Word: stoppard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Usually, all the plot intricacies and convolutions in a Stoppard play will bewilder the audience, sucking them into the Sysiphean task of figuring out the play. Stoppard's funny and impassioned dialogue demands some sort of response...
...fair, each actor individually does well, but as an ensemble they lack cohesion. Lines evaporate. Little carries across the stage. And along with the passion, the humor in the dialogue--a Stoppard play should be a rollicking experience--is lost as well...
Speaking about a political prisoner whose cause she's espoused, Annie says to Henry, who is clearly a Stoppard alter-ego, "You think that he can't write and he thinks that that's all you can do." Since writing may possibly be the only thing that Stoppard can do-and he does it pretty well--his words are worth respecting...
...most of his works, Stoppard creates a confusion of plots and sub-plots, plays within plays, an inversion of theater and reality. Art imitates life and life imitates...
...THIS PLOT sounds a bit impenetrable and hard to follow on paper, then Stoppard has succeeded. His plays are made to be performed, not described. So if you have not yet seen The Real Thing on Broadway or in one of its other incarnations, that's a good enough reason to go see it at the Dunster House Dining Hall. And that may be the only reason to see it at Dunster, where the production proves itself to be rather lifeless and uninspired...