Word: lonesco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...title implies, Macbett is Macbeth with a twist--more than a twist, actually. lonesco puts Shakespeare through a meatgrinder and winds up with something that falls between Monty Python and the Marx Brothers. If this production is more silly than profound, though, much of the dubious credit should go to director Andrei Molotiu, who has turned the play's darker moments into absurd self-parody...
...plot centers around a series of coups in an unnamed archduchy, in which increasingly more ruthless leaders usurp the throne. lonesco takes this all-to-obvious premise--e.g. that power corrupts--and revels in its inanity. While facing execution for leading an unsuccessful rebellion, Candor (Glen Whitney) declares that he is a historical dead-end, and that his "rebellion was necessary, if only to prove I'm a criminal." Much of the humor of the play arises from the hackneyed, emotionally-inappropriate intellectualizations in which the characters are endlessly engaged...
Strokests often excrutiatingly funny, but the playwright's intentions remain obscure. Leslie Glass writes dialogue as absurd as a cross between lonesco and "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," but the one-liners and hilarious situations lead nowhere. As a satire on the American family, the play never succeeds on the level of Albee's American Dream although the relentless reinforcement of American stereotypes leads us to expect as much. But for black comedy Strokes can't be beaten...