Word: gages
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Larry Gage obscurs what should be clear. Gage didn't encourage the rebel to rave and weep and spew out his god-damns. Richard Silberg never wallowed in some old lady's death, never whined about his life. Too much taste was his problem...
...story of course oozes whimsy. The broader humor of Larry Gage's Lowell House production comes across fresh and funny. Toad (John Sansone), who regrettably is far too thin for a toad, bounces around the stage, bubbling, buzzing and boop-booping his phonic fantasies of motoring. Water-rat (David Baughan) and Mole (Carla Barringer) playfully "mess around the river" while a chorus of small, furry animals endears itself...
...movements are also a bit too tense and rigid. Even a Toad can be graceful. But Sansone isn't. Some of the scenes between the natty, restrained Water-rat and the eager, gliding Mole are pleasantly graceful; in smaller parts, Phillipa Lord as Phoebe and Dan Smith and Bob Gage as a horse and his rear end are funny without obviously pushing for laughs...
...show's most disturbing gracelessness is Director Gage's blocking. Given a spacious stage, fine lighting and colorful costumes he seems to have taken care to crowd bodies in small spaces and to compose lopsided stage pictures. In lieu of pacing riot scenes--the court-room scene and Toad's return to Toad Hall -- Gage throws his entire cast together for ten-second lumps of chaos, the quickest starting and fastest ending mob actions you've ever seen...
Only once has Gage used his eye effectively: when the four lead animals, carrying candles, slink through an underground passage in front of a banquet table draped with silhouetted ferrets, stoats and weasels in tableau...