Word: rameau
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...Rameau's Nephew...
...volume Encyclopedie for which he is best known, Denis Diderot defined satire as a work "dictated by the spirit of invective." The American Repertory Theatre's staging of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew may have other elements besides that of invective, but the cynicism and nastiness with which the title character skewers 18th-Century French society provide most of this play's merriment. Rameau's Nephew skillfully combines old-fashioned satire with modern expletives, and while this production is saddled by the occasional annoying technical gag, as a game of wicked dialogue the results are delicious...
...Rameau's Nephew is ostensibly the record of a conversation between two characters, I (Jeremy Geidt) and He (Tony Shalhoub), at the Cafe de la Regence in Paris. I is a philosopher who spends hours "observing all, talking to none," at his favorite haunts. He is the outcast nephew of the celebrated French composer Jean Philippe Rameau. Their verbal duel can either be interpreted as a disagreement of lifestyles between two people or as a vocalized internal struggle within an ambiguous individual...
...some bits and pieces of the private Adam Cohen emerge in conversations with him and with his roommates. For instance, Cohen is a classical music afficianado, enjoying what Greenwald calls "awful Baroque music"--particularly "a truly horrible piece of music" by Rameau called "The Chicken...
...children's faces -- is all dour style, a Bugsy Malone in Nighttown. The Bruce Beresford segment, from Erich Korngold's Die tote Stadt, is content to watch two young people disrobe in an English mansion. Robert Altman had the inspiration to show a restless 17th century audience at Rameau's Les Boreades, then neglected to develop his night-at-the-opera sketch with any coherence. Derek Jarman's episode, to Charpentier's Louise, imagines an old diva taking a final curtain call, her mind garlanded with fading memories. Sweet but frail...