Word: minimalistically
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Director Andrei Belgrader wisely adopts a minimalist approach towards this play, recognizing that its success depends on acting and the use of dialogue rather than any inspirational staging. The set is appropriately barren, and the difference of agreement between the two characters is highlighted with a minimum of movement. One clever touch is Belgrader's decision to spice the 18th Century satire with modern references and expletives; they serve both to shock the audience into attention and remind us that the script has meaning for contemporary society. Another is Shalhoub's coughing jag, with its reference to Topol's song...
...sassy new music called minimalism burst out of the lofts of Manhattan's SoHo district and marched smartly uptown to the Metropolitan Opera House. Part rock, part raga, part dreamscape and part photo-realism, the minimalist ethos was distilled by composer Philip Glass and theater artist Robert Wilson in a 4 1/2-hour operatic extravaganza called Einstein on the Beach. The sung text consisted solely of numbers and the syllables do, re, mi, etc., while the music was built from a series of simple phrases, insistently repeated. The effect was either riveting or maddening, depending on one's point of view...
Glass went on to add Satyagraha (1980) and Akhnaten (1984) to Einstein to form a trilogy of music dramas. Last week in West Germany, Stuttgart's State Theater held what amounted to a minimalist retrospective by staging all three as a complete cycle for the first time. For Glass, for Stuttgart and for new music, the cycle made for three extraordinary evenings in the theater. It was also, in a curious way, a farewell to a style that has changed the face of modern opera...
...minimalist, to say the least, but the paucity of props works because the stage is usually full of performers. The cast is energetic, and there are so many interesting characters that there is never a dull moment...
...cast, can be best described as enthusiastic. The jarringly bad costumes and set certainly do not impress. The outfits look like dress-up clothes found in the back of a closet. The police officers inexplicably look like Hell's Angel rejects and the hookers look like Barbie dolls. Minimalist crepe-paper palm trees and a funky beaded curtain litter the stage. A God-only-knows-why velvet Elvis painting completes the perfect tackiness of the scene in the Leverett Old Library. But the acting is good enough to compensate for all that...