Word: kaplan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this story pleasantly loses itself in the fireworks of the staging. Kaplan seems embarassed by his play and hides it underneath slick, intriguing extra baggage. A trio of dancers introduce the play and revive it every so often with some beautiful props--portable striped walls and peacock plume pens. Howard Cutler's set--a thatched Roman comedy setup--is thoroughly used by Kaplan. Unlike most Loeb sets it is reassuringly substantial and handsome...
Deitch grossly misplays Diccon, the one role which might have substance, assumedly with Kaplan's approval or instructions. Diccon is a Bedlam, a lunatic released from the asylum to beg about the country, like Poor Tom in King Lear. Deitch plays him as a controlled crafty-plotter--a fuzzy combination of Puck and an American confidence-man. His dress and manner is stylized motley rather than lunatic tatters. His elegant flourishing makes him swallow the many good jokes he has, and completely twist his character...
...play needs to be manhandled. But on the other hand, if it can't be produced as an authentic, academic staging (which would be disastrous), there's little reason to do it at all. Gammer Gurton's Needle is not even a vehicle for Kaplan's production, it is an excuse. Don't see the play, but do see the production and dream about the marvelous things that might happen if this company got its hands on a real bawdy Elizabethan farce...
...Steve Kaplan's Loeb production, Gammer Gurton's Needle is a funny play, though what play it is that's funny is often unclear. Kaplan has staged a brilliantly colorful, broadly comic, visually and musically inventive production which attaches itself only loosely to what in a modernized version, is still a crude and dull play...
...CLEMENS AND MARK TWAIN, by Justin Kaplan. No one disputes Mark Twain's lofty position in literature, but Author Kaplan's searching biography reveals him as an embittered and despairing cynic who courted the values of his time and despised himself for doing...