Word: shaffers
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...discussing the cost-of-living clause demand, John Shaffer, shop steward for five House dining halls, said yesterday, "We won't accept percentages--we want across-the-board raises...
...should damn a college drama society for producing an enormously difficult play. Although Anthony Shaffer's thriller Sleuth may not challenge a company the way a play by Ibsen or O'Neill does, in some ways the risks are even greater. In a naturalist classic, after all, the director and cast can strive for emotional honesty to compensate for a lack of maturity or finely-honed technique; Sleuth, however, is an exercise in style, and it demands a display of brazen theatrical exhibitionism, a roaring hamminess firmly entrenched in technical precision. The actors must savor Shaffer's dialogue, sputter...
Garry has chosen the wrong vehicle for his directorial debut. Presumably, he assumed that with only two (oops--five) characters and a single set, this would be an easier show to handle than most. But Shaffer's intricate cat-and-mouse thriller requires visual flamboyance, as its two adversaries wind about each other, the tension mounting as the roles of cat and mouse are juggled and exchanged. Garry's blocking is too straightforward: get up, sit down, walk up the stairs, pace a little. There is a bit of original stage business involving some darts at the beginning...
...Tindle. Sellon, clearly a talented actor, breezes into Wyke's mansion, his teeth gleaming obscenely, and proceeds to act as though he's been there on countless earlier occasions. Perhaps Sellon intends to play Tindle as a rather shallow gigolo, but he is not right for that interpretation--besides, Shaffer has taken great pains to show us a much more complex, sympathetic character, a young man understandably baffled by his host's odd behavior. Sellon's ultra-smooth Milo forgets to be incredulous. He improves in his later scenes, when the ordeals he undergoes, and his eventual mastery...
...perhaps mitigate his criticism by citing a strong chorus. Maybe that is why the small opening-night audience applauded so enthusiastically--because, what the hell, those guys worked up quite a sweat, and they didn't drop a line. But "workmanlike" should be the last adjective that Anthony Shaffer's scintillating thriller-symphony evokes. A pity, but all too literally, this Sleuth substitutes "uh-lan" for elan...