Word: taleã
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...best for winter,” R&B queen Serena tells her young son in the American Repertory Theater’s “Best of Both Worlds,” the new gospel adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale?? playing at the Loeb Drama Center through Jan. 3. Unfortunately, such sad songs are just about the only agreeable aspect of the show; to deem anything the “best” in this disappointingly mediocre production would be to issue a gross overstatement. Though it offers...
...Best of Both Worlds” frames “The Winter’s Tale?? in an R&B world in which Shakespeare’s rival monarchs are now kings of soul, or “chocolate royalty,” and music has the power to heal. One of the kings, Ezekiel (Gregg Baker), devastates his empire when he accuses wife Serena (Jeanette Bayardelle) of having an affair with his former best friend Maurice (Darius de Haas). Despair at Serena’s banishment eventually leads to redemption in the restorative second...
...flawed, from its undeserved redemption of Leontes (here, Ezekiel) to the dull romance between Perdita and Florizel (now Rain and Tariq). However, in his adaptation, Weiner makes no attempt to remedy any of the source story’s faults. Instead, he offers pat lines that tackily acknowledge the tale??s weaknesses. While these little fixes are cloyingly cute, they hardly improve upon the story; in fact, they actually highlight its failings...
...class reads three Shakespeare plays—“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Macbeth,” and “A Winter’s Tale??—and students are obligated to attend three A.R.T. performances—part of the A.R.T.’s Shakespeare Exploded festival—during the semester...
...delivery boy, and an enormous fight with her best friend. She has also saved her child’s life over the phone. The situational humor in all this tends to fall flat, and the bleak accumulation of incident after incident comes close to reducing this movie to cautionary tale??the cinematic equivalent of birth control...