Word: hippolyta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...before the lights go up the director's vision of A Midsummer Night's Dream: counterpoint over harmony. If the music doesn't bring that message home, Epstein has added a brief masque to accompany the overture: before a Paolo Uccello-like tapestry, the helmeted figures of Theseus and Hippolyta have it out with swords (Hippolyta wins...
With less care this discord-first interpretation could turn the Dream into a rowdy cockfight, with lovers, parents, fairies and rustics tussling through scene after scene. But Epstein draws nearly all of his conflict from the text--except for an amusing pre-marital spat between Theseus and Hippolyta that makes some dramatic sense but seems only marginally present in Shakespeare's original. Everywhere else, the conflicts in this production neatly fit into a world thrown out of kilter by the feud between Oberon and Titania, the presiding deities. The explosive initial entrance of the lovers and Egeus, grunting and panting...
...directors clearly stressed diction, for the actors speak with great precision, making this easier to understand than most undergraduate productions of Shakespeare. But Monica Bachner as Hippolyta is too mechanical in her delivery, sacrificing inflection for clarity. Tim Sellars plays Hermia's lover Lysander well, but is handicapped by his boyish cuteness. Sellars looks too much the blonde California surfer. He delivers his lines with feeling, but we can't help thinking that if Hermia threw him over, he'd just as soon hop into his dune buggy and cruise down the beach until he found a new place where...
...married Dankworth and began appearing with his band as a featured act, but she also kept up her new attachment to the theater. She played both Hippolyta and Titania in a West End production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hedda Gabler at Canterbury, and replaced an ailing Lotte Lenya in a production of the Weill-Brecht The Seven Deadly Sins in Edinburgh. Currently she is starring in a London revival of Show Boat, where her breathy, pulsating Bill is a showboat-stopper. Her musically adventurous nature has also led her to give lieder recitals, try some of Dankworth...
...brilliant and dedicated cast. Dean Gitter's fascinating Bottom remains the most difficult performance to fathom: his "wit" in the scenes with Titania almost passes for just that, and his death scene as Pyramus reveals Bottom, unbelievably, a capable actor--capable at least of temporarily affecting Theseus and Hippolyta, played superbly by Tommy Lee Jones and Lynette Saxe...