Doubt (La Duda)
November 13, 2008 by Rosalind Lacy
Doubt (La Duda)
By John Patrick Shanley
Adapted and directed by Matilda Corral
Produced by I.E. Productions C.A., from Venezuela for Teatro De La Luna’s Eleventh International Festival of Hispanic Theater
Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy
What universalizes John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt (La Duda), about a priest suspected of pedophilia, are the adaptations director Matilda Corral makes. We are in a Catholic school in Venezuela instead of an Irish-Italian school in Northeastern United States. But the explosive issues and controversy are the same. When in doubt, is it wise to take action? Corral establishes a sense of unease immediately. A screen projection of a stained glass window displays a stern Madonna with staring eyes. Discordant electronic music rains down from everywhere.
The plot is simple but the characters are complex. The four characters come across as distinctly individualized, conflicted human beings depicted by actors who are uniformly excellent and profoundly moving. Sister Eloisa (Elba Escobar) runs her school with an iron fist. Her values and style are clearly those of the past generation. When an inexperienced nun and teacher, Sister Josefina (Maria Carolina Semprum) innocently reports that one of her male students, after a private meeting with the charismatic assistant pastor Father Luis (Raphael Romero) in the rectory, came to class with alcohol on his breath, Sister Eloisa concludes the priest has molested the boy. She bases her suspicions on the circumstantial evidence that the priest grows his nails long and is, in her opinion, overly friendly with the male students. Surprisingly, the boy’s mother, Mrs. Blanco (Beatriz Vasquez) argues in favor of the relationship. Conflicting perceptions lead up to Father Luis’ resignation, leaving the characters and us with lingering questions about justice and the truth of what really happened.
Venezuelan director Corral, who recently received a Masters in Acting from the Actors Studio in New York, is an actors’ director. She takes risks. When Father Luis delivers the homily which opens the play, Romero speaks from a spotlighted podium; then moves out of the spotlight to the darker downstage area, closer to the audience, to tell the story about a sailor lost on a raft at sea under a starless sky. “When you are lost, you are not alone,” he concludes, and we feel a sense of intimacy as a part of the priest’s congregation. in 1964, two years after Vatican II modernized the Catholic Church. We are in a time – 1964, two years after Vatican II began to modernize the Catholic Church – when values and teaching, even preaching styles, are in flux.
Escobar, well-known in films and stage in Venezuela, gives a multi-leveled performance. She starts out as a petty, somewhat comic martinet, but develops stature until her moral force seems massive. By the end of play, Sister Eloisa is a character you want to trust. Although her obvious disdain for the warmth of intimacy and compassion makes her hard to like, her confession of doubt at the end makes her pathetically human.
Romero is equally strong in their male/female battle. In their climactic scene in Sister Eloisa’s office, Romero’s self-defense is one of controlled rage, expressively convincing and sympathetic. He sounds innocent in spite of his resignation, which Sister Eloisa interprets as a confession of guilt.
The boy whom Father Luis has allegedly victimized is African-American in the English-language version. Here, the child is white, which removes race as an explanation for the brutal alienation he feels from his classmates and allows us to focus on his behavior, and more specifically, his gayness. Vasquez pulls out all the stops and gives an impassioned plea as a mother, powerless to protect her son from a father who beats him, who sees his relationship with Father Luis – as dangerous as it might be – as her boy’s only chance at safety and happiness.
Corral has done even more to adapt this 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning play from an American to a Venezuelan setting by staying true to the underlying themes. Character names are Spanish. References to historical figures: for example, FDR becomes Venezuela’s founder and liberator, Simon Bolivar. But what’s important is that underlying whatever adaptations are made in the dialogue, the deeper concern is still manifest: In an over-regulated world, what’s horrific is the way a society discourages touching, intimacy, warmth and emotional bonding and isolates all of us, one from the other.
These magnificent actors from Venezuela perform the play with an expressive bravura that clarifies the moral questions. We in the audience have to supply the last judgment; and we leave the theater discussing the doubts that linger.
If you possibly can, go and see this production that ends this year’s Hispanic International Festival.
Running Time: 90 minutes. No intermission. Headsets provided for English translation.
