Word: thaisa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...make the inevitable stylistic comparison, the atmosphere feels like a slightly closer-to-home version of "South Park." Overlaid on bad Shakespeare, the result turns out to be surprisingly funny. In one of the most hilariously effective touches, the celebration that sets the scene for Pericles' and Thaisa's romance metamorphoses into a terrifyingly believable middle-school dance--complete with strobe lights, the electric slide and the immediate clearing of the dance floor when the slow songs begin. (Who doesn't remember those magical, sweaty nights in the school cafeteria...
...loud static of eighth-grade toilet humor. But the bizarrely goofy comedy of the production becomes all the more surreal in contrast with the newly straight-faced drama, providing some startlingly memorable moments: Kirk Hanson '99 as the apothecary Cerimon, hamming it up as he restores the drowned queen Thaisa to life ("She's ALIIIIVE!"); Michael Roiff '01 as the whorehouse Bawd, camping it up in a drag performance so broad it threatens to overwhelm everyone else on stage; and, of course, the constantly intrusive pirates, who are always guaranteed to provoke a laugh...
...speeches. (Of course, given the inherent flimsiness of the plot, this may not be such a terrible loss.) Still, everyone gets an A for effort. David Egan '00 is a sincere and entertainingly histrionic Pericles; Erin Billings '00, doubling in the major women's roles as Pericles's wife Thaisa and his daughter Marina, splits her personality neatly between a shudderingly silly and endearing pre-adolescent 1980s chick in the former role ("Wow! She's, like, the cutest thing since Safari-Style Barbie!" confides the love-struck Pericles to the audience) and the more serious one of the frightened virgin...