Word: lyttelton
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...case in London. Now, after a triumphant tour of Europe, Beale and his fellow players cross the Atlantic for a string of American engagements. Witnessing their debut at the Wilbur Theater, it became painfully clear that something had been left behind at the National’s Lyttelton Theater. Gone was a certain stillness that permeated the original production and helped it resonate beyond the stage. The actors who appeared so calm and humble in London now seem agitated and anxious; they are suddenly playing roles rather than living in them. There are lines to be said, marks...
This is not helped in the least by the relatively poor acting of much of Beale’s supporting cast. There was a comfort level at the Lyttelton which seemed to prop up the show’s other actors. What they lacked in delicacy and originality they made up for in confidence and a well-developed sense of how to turn a scene over to Beale without actually creating a one-man show. Now, with the cast out of its element, it has become increasingly clear that they resemble nothing more than a pick-up team whose only...
This isn’t purely a matter of acting, either. At the Lyttelton, Tim Hatley’s set design was a stroke of genius. Filling the enormous stage with crates of various sizes, surrounding them with gray windows and walls that rose to the sky in a cruel hybrid of prison and cathedral aesthetics and topping it all with a series of candle chandeliers which could retreat to the heights of the theater or lower to ground level singly or in battalions, Hatley effectively literalized the boxed-in nature of Hamlet’s privileged world...