When: Sat. Nov. 15, 3:00 p.m. and 8 p.m. See: www.teatrodelaluna.org for details on the rest of the season, continuing Feb. 12, 2009.
Where: Gunston Arts Center-Theatre Two, 2700 South Lang Street, Arlington VA 22206. Free Parking.
http://www.teatrodelaluna.org/tem/18/festival/home_i.htm
martes, 1 de septiembre de 2009
"Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley - Criticas en DC
AllArtsReview4U
The finest reviews of the performing and visual arts from the DC and Baltimore area plus contributions from around the country and the world!
La Duda (Doubt)
by Bob Anthony
It was so wonderful to see and hear a production of Shanley's "Doubt" performed in Spanish and the Venezuelan company at Teatro de la Luna was superb...the best in this year's festival. Elba Escobar proved to be a total equal to American actresses (this critic has seen it done twice in English) and she added a verbal viciousness that was so dramatically appropriate even though unlikely for a religious. Handsome Rafael Romero gave a complete and most satisfactory reading of a affable priest who is being attacked for a crime he did not commit (?). Maria Carolina Semprum was outstanding as Sister Josefina who inappropriately made inferences about people's behaviors so unusual for such a lovely angelic blue-eyed nun. The tops goes to Beatriz Vasquez as the mother... who was slatternly dressed but world wise about immorality... who challenges the religious and the church regarding their moral high horses while the church rots away in its own lasciviousness. It was a powerful production tenderly directed by Matilda Corral. This production could easily win another "Tony" award if it were on Broadway!
Noviembre 2008
The finest reviews of the performing and visual arts from the DC and Baltimore area plus contributions from around the country and the world!
La Duda (Doubt)
by Bob Anthony
It was so wonderful to see and hear a production of Shanley's "Doubt" performed in Spanish and the Venezuelan company at Teatro de la Luna was superb...the best in this year's festival. Elba Escobar proved to be a total equal to American actresses (this critic has seen it done twice in English) and she added a verbal viciousness that was so dramatically appropriate even though unlikely for a religious. Handsome Rafael Romero gave a complete and most satisfactory reading of a affable priest who is being attacked for a crime he did not commit (?). Maria Carolina Semprum was outstanding as Sister Josefina who inappropriately made inferences about people's behaviors so unusual for such a lovely angelic blue-eyed nun. The tops goes to Beatriz Vasquez as the mother... who was slatternly dressed but world wise about immorality... who challenges the religious and the church regarding their moral high horses while the church rots away in its own lasciviousness. It was a powerful production tenderly directed by Matilda Corral. This production could easily win another "Tony" award if it were on Broadway!
Noviembre 2008
For the Pain of Love, a Cerebral Bath of Words, Words, Words
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: August 31, 2009
LENOX, Mass. — John Douglas Thompson is being hit with a double whammy by that old devil called love this summer. As often as five times a week this strapping actor is asked by the repertory troupe Shakespeare & Company to demonstrate how even the strongest men can be felled by fatal attractions.
Published: August 31, 2009
LENOX, Mass. — John Douglas Thompson is being hit with a double whammy by that old devil called love this summer. As often as five times a week this strapping actor is asked by the repertory troupe Shakespeare & Company to demonstrate how even the strongest men can be felled by fatal attractions.
Danny Kurtz
John Douglas Thompson and Miriam Hyman as father and daughter in “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow.”
Related
Theater: Farewell the Tranquil Mind: Othello’s Noble Passion Is Also His Curse (August 9, 2008)
Times Topics: John Patrick Shanley
John Douglas Thompson and Miriam Hyman as father and daughter in “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow.”
Related
Theater: Farewell the Tranquil Mind: Othello’s Noble Passion Is Also His Curse (August 9, 2008)
Times Topics: John Patrick Shanley
Danny Kurtz
Bowman Wright and Miriam Hyman in this early John Patrick Shanley play.
Bowman Wright and Miriam Hyman in this early John Patrick Shanley play.
Saturday found him being slowly torn to pieces by sexual jealousy at the Founders’ Theater in the title role of “Othello,” a part he played here last season and then recreated in a production for Theater for a New Audience in New York, picking up much acclaim and assorted trophies. On Sunday, at the smaller Elayne P. Bernstein Theater here, Mr. Thompson could be heard unhappily recalling how finding the perfect bedmate destroyed his life.
