Word: stageful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Dissertation is not drama. Between hard covers it may pass as a Ph.D. thesis; on the open stage it is a cruel test of audience patience. In recent seasons, a firm of legalistic factmongers - Hoch-huth, Weiss and Kipphardt - has invaded the theater. They shuttle between distortion and documentation, rehashing past history and seasoning it generously with the catchup of guilt. Each of these playwrights is a displaced pedant who pretends to be stretching the mind. In actuality, he is merely inviting the audience to have a good...
...question has often been asked: "What is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark?" The answer may be found on the stage of Broadway's Lyceum Theater in Ellis Rabb's APA revival. Rabb is the definitive zombie Hamlet, a puppet rather than a mettlesome prince-passionless, prideless and bloodless. So supine is this Hamlet that he lies on the floor of the stage literally for minutes on end, making one wonder if he is in the royal castle at Elsinore or in an opium...
...monotonous for eloquence and too weary for anger. The rest of the cast is almost uniformly inept. Horatio is played like a lost Boy Scout, Gertrude as a matronly simp and Ophelia as an epileptic. Only Richard Easton's Claudius has the dignity of a solid stage presence, and Philip Minor's First Gravedigger has wry antic authority. In view of his acting and directing, perhaps Ellis Rabb should really be listed as the First Gravedigger...
True of some, but not of Nathaniel Merrill, the resident stage director of the Metropolitan Opera, whose eleven productions are among the best that the company has ever mounted. The youngest (40) and first American-born director ever to hold that post, Merrill is almost devoid of flamboyance or gimmickry. Unlike such glamorous directors as Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti, whose personal styles sometimes interfere with musical values, Merrill subordinates himself to the score. Like a musical detective, he searches it and the libretto for clues that will evoke a fresh visualization onstage...
...fate of the franc rides on the long-awaited wage negotiations between Charles de Gaulle's government and French labor unions. Last week, three days after they began, those talks collapsed in acrimony. French unions called a 24-hour general strike for early this week and set the stage for a showdown that could determine whether France can avoid devaluation-and whether the world can escape new monetary dislocations...