Word: dionysus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Frogs, as Aristophanes wrote it, is a kind of ironically motivated slapdash quest to restore a major dead dramatist to the ranks of the living. It might wryly be regarded as one of those periodic efforts to save the ailing theater. The god Dionysus (Larry Blyden) resolves to go down to Hades and bring back Euripides. In the Shevelove version, Bernard Shaw substitutes. As his companion, Dionysus takes along his obese, grumbling Sancho Panza-like servant Xanthias (Michael Vale). They have their slapstick encounters, not only with the cranky Charon, who speaks like a movie gold prospector, but with enticing...
Shevelove has peppered the script with contemporary theatrical in-jokes and quizzical one-liners. As the god of wine and drama, Dionysus quips: "A little wine will get you through a lot of drama." One knows by past performance that the Sondheim lyrics are contrapuntally clever and that his music is astringently bittersweet, but the acoustics round the pool do not permit absolute proof. If Yale should opt for participatory theater, the show could close with a gorgeously refreshing swim-in. · T.E. Kalem
...available in unlimited supply, and as with the Linda Lovelaces and Felicity Splits of the blue-movie screen, too much is not enough for these celebrants. Once embarked on an orgy of tasting and touching, they are powerless, imprisoned rather than liberated by the spirit of Dionysus...
...stomachs thrust forward in imitation of their pregnant mothers and in primitive rites and ancient myths. According to these myths, presumably conceived by males, Adam delivered Eve from his rib cage, Zeus gave birth to Athena out of his head, and when Semele was burned to death, Zeus seized Dionysus from her womb and sewed him up in his thigh until the infant had developed...
...cult of madness, the far-out wing of Dionysus, has passed its judgment on reason more harshly than Nietzsche could have foreseen; but the time is coming when judgment must be passed on the Dionysiacs themselves. The irony is that as absolutes, Reason and Unreason commit the same mistake. The ideology of Reason was an attempt to escape human complexity by rising above it. The ideology of madness is an attempt to escape by plunging beneath it. Impulse to action-no hesitation in between, no regret afterward-is the romantic dream of those who envy animals and madmen...