Word: verbals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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British wit also characterizes the Dunster House production of Shaw's Heartbreak House. Though not lacking in Shavian verbal cleverness, this play is atypical Shaw in certain ways. It abounds in action, making it less talkative than Man and Superman or Saint Joan. The characters are more three-dimensional and very finely drawn; they espouse philosophies, instead of embodying them, as is so often the case with Shavian types. Often, in fact, they seem to echo characters of other plays by Shaw, only they turn out not to be what they seem. This motif runs through Heartbreak House...
That would be a mistake in any play of Shakespeare's, but Romeo and Juliet suffers cruelly. Shakespeare frolics in the verbal exuberance of his youth in each of the play's celebrated passages. Like Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, Romeo and Juliet studies insubstantiality, considering love as the product of words, not acts. After all, there isn't much in the plot to convince an audience of the worth of the love between Romeo and Juliet: a kiss at a masked ball, a nighttime encounter, a secret marriage, and one night together are its only substance...
...Romeo and Juliet must lie at the feet of Hughes and Shannon Gaughan as Juliet. Neither goes beyond the broad label of 'youth' to find some more specific trait in their characters to highlight; neither is terribly graceful on stage; and both annoyingly exploit some vocal and some non-verbal mannerisms...
British wit also characterizes the Dunster House production of Shaw's Heartbreak House. Though not lacking in Shavian verbal cleverness, this play is atypical Shaw in certain ways. It abounds in action, making it less talkative than Man and Superman or Saint Joan. The characters are more three-dimensional and very finely drawn; they espouse philosophies, instead of embodying them, as is so often the case with Shavian types. Often, in fact, they seem to echo characters of other plays by Shaw, only they turn out not to be what they seem. This motif runs through Heartbreak House...
...atmosphere that is somehow benign or "safe," where I'm not going to have to watch my every word and gesture, that are lethal. When I thought I could suspend the usual caution that I exercise with whites that I don't know very well I got the verbal equivalent of a sledgehammer in my face...