Word: staging
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Your hands begin to sweat as you look around Quincy's transformed JCR--or cavern, rather. The stage is configured into the shape of a capital letter I. There are two boxes at each end of the I, chairs along the length of the room, and black drapes everywhere...
COWARD'S plays rely on the lightning speed of witty repartee, which is rapid even for the British stage. Indeed, a quick pace seems to pervade the characters' every action. Elizabeth Humphrey as Mrs. Condomine affects a no-nonsense, secretarial air that perfectly fits, as her husband would say, her "glacial nature." As Humphrey's high strung counterpart, Peter Hirsch also seems to have had one too many cups of Sanka before the performance. This freneticism however, appears to be appropriate to Charles' character...
Luckily, the original clever, funny and downright likable core of this play has managed to emerge from each remake unscathed, and, if this slightly updated Currier House stage production is any indicator, there's still plenty of life left to keep new audiences happy...
...delighted to report that the worst thing about the Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of The Mikado is the lighting. House lights glow dimly throughout the performance (so viewers can watch each other, perhaps), and the stage is uniformly flooded with white light. Horrendous...
...approach only hurts the play. Woody Allen doesn't write broad physical comedies, and he can't be performed like the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy, though this seems to be the Dunster House approach. Physical humor, which might play well in the background, is brought to center stage, detracting from the play itself. The audience is treated to such extended vignettes as Axel struggling with Scotch tape and the embassy priest struggling to free himself from a Houdiniesque magic trick. These antics are funny by themselves, but are not anywhere near enough to carry an entire play...