That was in another title role, in "The Dreamer Examines His Pillow," a comedy of anguish by John Patrick Shanley from 1985. I am happy to report that the character identified only as Dad in “Dreamer” is not the heavy lifting that Othello is. Fluidly directed by Tod Randolph, this production is only 90 minutes long. And Mr. Thompson is required neither to fall to the ground in an epileptic seizure nor to strangle anyone.
He is called upon once again, however, to speak in an elaborate, densely poetic manner seldom heard outside a theater. Perhaps partly from having lived so long with Shakespeare’s Venetian general, he makes Mr. Shanley’s baroque talk seem as natural as breathing.
So, it should be said, do Mr. Thompson’s young co-stars, Miriam Hyman and Bowman Wright, and that’s no easy task. “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow” is not one of the more audience-friendly works by Mr. Shanley, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Doubt" and the Oscar-winning screenplay for "Moonstruck."
A more convoluted and static variation on the themes of his breakout play “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” (1983), “Dreamer” is far less well known. The play is basically three unhappy people exchanging metaphors about the fear that comes with loving too much. As thick with whimsy as it is with misery, “Dreamer” shares some of the cloyingly obsessive spirit that made “Romantic Poetry,” Mr. Shanley’s recent musical (with the composer Henry Krieger), such a trial.
But there are rewards in watching talented interpreters turn muddy poetry into flowing prose. Ms. Randolph has said that she wanted to direct “Dreamer” since she saw a scene from it in an acting class 23 years ago, and you can see why. It’s an extreme example of what good acting is often said to be about: externalizing the internal. You can imagine the intense, soul-searching rehearsals that must go into any production of it.
Even in performance, the play feels a bit like group therapy. Like much of Mr. Shanley’s early work, “Dreamer” considers the impossibility and inescapability of love, or the state of hormonal intoxication that we call love. You can’t live with it, but without it life is meaningless. That, anyway, is the conclusion arrived at by the play’s three characters: Tommy (Mr. Wright) and Donna (Ms. Hyman), an on-and-off couple who make both love and war like wild animals, and Donna’s father (Mr. Thompson), an artist paralyzed by memories of a similar relationship.
The play is structured as a series of confrontational conversations. Having heard that Tommy is seeing her younger sister, Donna seeks him out in his squalid hole of an apartment, where his search for identity has reduced him to communing with his refrigerator. They argue, they grapple, they kiss, they part. And they resolve nothing. So Donna visits her dad, whom she hasn’t seen in months, to figure out why she is the way she is.
In the play’s final scene Dad talks to Tommy, at Donna’s behest. Nothing is resolved then either. It is Mr. Shanley’s point that nothing is ever resolved in life, and all we can do is make the best of an eternally unconcluded bargain. Along the way to this revelation there is much talk of caves of the unconscious and the wilder frontiers of sex. (Music that evokes tribal rituals in the jungle is heard between scenes.)
Though the subjects are visceral, the tone is dizzyingly cerebral, and I shudder to imagine how “Dreamer” might be with a less grounded cast. But you never feel that in portraying people who are straining for clarity, the performers here are strained themselves. Mr. Wright unflinchingly finds the aggression in Tommy’s leaden passivity. And Ms. Hyman’s excellent exasperated Donna becomes the audience’s essential point of connection as she wanders with steady tread through Mr. Shanley’s labyrinth of passion.
Nobody chews up the scenery, in other words, including Mr. Thompson. If his fiery Othello is a man flailing amid the chaos of love gone bad, his character in “Dreamer” is someone who has survived that chaos and is now fingering the scars it left behind. Mr. Thompson doesn’t fall prey to the natural temptation of acting out what his character remembers. The dynamic of his performance is in the energy Dad expends in trying to keep a distance from past torments as he describes them.
Repertory is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? It allows an actor like Mr. Thompson the relief of moving from the in-the-moment passion of “Othello” to the recollected passion of “Dreamer.” And it allows theatergoers the treat of seeing an admirable performer confidently shift keys from blazing fury to quiet contemplation.
THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW
By John Patrick Shanley; directed by Tod Randolph; sets by Christian Schmitt; lighting by Greg Solomon; costumes by Lena Sands; sound by Michael Pfeiffer; stage manager, Bryanna Meloni. Presented by Shakespeare & Company, Tony Simotes, artistic director; Tina Packer, founding artistic director. At the Elayne P. Bernstein Theater, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass.; (413) 637-3353. Through Sept. 6. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
WITH: Miriam Hyman (Donna), John Douglas Thompson (Dad) and Bowman Wright (Tommy).
That was in another title role, in "The Dreamer Examines His Pillow," a comedy of anguish by John Patrick Shanley from 1985. I am happy to report that the character identified only as Dad in “Dreamer” is not the heavy lifting that Othello is. Fluidly directed by Tod Randolph, this production is only 90 minutes long. And Mr. Thompson is required neither to fall to the ground in an epileptic seizure nor to strangle anyone.
He is called upon once again, however, to speak in an elaborate, densely poetic manner seldom heard outside a theater. Perhaps partly from having lived so long with Shakespeare’s Venetian general, he makes Mr. Shanley’s baroque talk seem as natural as breathing.
So, it should be said, do Mr. Thompson’s young co-stars, Miriam Hyman and Bowman Wright, and that’s no easy task. “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow” is not one of the more audience-friendly works by Mr. Shanley, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Doubt" and the Oscar-winning screenplay for "Moonstruck."
A more convoluted and static variation on the themes of his breakout play “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” (1983), “Dreamer” is far less well known. The play is basically three unhappy people exchanging metaphors about the fear that comes with loving too much. As thick with whimsy as it is with misery, “Dreamer” shares some of the cloyingly obsessive spirit that made “Romantic Poetry,” Mr. Shanley’s recent musical (with the composer Henry Krieger), such a trial.
But there are rewards in watching talented interpreters turn muddy poetry into flowing prose. Ms. Randolph has said that she wanted to direct “Dreamer” since she saw a scene from it in an acting class 23 years ago, and you can see why. It’s an extreme example of what good acting is often said to be about: externalizing the internal. You can imagine the intense, soul-searching rehearsals that must go into any production of it.
Even in performance, the play feels a bit like group therapy. Like much of Mr. Shanley’s early work, “Dreamer” considers the impossibility and inescapability of love, or the state of hormonal intoxication that we call love. You can’t live with it, but without it life is meaningless. That, anyway, is the conclusion arrived at by the play’s three characters: Tommy (Mr. Wright) and Donna (Ms. Hyman), an on-and-off couple who make both love and war like wild animals, and Donna’s father (Mr. Thompson), an artist paralyzed by memories of a similar relationship.
The play is structured as a series of confrontational conversations. Having heard that Tommy is seeing her younger sister, Donna seeks him out in his squalid hole of an apartment, where his search for identity has reduced him to communing with his refrigerator. They argue, they grapple, they kiss, they part. And they resolve nothing. So Donna visits her dad, whom she hasn’t seen in months, to figure out why she is the way she is.
In the play’s final scene Dad talks to Tommy, at Donna’s behest. Nothing is resolved then either. It is Mr. Shanley’s point that nothing is ever resolved in life, and all we can do is make the best of an eternally unconcluded bargain. Along the way to this revelation there is much talk of caves of the unconscious and the wilder frontiers of sex. (Music that evokes tribal rituals in the jungle is heard between scenes.)
Though the subjects are visceral, the tone is dizzyingly cerebral, and I shudder to imagine how “Dreamer” might be with a less grounded cast. But you never feel that in portraying people who are straining for clarity, the performers here are strained themselves. Mr. Wright unflinchingly finds the aggression in Tommy’s leaden passivity. And Ms. Hyman’s excellent exasperated Donna becomes the audience’s essential point of connection as she wanders with steady tread through Mr. Shanley’s labyrinth of passion.
Nobody chews up the scenery, in other words, including Mr. Thompson. If his fiery Othello is a man flailing amid the chaos of love gone bad, his character in “Dreamer” is someone who has survived that chaos and is now fingering the scars it left behind. Mr. Thompson doesn’t fall prey to the natural temptation of acting out what his character remembers. The dynamic of his performance is in the energy Dad expends in trying to keep a distance from past torments as he describes them.
