Word: wittstein
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Even before any players appear on the Festival stage, the audience is confronted by balance in the form of Ed Wittstein's setting. In upstage center stands an imposing depressed segmental arch suggestive of some oversize fireplace. Its Ionic flanking columns hold up a gabled brick wall, with a set of cyma recta consoles supporting a three-arch window that sheds lambent light through its variegated diamond panes. Some distance to the right and left of this centerpiece are placed smaller diagonal arched doorways. When the garden scenes arrive, a section of brick wall and a bench roll in symmetrically...
...dukes appointed trial-by-combat, Richard appears high on Ed Wittstein's imposing baldaquinesque two-story structure, trimmed with heavily bordered stained-glass panels reminiscent of Raoul Dufy. The King is now clad in gold with white boots, and there are seven colorful flagbearers in position. It is a fine touch in this highly ritualistic play that the King and the Lord Marshal (penetratingly projected by Robert Lumish) actually sing some of their lines here as though running through a formulaic and time-honored chant. An onstage sidedrummer accompanies the King's staircase descent and ascent...
...scenes in Portia's Belmont, Ed Wittstein has designed an outdoor garden setting dominated by an enormous tree branch with leaves of -- you guessed it -- gold. Portia appears in a peach gown (designed, like all the other costumes, by Jose Varona) and carrying a parasol. It is not long before we realize that this Portia, in the hands of Barbara Baxley, is a thoughtless, superficial woman, and probably frigid to boot. Miss Baxley's nasal and mindless mode of speaking doesn't help much, either; she constitutes no improvement over Katharine Hepburn, who was so disastrous a Portia...
...Wittstein has designed sets 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...