Word: tharon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This uniform visual excellence, lovingly lit by Tharon Musser, is all the more welcome when one recalls the hodge-podge of eyesores that afflicted the Festival's production of the play six years ago, with its vulgar Coney Island atmosphere and people cavorting in bath towels and swimming suits...
...based on four vertical beams that function as an elevator shaft for a rising and falling structure, with two other second-storey platforms that roll in from the sides. These make some of the entrances and exits needlessly awkward. Domingo Rodriguez' costumes are, some details aside, generally apposite, and Tharon Musser's lighting is somewhat too active. John Duffy's opening A-minor music for brass, cymbals and kettledrums smacks too much of a Near East movie spectacular, but the later rustic music, in the traditional rustic key of F-major, is much better. When a lutenist appears on stage...
...Tharon Musser's lighting makes obtrusive use of a follow-spot more appropriate for musical comedy. Or did she unconsciously hope the production would somehow turn into Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate? (Come to think of it, Duffy's incidental music does quote a couple of Porter snatches.) William Pitkin merits praise for his ingenious traveling wagon, which sprouts into all sorts of structures including eventually a second-floor balcony...
...little credit goes to Tharon Musser's inspired lighting throughout. The show opens with Richard delivering his celebrated soliloquy in pitch darkness. Only as it continues do the lights come up to reveal a steeply raked stage with an oppressive, gray two-level set, and Richard (Douglas Watson), with a big cross hung about his hypocritical neck, sitting on the floor until he begins to crawl like an animal. Only gradually are we aware of his ugly visage, hunched back, deformed right hand, and a misshapen leg that necessitates the strapping on of an artificial foot...
...sumptuous. And again and again, Seale has grouped his players to form attractive pictures. I have only two complaints here. Herman Chessid's music is too squealy, his fanfares too insipid. And, at the very end of the play--a blaze of glory--it is ridiculous for light-designer Tharon Musser to give us a long slow fadeout instead of a quick blackout...