Word: mclane
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...RAMSHACKLE HOTEL, beneath a tattered counterpane, a genius languishes. Rejected by Radcliffe at the age of 20 and by her family and friends at the age of 40. Mary McLane, and author who once published a scandalous memoir lies dying. Played by both a young and an old actress, she simultaneously cries out for affirmation of her past accomplishments and bleeds with the desire for future success...
...Agassiz Theater, with its Victorian decor and its Radcliffe affiliation, is the perfect setting for Dudley House's production it conjures up the very turn-of-the century female identity that gives rise to both Mary McLane's artistic uniqueness and her despair. Donna Staephansky as the dying, 40-year-old Mary succeeds in dominating the play from her sickbed her haggard face showing the marks of unfulfilled expectation. Her raspy voiced stubborness and eccentricity keep her alive as a character and avoid the danger of letting the role wallow in bitterness and cynicism...
THERE IS A fundamental miscalculation in the new production of Uncle Vanya--the distance it puts us from the actors. Derek McLane's attractive set consists of a tall house frame, cocked at a slight angle upstage, and, to its right, a large patch of wheat and two swings that seem to reach forever up to the proscenium arch. The action after the first act is confined mainly to the house, which is towering but not very roomy, divided as it is into different levels. The actors, then, are both distant and dwarfed, surrounded by space and yet cramped...
...REAL STAR of the show is the set, created by Derek McLane, Mammoth flowers open with a resounding pop, like umbrellas--not flowers so much as an urban person's idea of a flower, the sort of thing you might find decorating the Citicorp lobby, or around Lincoln Center's glass and steel and concrete. The center of the stage is a huge black reflecting pool, a tar pit to trap Narcissus; around it is a path of Harvard Square brick, and around that a "lawn" of torn Hefty bags. Everything is unhealthy and artificial, beautiful...
These transitions from the Riley home to the pub (a wonderfully dilapidated one, designed by Derek McLane), from disturbing reality to comic illusion, occur smoothly under Maddy DeLone's crisp direction. DeLone makes full use of the intimate confines of the Winthrop House JCR, organizing the human traffic with all the aplomb of a Back Bay traffic cop. A Stoppard play needs technical gadgetry: for true comic effect, Enter a Free Man should have a "Rule Britannia" clock, a few portraits of the Queen, BBC radio droning in the background, and "indoor rain." The Winthrop production manages well without them...