Word: director
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Carlos Dobal as Gabriel has perhaps the hardest part of all: a sixty-odd-year-old deaf man. Apparently Dobal and director Jeffrey Harper decided that Dobal should speak with the voice of a normal man rather than one who was old and deaf. Perhaps the fact that Gabrial has so many speeches--which could possibly be read as internal monologues--led them to this. At any rate, Dobal comes across as exactly what he is--a 20-year-old actor with silver paint in his hair. He doesn't convey enough of the decrepitude or pathos inherent in Gabriel...
...production suffers from severe weaknesses. Director Greg Farrell seems to find no distinction between projection and bellowing. Thus the tone of the entire play is too loud, like a minuet turned to disco level. There is also a strange mish-mash of modern and antique costuming that, despite its cuteness, is distracting. And though designer Tamar Zimmerman constructed an adequately elegant sitting-room for the only set, her lighting often darkens half the stage, shadowing actors at key moments...
...says. The note's existence points to the major flaw in Sellon's directing: He is not secure enough to let the audience find things funny without prodding, and he doesn't understand that even stereotypes need life breathed into them. In addition, Sellon lacks technical skills as a director. Characters turn upstage for no apparent reason, or stare at the ceiling in obvious discomfort. Sellon chooses to have actors find their puns stupendously funny, depriving the audience of a chance...
...operetta around the flimsiest of comic opera conventions, but it's loved nonetheless for its infectious waltzes. No matter what performers do to this durable music, it will intoxicate listeners. Lowell's Fledermaus refuses to take Strauss's joie-devivre seriously--which is no sin in itself--but director J. Scott Brumit fails to provide a substitute, leaving the show to wander in a wasteland of farce, sarcasm, and tastelessness...
...level takes guts, and it would be patently unfair to expect professional quality singing and playing from a group like Lowell House Opera. What's frustrating about this Fledermaus, though, is that the singing is the strongest part of the show. If the orchestra were better prepared and the director had replaced Strauss's Vienna coherently, Lowell's Fledermaus could please everyone. As it stands, the program lists the show's time-setting as "uncertain"--a word you might better apply to the whole affair...