Word: playing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Director Peter Sellars chose to combine two Wedekind plays--Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box--that were treated in Berg's opera Lulu. Wedekind, writing in the late 19th century, deliberately set out to shock and horrify the conventional polite society of his time. Some of the melodramatic trappings of his play stem from his desire to force members of what he saw as a stuffy and hypocritical society to recognize the sex, passion and greed that lay at the foundation of their relationships. In Lulu, Wedekind describes the rise and fall of a peculiarly passionless beauty who works herself...
Although he writes in a style of studied unconventionality and portrays his depraved characters sympathically, Wedekind nevertheless wrote a morality play. The characters are not human beings but types and all receive their just deserts by the final curtain. However, no sense of optimism or serene belief in retribution lighten the atmosphere of depravity and despair. The world remains cold, detached, evil--and absurd...
...presents characters as symbols, and portrays a similarly seamy and exploitative world. But Wedekind's people lack the earthiness of Brecht's; their passions seem forced and silly. Brecht managed to create recognizable, if exaggerated, people. But Wedekind's characters are pale and disembodied ghosts. This failure flaws the play and riddles it with inconsistencies that make the characters hard to portray, the play hard to follow, and leaves it ultimately insubstantial. Wedekind brilliantly creates an atmosphere; he simply cannot create people to inhabit...
...despite its simplicity, is suitably rich and ornate. Liz Perlman's costumes are strikingly beautiful, especially her debauched creations for Lulu. The haunting photograph of Anne Clark as Lulu, as well as the jarringly lighthearted piano rags played by Roy Kogan, also contribute to the play's eerie decadence...
Sellars' direction skillfully capitalizes on this mood. The half-lit scene changes are a brilliant inspiration, reinforcing the nightmarish quality of the play and helping to tie the acts together...