Word: sellarsization
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THE CHARACTERS in this Inspector General huddle together onstage, shoulders hunched and arms poised as if to ward off some painful blow that could fall anytime, anywhere. Director Peter Sellars deploys Gogol's gallery of human grotesques under black bumbershoots--protection not from rain but from the details of daily...
SELLARS, WHOSE past work at Harvard has shown great imagination in conception and staging but often left actors stranded without a secure place in the theater, seems to have thrived working with the ART's professionals. Their self-assured individuality complements the impersonal quality this Inspector General shares with much...
Martin Davies, as Edgar, often manages to escape Sellars' designs. His sweet British accent gives Shakespeare's poetry its proper melody. And his transformation from Eton dupe to London punk adds a clever twist to Sellars' dismal view of modern civilization.
The rest of the cast fares less well, unable to break free of Sellars's spell, like automatons in a technocracy. Grace Shohet is properly bitchy as Goneril and Anne Clarke makes a vapidly cruel Regan but they remain one-dimensional. James Bundy plays Kent with remarkable sincerity but his...
But there is no curtain call. Sellars denies his actors a final chance to escape the machinery of his production, frustrates our expectations one last time. He has destroyed the Lear we came to see and offered nothing tangible in its stead. It took guts. It failed. The theater buff...