Word: stag
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...King Stag, written in 1762 by Carlo Gozzi in revolt against the realistic naturalism of contemporary theater, is a feast of the imagination with the technique and logic of the commedia dell'arte, Italy's native improvisational comedy. The third Gozzi production directed this year by Andrei Serban. The King Stag is a fairy tale set in the oriental kingdom of Serendippo where the good king Deramo is looking in vain for a worthy wife. His trusted but treacherous minister. Tartaglia, tries to insinuate his own daughter, Clarice, into the king's affections to distract the king from the beautiful...
...nonsense, but the "Gozzi Surprise," despite the comical efforts of Ben Haley's sorceress and Rodney Hudson's monstrous cook with a 10-foot, lethal ladle, never gets off the ground. Its absurdity remains strangely humorless and merely casts in greater relief the splendour and sublimity of The King Stag...
Everything about The King Stag is enchanting. The Forest of Miracoli, where Deramo goes hunting with Tartaglia, is filled with parrots whose gorgeous plummage creates a fluttering rainbow swirling in the air. Clever back-lighting on a pale skrim projects a prancing menagerie of lions and tigers and bears. A poor of light, lit from below the stage, suggests a woodland stream around which the overhead-lighting throws a sun-dappled forest floor. The fragile nobility of the two stags, with their breathtakingly lovely coats of the palest pastel, steal the forest show...
...dirty by Sunday evening as Coney Island." Confused and lonely, Madden stalks the deserted streets and dunes by day and repairs in the evening to a local restaurant, where he sits in the bar and drinks too much. He is conscious of his new status as an unaccompanied stag and approves of the fear the waitress seems to feel in his presence: "In the days when I used to be a bartender, I had watched over a few customers like myself. They never bothered you until they did. Then the room could get smashed...
...could trust you. Grammar is irrelevant; sentences seem to have been delivered, not written: "At approximately 1:30 a.m. he saw the Silver Mark VI traveling south on John R at a high rate of speed with a black Buick like nailed to its tail." His humor is stag: "When the girls would say do-it-to-me, do-it-to-me, he would think, What do you think I'm doing?" or Vegas: "Listen, when I was a kid, the neighborhood I grew up in? It was so dirty...