Word: plot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ntozake Shange's Spell 7, written in 1980, is like Hollywood Shuffle without the comedy and without a plot. The Mather House production has some powerful moments and excellent performances, and its political message is compelling. But sometime around the middle of the second, and last act, the performance runs out of steam...
Since this play is a farce, character development is less important than the machinations of the plot, and performances that would be workmanlike or routine elsewhere are sufficient here. What these actors lack in characterization, they make up for in physical comedy, not only in the histrionic gesticulations and cartoonish violence, but also in minute details, such as droll facial expressions. Orin Percus, as the sly, playful Duke Solinus, and Everett, as the witty Syracusan Dromio, deserve special mention...
PERCY HAS a computer in his head, apparently. More unfolds the water-supply plot with the symmetry and cunning of a Creole Hercule Poirot. But agents more intimidating than Bionic Bridge players lie at the end of the molar-mystery. More discovers a kiddie-porn racket which Percy depicts too graphically for my taste...
...plot thickens. This is no ordinary affair, but one between a man and the wife of his best friend. Heard that one before? The play also suggest a homosexual relationship between the two friends, a suggestion which this production makes overt...
...plot moves very quickly through countless twists and turns involving movie stars, bums, religious fanatics, murderers, and naked women, but none of it really comes as a surprise, You know immediately it's a set-up when a stranger offers the narrator ten dollars to do a simple favor, and you know the evidence he hides will eventually turn up again...