Repertory is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? It allows an actor like Mr. Thompson the relief of moving from the in-the-moment passion of “Othello” to the recollected passion of “Dreamer.” And it allows theatergoers the treat of seeing an admirable performer confidently shift keys from blazing fury to quiet contemplation.
THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW
By John Patrick Shanley; directed by Tod Randolph; sets by Christian Schmitt; lighting by Greg Solomon; costumes by Lena Sands; sound by Michael Pfeiffer; stage manager, Bryanna Meloni. Presented by Shakespeare & Company, Tony Simotes, artistic director; Tina Packer, founding artistic director. At the Elayne P. Bernstein Theater, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass.; (413) 637-3353. Through Sept. 6. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
WITH: Miriam Hyman (Donna), John Douglas Thompson (Dad) and Bowman Wright (Tommy).
viernes, 28 de agosto de 2009
Lady Bracknell Is Back, With a Slightly Unladylike Air
New York Times / Theater
August 26, 2009
THEATER REVIEW 'THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST'
Lady Bracknell Is Back, With a Slightly Unladylike Air
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
STRATFORD, Ontario — As the superb classical actor Brian Bedford proves in the splendid production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival here, when it comes to inhabiting the imperious spirit of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, being biologically female is immaterial.
Possibly this should not be surprising. Wilde’s monstrous paragon of patrician British matronhood, who takes propriety to the point of absurdity and well beyond, has a personality so formidable it all but obliterates gender. Sex — her own and everybody else’s — is far less important to Lady Bracknell than matters of decorum, respectability and breeding. (That’s breeding as in upbringing, thank you, not procreating.) If a two-headed hermaphrodite arrived in her drawing room with the proper social bona fides, she would coolly offer a cucumber sandwich. Or rather, two cucumber sandwiches.
When Mr. Bedford strides onstage in the full regalia of a Victorian gentlewoman, a tuft of angry-looking tulle crowning his head, you instantly come to share Lady Bracknell’s indifference to insignificant matters, so forcefully does he communicate the implacable will of this glorious theatrical creation. Mr. Bedford knows that there is no room for low camping in high comedy. And while “in matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing,” as one of the play’s characters asserts, Mr. Bedford manages to accommodate both. His performance is as impeccably stylish as it is thoroughly sincere.
As such, it is very funny. Mr. Bedford is not the first man I’ve seen in the role; he is not the second either. But he is by many measures the finest. The great Canadian actor William Hutt, also a Stratford mainstay, played Lady Bracknell to acclaim in the 1970s. Mr. Bedford’s turn can be seen as a homage to his colleague, who died in 2007 after 39 seasons with the festival. But knowledge of this history is hardly necessary to delight in the performance, and the production, which Mr. Bedford also directed.
Despite its brilliantly filigreed plot and rich trove of perverse aperçus, “The Importance of Being Earnest” can be heavy going in lesser performances, its cascading witticisms coming across as freeze-dried and familiar. But Mr. Bedford and his cast give it a bright bloom, for the most part delivering the ornate language with a purifying gleam that makes it sing.
In less precise productions, for instance, the characters can sound like interchangeable stand-ins for the author. Here the personality of each comes across with unusual distinctness. As Jack Worthing, the young man whose disturbingly vague parentage so inflames Lady Bracknell’s social sensibilities, Ben Carlson is comically priggish without losing his charm. He’s wonderfully natural, too, suggesting an understanding that Jack is the sanest person in this decorous madhouse, the lone character in the play whose feet are on the ground, at least intermittently.
The lovely Sara Topham, playing Jack’s would-be betrothed, Lady Bracknell’s daughter, Gwendolen Fairfax, captures the character’s delicate lunacy with refreshing ease. The dark timbre and slight burr in her voice recall Joan Greenwood in the brilliant Anthony Asquith movie from 1952. But the performance is not a carbon copy. Ms. Topham brings her own poised elegance to Gwendolen’s iron will, a miniature of her mother’s.
As Algernon Moncrieff and Cecily Cardew, the instantly smitten couple whose matrimonial hopes also hang on the question of a Christian name — both Gwendolen and Cecily insist on marrying a man named Ernest — Mike Shara and Andrea Runge make a comely pair, their matched blue eyes set twinkling in the giddy rapture of young love. Mr. Shara’s playing is a little too arch in the first act, and Ms. Runge does not always seem at ease with the rococo language, but these are small infelicities amid the generally assured style.
