Word: stage
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Stage...
Conrad Susa's incidental music is mostly just a series of sound effects. When Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus, Tharon Musser's eerie lighting makes it quite unnecessary to add the off-stage roll on the cymbal. And must we have another crude cymbal roll when Brutus runs on his sword? As a background to the aura of death at Philippi, Susa has also introduced on the harp an ostinato pattern from the Dies irae plainchant, which recalls the identical ostinato near the end of Rachmaninoff's tone-poem Isle of the Dead. At any rate, I suspect that...
Since the play ping-pongs between these two households, it was logical to devise a basic unit-set in which the entrances of the two residences face each other diagonally at the sides of the stage with an open vista between -- much in the manner of the conventional settings of ancient comedy...
...suffered from Mathews' inability to sing on pitch. At the opening performance he did better with "Come away, death," a quite lovely piece accompanied by two oboes and a harp. He is allowed to end the show as Shakespeare wrote it, singing "When that I was" all alone on stage. The lights go down, stars come out on a dark blue cyclorama, and Mathews punctuates his five verses with the tintinnabulation of tiny finger-bells. The effect is charming. How much more so it would be with a professional singer...
Armstrong introduced some flexibility, however, to facilitate the play's special demands. The well panels can side back to reveal the interiors. For the several important scenes in Olivia's garden, not only is there a potted palm at the far edge of the stage, but the wall of her house wings out to become a trellis covered with oranges and greenery, punctuated by three oval holes through which is Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian can stick their heads to spy and comment on Malvolio's famous Letter Scene. All the shifts work smoothly and allow the play to flow...