Word: vaughans
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...READ Stuart Vaughan's book A Possible Theatre is to wonder how anyone ever managed to procure his services as the first Visiting Professor in theater at Harvard University. Within the first two chapters, he makes several bitter attacks on "academic theatre," using such terms as "a bore," "an evasion," and (my favorite) "fierce suspicion." I can't say that I disagree with his terms, but I am glad that he decided to come: the current production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, directed by Vaughan, is certainly the best thing to appear on the Loeb mainstage in some...
...STUART VAUGHAN'S production of John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is intelligent in conception, a bit deficient in acting, and incredibly rich in details of staging. This Caroline tragedy, first performed at the Phoenix in 1633 by the Queen's Players, receives here an opulent mounting worthy of its subject matter an equal in quality to the Loeb presentation several years ago of Middleton's Women, Beware Women. It seemed easier then than it does now to cast a jaundiced eye on the obvious decadence of subject matter in the plays of Shakespeare's successors...
...watch the metamorphosis in her pillow as her sin and the play's action deepen: first it picks up a red ribbon on the end, then it becomes pure scarlet); a massive crucifix lowered from the ceiling turns right-stage into the friar Bonaventura's cloister. Especially after intermission Vaughan makes very effective use of the traditional alcove at center stage which he has opened and closed for ceremonial processions and deftly lighted tableaux...
...Pity She's a Whore in this presentation is the work of the Loeb's "first visiting director." Vaughan's excellent directorial effort, hopefully, will encourage the Harvard Dramatic Club to extend similar invitations in the future. Shedding some of their provinciality in the process, the usual retinue of Harvard dramatic talents have come up here with an entertaining, visually delectable staging of a difficult play. If you're ever going to see a Loeb play, see this one. The costumes, the set and an unearthly masque in the second act are splendid surface externals in a play which shows...
...callousness of the undergraduate poet. He is overwhelmed by Cambridge, by the poets who have preceded him there, and likewise removed from his hyperactive social life to "Monkhood": "I don't show my work to anybody, I am quite alone. / The only souls I feel toward are Henry Vaughan and Wordsworth." The Berryman of this section is naive, lacking the cocky self-assurance of his undergraduate predecessor. He is easily awed by Paris, and completely stripped of his Columbia sophistication...