Word: musser
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...Tharon Musser has provided lovely lambent lighting, though its technical execution is distractingly jerky. At one point, taking a cue from Titania's words--"The moon methinks looks with a wat'ry eye;/ And when she weeps, weeps every little flower"--she has all the pendent vegetation come alive with tiny lachrymal lights, while the fairies march out carrying hand torches. A beautiful way to end the show's first half...
Conrad Susa's incidental music is mostly just a series of sound effects. When Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus, Tharon Musser's eerie lighting makes it quite unnecessary to add the off-stage roll on the cymbal. And must we have another crude cymbal roll when Brutus runs on his sword? As a background to the aura of death at Philippi, Susa has also introduced on the harp an ostinato pattern from the Dies irae plainchant, which recalls the identical ostinato near the end of Rachmaninoff's tone-poem Isle of the Dead. At any rate, I suspect that...
This uniform visual excellence, lovingly lit by Tharon Musser, is all the more welcome when one recalls the hodge-podge of eyesores that afflicted the Festival's production of the play six years ago, with its vulgar Coney Island atmosphere and people cavorting in bath towels and swimming suits...
...four vertical beams that function as an elevator shaft for a rising and falling structure, with two other second-storey platforms that roll in from the sides. These make some of the entrances and exits needlessly awkward. Domingo Rodriguez' costumes are, some details aside, generally apposite, and Tharon Musser's lighting is somewhat too active. John Duffy's opening A-minor music for brass, cymbals and kettledrums smacks too much of a Near East movie spectacular, but the later rustic music, in the traditional rustic key of F-major, is much better. When a lutenist appears on stage, though...
...Tharon Musser's lighting makes obtrusive use of a follow-spot more appropriate for musical comedy. Or did she unconsciously hope the production would somehow turn into Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate? (Come to think of it, Duffy's incidental music does quote a couple of Porter snatches.) William Pitkin merits praise for his ingenious traveling wagon, which sprouts into all sorts of structures including eventually a second-floor balcony...