Word: stage
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...grinning Gargantua in sweat-pants quietly masturbates stage left. One little lady dangles a rope of drool from her lips, and shrieks and snickers. A squat hirsute thing (female) who looks like a drowned foetus whaps her head against the uprights of what used to be the vice-ridden Hotel Touraine's gaudy ballroom...
David Wheeler's production departs from Brook where it shouldn't and follows it where it must. This is inevitable, since the play really doesn't exist apart from its interpretation. Wheeler substitutes a broad cineramic "happening" stage for Brook's deep proscenium, paralyzing the underlings and thrusting the chorus in our laps. This is fine, for he makes good use of vertical poses (pyramids, piggy-backs, tableaux) at the expense of marching scenes and horas. But there are other problems. Kimball and Kimbrough, while excellent, are all too evidently acting toward their roles from their personalities (which shouldn...
...gist, Marat/Sade shows Sade's little company reenacting the death of the Revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat at the hand of the Royalist Charlotte Corday, before a stage audience of Charenton's director and his lady. But the murder is strung out by the philosophical intrusions of Sade, who leaves his stage-side perch to argue with Marat and deflect the action; by the blank verse narration of the herald, who prompts, cajoles and apologizes; by the petulant interruptions of M. Courmier, upset by the political content of the skit; and by the eruptions of the mental patients...
...Wheeler's Boston version inherits most of Weiss/Brook's inspiration and contributes a little of its own. The play "breathes." Marat (Clinton Kimbrough) hunkers in a large bathtub at the center, periodically approached by Corday (Lisa Richards) and Sade (Frederick Kimball). The patients sprawl, wander and sprint across the stage in johnnies and slippers. And a chorus in the tatters of Revolutionary costumes roams from the lights to the wings, now clustering around the tub to mime the principals' conversation, now reaching out to incite the patients to riot. Each brawl is quelled by the nurses, and our attention returns...
...last picture, Kiss Me, Stupid. Fortunately, something like a miracle is at hand: Walter Matthau. A magnificent comic actor too long misused as a minor cinemenace, Matthau last year played such a spectacular slob in The Odd Couple that he made himself a major star of the U.S. stage. As the icing on Wilder's Cookie, he should also be accepted as one of cinema's top comedians...