Word: titania
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Titania (Sally Marshall) is a most attractive but most insipid Queen. In deep it is left to Oberon to redeem the fairies, which John Parker effectively does: his light scheming and commanding presence indicate that whatever happens in the wood, he is essentially in charge. One wonders, though, how even he can deal with the curious jumble of wood-creatures Adams House has given him. Theseus (Langdon Marsh) could profit by some of Oberon's authority; Marsh manages to lose his air of vague ineffectuality only in the final...
...corps de ballet's wispy costumes cost $400 apiece; Oberon's gold lame tunic, $1,200). With a cast of nearly 100, most of the emphasis was inevitably on swirling group movements and splashy stage effects: clouds of smoke pouring over the footlights into the orchestra pit, Titania coming onstage with a magnificent retinue. There were also some deft characterizations and some fine bits of choreography: a fluent, elegant pas de deux between Conrad Ludlow and Violette Verdy, an elastically lyric solo by Edward Villella as Oberon, a wonderfully comic and closely knit dialogue of movement between Melissa...
...bags the killer. Best shot: Actress Rutherford stuffed in a French maid's uniform (black bombazine with a white lace apron tied at the back in a pretty little winglike bow) and looking for all the world like a hippopotamus trying to play Titania...
...seen, it is fantastically good. Let an acorn fall from a tree, does it lie there like any natural nut? No, it is an acorn of the mind that spins like a top, turns suddenly into a busy little brownie and goes bustling off into the grass. Let "proud Titania" glide through a glade, does she flutter like any common fairy? No, she is borne on a whispering bejeweled wind of minikin glittering wings...
...Theseus, handles some of Shakespeare's most exquisite poetry as if it were prose; Rae Allen (Hippolyta) cannot shape a long speech so as to maintain any interest at all; three of the four young Athenians are incompetently portrayed, with only Mariette Hartley, as Helena, rising above mediocrity. Titania, Oberon, and most of their minions were neither human nor supernatural, and failed completely to blend the two in the way that the play requires. Some child-fairies, costumed in what appeared to be their pajamas, were revolting...