Word: kaplan
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...SCENE of Doctor Faustus, John Faustus boldly adopts a course that will allow him to live out his secret desires and satisfy the strongest cravings of his curiousity; in the closing scene he spits upon these pleasures, as he faces his punishment, the inevitable consequence of his boldness. Michael Kaplan's verson of Christopher Marlowe's classic play loses some of the middle ground, but captures with force the weight of the Faustian decision and the heights and depths of emotion that it entails...
...Kaplan, in response to the difficulties in the text--and to the hurdle of the old English, which requires adjustment and greater concentration on the part of an audience than does the more familiar Shakespearean dialogue--combines innovative technical aspects with a rotating cast. His set consists of four 15-foot-high white screens, a white floor with a red grid and black cubes of varying sizes placed with stools around the stage. Kaplan calls his set "new wave," and, while avoiding a more traditional setting, it aids in conveying a sense of the story by its quality that avoids...
...rotating cast works less well in contributing to clarity. The original play calls for a cast of about 45, in addition to a chorus, obviously an impossibility for this production. Kaplan should have cast more than seven players, though; the entrances and exits of characters only add to the confusion which mounts in the middle of the play. All the characters wear formal black suits, as do Faustus and Mephostophilis, and superficial differences like masks are not enough to make it clear that, when one character leaves the stage and reappears immediately, he represents someone new each time...
NONFICTION: Ambition, Joseph Epstein American Dreams, Studs Terkel The Magazine Maze, Herbert R.Mayes -Naming Names, Victor Navasky -Walt Whitman, Justin Kaplan -"Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!" Orville Schell Ways of Escape, Graham Greene
NONFICTION: Ambition, Joseph Epstein ∙ American Dreams, Studs Terkel ∙ The Magazine Maze, Herbert R. Mayes ∙ Naming Names, Victor Navasky ∙ Walt Whitman, Justin Kaplan ∙ "Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!" Orville Schell ∙ Ways of Escape, Graham Greene