As the Rev. Canon Chasuble, Stephen Ouimette is a gallant comic foil to Sarah Dodd’s redoubtable, starchy Miss Prism, with her pinched mouth and surprised eyes.
But while she is absent for the entire second act, the indomitable Lady Bracknell dominates any production of Wilde’s play, and so the evening ultimately belongs to Mr. Bedford. The flutey phrasing of Edith Evans in the Asquith film tends to chime in my head whenever I see the play, creating a distracting echo — and making most Lady B’s seem like hollow also-rans. But Mr. Bedford’s interpretation makes for strong competition.
Without sacrificing a single of Lady Bracknell’s withering bons mots, he avoids the stridently arch and the obvious. A single word — “Found?” — spoken in a tone of hushed stupefaction sets the audience roaring no less than that peerless joke about losing both one’s parents seeming like “carelessness.” The trick to making a male Lady Bracknell into something more than a camp joke is to take her as seriously as she takes herself. That’s no mean feat, of course, but Mr. Bedford performs it with forthrightness that inspires admiration, riding the crests of Wilde’s language like a great galleon in full sail.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
By Oscar Wilde; directed by Brian Bedford; sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley; lighting by Kevin Fraser; music by Berthold Carrière; sound by Jim Neil. Presented by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival; Des McAnuff, artistic director. At the Avon Theater, 99 Downie Street, Stratford, Ontario; (800) 567-1600. Through Oct. 30. Running time: 2 hours 30 min.
WITH: Robert Persichini (Lane), Mike Shara (Algernon Moncrieff), Ben Carlson (John Worthing), Brian Bedford (Lady Bracknell), Sara Topham (Gwendolen Fairfax), Andrea Runge (Cecily Cardew), Sarah Dodd (Miss Prism), Stephen Ouimette (The Rev. Canon Chasuble), Merriman (Tim MacDonald) and Barbara Fulton (Maid).
August 26, 2009
THEATER REVIEW 'THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST'
Lady Bracknell Is Back, With a Slightly Unladylike Air
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
STRATFORD, Ontario — As the superb classical actor Brian Bedford proves in the splendid production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival here, when it comes to inhabiting the imperious spirit of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, being biologically female is immaterial.
Possibly this should not be surprising. Wilde’s monstrous paragon of patrician British matronhood, who takes propriety to the point of absurdity and well beyond, has a personality so formidable it all but obliterates gender. Sex — her own and everybody else’s — is far less important to Lady Bracknell than matters of decorum, respectability and breeding. (That’s breeding as in upbringing, thank you, not procreating.) If a two-headed hermaphrodite arrived in her drawing room with the proper social bona fides, she would coolly offer a cucumber sandwich. Or rather, two cucumber sandwiches.
When Mr. Bedford strides onstage in the full regalia of a Victorian gentlewoman, a tuft of angry-looking tulle crowning his head, you instantly come to share Lady Bracknell’s indifference to insignificant matters, so forcefully does he communicate the implacable will of this glorious theatrical creation. Mr. Bedford knows that there is no room for low camping in high comedy. And while “in matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing,” as one of the play’s characters asserts, Mr. Bedford manages to accommodate both. His performance is as impeccably stylish as it is thoroughly sincere.
As such, it is very funny. Mr. Bedford is not the first man I’ve seen in the role; he is not the second either. But he is by many measures the finest. The great Canadian actor William Hutt, also a Stratford mainstay, played Lady Bracknell to acclaim in the 1970s. Mr. Bedford’s turn can be seen as a homage to his colleague, who died in 2007 after 39 seasons with the festival. But knowledge of this history is hardly necessary to delight in the performance, and the production, which Mr. Bedford also directed.
Despite its brilliantly filigreed plot and rich trove of perverse aperçus, “The Importance of Being Earnest” can be heavy going in lesser performances, its cascading witticisms coming across as freeze-dried and familiar. But Mr. Bedford and his cast give it a bright bloom, for the most part delivering the ornate language with a purifying gleam that makes it sing.
