Word: sellarsization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
The "nothing" of the play's title should apply to both plots; Claudio's charges of Hero's infidelity are the negative side, and the bond between the celebrated Beatrice and Benedick, constructed of words alone, the positive. There's meaning in Shakespeare's juxtaposition of his parody of the...
THOSE DUMMIES play an important part in the scenes with Dogberry (Peter S. Miller) and Verges (David Frutkoff), the "mechanicals" or clowns of this comedy. As the town watch and constabulary they are the ones who unravel the intrigue by which Don John (here "the Prince") convinces Claudio of his...
Both Miller and Frutkoff are effective, the former in a huge chestplate that makes it virtually impossible for him to sit down. Sellars' direction of their scenes, too, seems more careful. He dims the lights to a ghostly blue and has his pianists play wild chase music for their detection...
But no cadaver should ever endure what Sellars does to the Dogberry/Verges scenes--his chopping reduces them from a major element of the play's structure to mere comic relief. It's tempting to look at them that way, of course, and in the uncut script their scenes do go...
Sellars' staging matches his conception of the rest of the play; that is, there's no idea behind it, only a fanatical desire not to do things conventionally. He uses scaffolds and shrubbery well, and borrows dark blue back-lighting and candles from his spring production of The Three Sisters...