Word: knockã
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Although the intensity of the townspeople’s horrified reactions to Dr. Knock??s dire diagnoses provides a good sense of the contrast between Parpalaid’s informal treatment of “medicine” and Dr. Knock??s authoritative perspective on the discipline, sometimes the acting is so over-the-top that its frenzy removes the subtlety of the interaction. Albeit amusing, the polarization between Dr. Knock??s cold reserve and the townspeople’s frenzy at times prevents the personal, human element from coming through. Nonetheless, the performances...
...lighting plays an increasingly complex role; at first, it only consists of the typical, harsh, white lights of a doctor’s office, but its intensity and scale increases to represent the truth-revealing sterility of Dr. Knock??s “medicine,” and the possibility of his power. Light designer Aidin E.W. Carey ’07 does a good job of making the lighting’s intensity manifest that power...
...first, the simplicity of the set just demonstrates Dr. Knock??s focus on modern hygiene and sterility. But after the intermission, when the play jumps to a scene several months after Dr. Knock??s arrival, the futuristic set design transforms the space of the Mainstage from the previous flat, low lines to a mass-scale laboratory. The increased complexity of the set dramatically adds to the feel of rapid modernization that pervades the play, and represents a truly impressive technical feat on the part of set designers Burkle and Grace C. Laubacher...
...Knock?? raises questions on a far broader, deeper level than most Harvard shows achieve. Does illness exist before doctors say it does? (This is particularly appropriate for a French play, given that a similar controversy surrounded Pasteur’s “discovery” of the microbe in the nineteenth century.) To what extent do we let medicine govern our bodies more than is necessary? And it’s difficult to avoid allusions to Hitler in the stiffly crisp and completely insane figure of Dr. Knock and the mechanistic modernization he envisions...
Ultimately, “Knock??s” treatment of these questions is discouraging. The show expresses a deep discomfort with its namesake’s “medicine,” suggesting that what may seem like a great “experiment” to better mankind through modernization is actually just the experiment of one power-hungry man. It leaves you questioning whether the “triumph” of medicine is really a victory for mankind, or something that will destroy mankind—maybe something for all those pre-meds...