Word: welshed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dylan Thomas' classic Drama, Under Milkwood, continues at the Loeb Ex. The play is a "lyrical and bawdy romp" through the lives of the families in a small Welsh fishing village, and 10-12 actors play all parts, being characters aged 6-85. Admission is free...
Dylan Thomas' classic drama, Under Milkwood takes the Loeb Ex this weekend in a two-week run. Thomas' play is a "lyrical and bawdy romp" through the lives of the families in a small Welsh fishing village, and 10-12 actors play all parts, being characters aged 6-85. Admission is free...
That was the most remarkable of the many striking effects in German director Peter Stein's production of Falstaff, with which the celebrated Welsh National Opera was making its American debut. But the applause that swept the amiably musty BAM theater was not just for Stein. Nor just for Donald Maxwell's passionate performance as Sir John. Nor even just for the smiling Princess of Wales, Princess Di herself, who appeared in a glowing white satin dress for the black-tie benefit. Also to be applauded and celebrated was the start of a new kind of opera season...
Cardiff, of course, is where the new Falstaff was born (last September), after the Welsh National Opera spent years courting Stein, who made his reputation at Berlin's famous Schaubuhne theater. Stein saw Falstaff as an intensely personal drama, clearly sexual and even slightly sadistic. "Hold your paunch, celebrate it," he instructed Maxwell at one point during rehearsals. "For Falstaff, it is not grossness, it is greatness, virility." Bearing out Epstein's point, the modest dimensions of the BAM theater enabled Stein to stage Verdi's last masterpiece as a kind of chamber work, with the stage action fast-moving...
...sword does turn up, after some unlikelihoods normal to popular adventure. Perhaps it was Arthur's, but Burgess, who invented it, now seems to feel that it doesn't much matter. Both he and his characters discount Welsh nationalism as unserious playacting. One of his protagonists, in exasperation, chucks the sword into a pond, where it sinks without a deathbed speech. He explains, "I had to grasp a chunk of the romantic past and find it rusty." Which does not entirely answer a last-page question to the author: "What was that all about...