Word: loeb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first he thought he was being paranoid, or just "too sensitive," as his white friends put it, when he told them of his misgivings about auditioning for a Loeb play. An aspiring student actor, Gerald Hail '81 tried to forget about the butterflies in his stomach and --accompanied by a white friend--walked into the Loeb Drama Center two weeks ago to audition for "The Royal Family," an upcoming mainstage production...
...nervous, with a history of discouraging experiences in Harvard theater behind him. This time he had asked the play's associate producer in advance if race would be a consideration in the casting, and since she had told him to go ahead and try out, Hail sat in the Loeb, waiting and hoping...
...pomposity, jabs at his tortuous plots, and tips of the hat to his skill with musical and visual images gives this Ring a legitimate value of its own, beyond, say, the similarly scaled but more ludicrous parody staged last year in New York by the Ridiculous Theater Company. The Loeb production is a sort of live theatrical touchstone for Wagner's effectiveness--the best scenes in the Ring come off best here, and the worst are cut to ribbons or ridiculed beyond recognition...
Obviously, Sellars resorts to this approach because he has to--the Metropolitan Opera today can't assemble a group of singers capable of doing the Ring justice, and the Loeb isn't even within striking range. But he's also making a point about other, more serious productions: most of the performers in them are dummies, and that's why we've never seen a Ring that works both musically and dramatically...
...actors at the Loeb become little more than menials on stage, pushing about various inanimate objects in time to the music. Only a couple of performances have much character--Paul Redford's cigar-chewing Loge and Grace Shohet's teasing Brunnhilde stand out. This is one show where the technical crew deserves more credit than the performers; Eric Cornwell's lighting, Antony Rudie's technical direction, and Jennifer Schreiber's stage-managing must all be epic efforts...