Word: lear
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unfinished text that is speculated to have been born out of a collaboration between Shakespeare and renaissance playwright Thomas Middleton. Of all Shakesperean plays, Timon of Athens needs a strong directorial hand to adapt it for the stage. Chronologically, the play occupies the uncomfortable spot between King Lear and Macbeth and can be easily dismissed as the awkward transition in-between...
...This is undoubtedly a moral play, more so than either Lear or Macbeth, and it presents several complications. The immediate problem is the absence of a working text. The Shakesperean original, involving an anti-climactic number of secondary characters wondering in and out of the stage and one too many perorations from the newly misanthropic Timon, is clearly unsuitable for a student production. To this problem, director Matt Hudson found the simplest solution: he cut. The cast was reduced to about half its prescribed size, Timon's speeches were shortened or eliminated and the verbal exchanges between characters were reduced...
Sure, you've heard of Hamlet and King Lear. But Timon of Athens? This weekend, one of Shakespeare's least known tragedies makes its Boston premier on the Agassiz Stage as director/producer Matt Hudson '03 brings to life a play that was probably never staged in the Bard's own lifetime. But even if you're not a Shakespeare scholar, there's reason to head for the Agassiz. A moving story of friendship and betrayal, Timon resonates with as much power as any of Shakespeare's better-known works...
...between a humanized George III and his puppet-like court. While most actors are fittingly powdered, wigged and decked up in period costumes, the king is shown alternatively in a nightgown or a straightjacket, with hair awry. The image of the mad king is an obvious echo of King Lear; the analogy between the two scenarios being played up in this production. In dcor, effects and characterization, Hood manages to convey his vision of Bennett's play as a story as epic and dramatically versatile as King Lear, but twice...
Essentially, madness is a state which one must enter alone, a place into which nobody, not even the audience in a theater, can follow you. They can follow you to the very brink of madnessand follow you with great interest if your name is Hamlet or King Lear. But they cannot cross that threshold with you; they can only watch the play develop around you once you have become little more than a set piece, a constant force of irrationality. There is a reason that the conflicts of government play a larger role in the second part of Bennett...