahn underlines this by having Time appear wordlessly in the first half bearing a barren branch, and in the second half bearing a green and, finally, a gold one. Miss Greenwood's costumes for Sicilia are stark white; for Bohemia they are brightly colored (and Conklin's hanging transparent tubes are lit with spring like green); and for the return to the indoor court in Sicilia, the white is mellowed with bits of gray. Thus, while the play is bipartite, it is simultaneously tripartite--somewhat analogously to the sonata-form design of a Classical symphony movement...
...this production director Michael Kahn has made all this especially clear, with the help of Jane Greenwood's costumes and Ken Billington's lighting. In the first Sicilia scenes, everyone is in snowy white. In Bohemia, John Conklin's handsome cyclorama of hanging Lucite tubes is lit with the green of vegetation, and the actors wear colorful yellows and greens. When we return to Sicilia for the last act, the whites have been softened with patches of light grey. In addition, the character of Time (Powers Boothe), whom Shakespeare brings in only to bridge the celebrated 16-year hiatus, appears...
...entire production at Manhattan's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater is laudable in its clarity and lack of gimmickry. The spare, pillared set of Santo Loquasto is a marvel of economy, and the tasteful costumes of John Conklin never distract from Shakespeare's lines, an unmixed blessing, considering who wrote them...