In less precise productions, for instance, the characters can sound like interchangeable stand-ins for the author. Here the personality of each comes across with unusual distinctness. As Jack Worthing, the young man whose disturbingly vague parentage so inflames Lady Bracknell’s social sensibilities, Ben Carlson is comically priggish without losing his charm. He’s wonderfully natural, too, suggesting an understanding that Jack is the sanest person in this decorous madhouse, the lone character in the play whose feet are on the ground, at least intermittently.
The lovely Sara Topham, playing Jack’s would-be betrothed, Lady Bracknell’s daughter, Gwendolen Fairfax, captures the character’s delicate lunacy with refreshing ease. The dark timbre and slight burr in her voice recall Joan Greenwood in the brilliant Anthony Asquith movie from 1952. But the performance is not a carbon copy. Ms. Topham brings her own poised elegance to Gwendolen’s iron will, a miniature of her mother’s.
As Algernon Moncrieff and Cecily Cardew, the instantly smitten couple whose matrimonial hopes also hang on the question of a Christian name — both Gwendolen and Cecily insist on marrying a man named Ernest — Mike Shara and Andrea Runge make a comely pair, their matched blue eyes set twinkling in the giddy rapture of young love. Mr. Shara’s playing is a little too arch in the first act, and Ms. Runge does not always seem at ease with the rococo language, but these are small infelicities amid the generally assured style.
As the Rev. Canon Chasuble, Stephen Ouimette is a gallant comic foil to Sarah Dodd’s redoubtable, starchy Miss Prism, with her pinched mouth and surprised eyes.
But while she is absent for the entire second act, the indomitable Lady Bracknell dominates any production of Wilde’s play, and so the evening ultimately belongs to Mr. Bedford. The flutey phrasing of Edith Evans in the Asquith film tends to chime in my head whenever I see the play, creating a distracting echo — and making most Lady B’s seem like hollow also-rans. But Mr. Bedford’s interpretation makes for strong competition.
Without sacrificing a single of Lady Bracknell’s withering bons mots, he avoids the stridently arch and the obvious. A single word — “Found?” — spoken in a tone of hushed stupefaction sets the audience roaring no less than that peerless joke about losing both one’s parents seeming like “carelessness.” The trick to making a male Lady Bracknell into something more than a camp joke is to take her as seriously as she takes herself. That’s no mean feat, of course, but Mr. Bedford performs it with forthrightness that inspires admiration, riding the crests of Wilde’s language like a great galleon in full sail.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
By Oscar Wilde; directed by Brian Bedford; sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley; lighting by Kevin Fraser; music by Berthold Carrière; sound by Jim Neil. Presented by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival; Des McAnuff, artistic director. At the Avon Theater, 99 Downie Street, Stratford, Ontario; (800) 567-1600. Through Oct. 30. Running time: 2 hours 30 min.
WITH: Robert Persichini (Lane), Mike Shara (Algernon Moncrieff), Ben Carlson (John Worthing), Brian Bedford (Lady Bracknell), Sara Topham (Gwendolen Fairfax), Andrea Runge (Cecily Cardew), Sarah Dodd (Miss Prism), Stephen Ouimette (The Rev. Canon Chasuble), Merriman (Tim MacDonald) and Barbara Fulton (Maid).
martes, 18 de agosto de 2009
ALAN ARKIN - CONGRATULATIONS - VIRTUAL REALITY
"Congratulations, Matilda, I am very happy for you. Please congratulate your cast for me. It's not necessary to send me any reviews, the fact the you had a good time, the cast had a good time and the audience had a good time is enough to make me have a good time. If it is convenient for you, I'd love to see the a video of the production. But please dont do it if its a big problem for you. Some day I'll tell you how the play came about. I dont know if you know, but my youngest son and I performed it in New York for a year. This was over ten years ago. The reviews were so good that we could be running still, but the repetition started driving each of us crazy. Again, congratulations to you"
love,
Alan
miércoles, 12 de agosto de 2009
Cecilia de Mateu comenta sobre nuestra obra
Hola Matilda, es Cecilia Mateu que anoche hablamos en Teatrex.
Te escribo esta notica Virtual para felicitarte por la Obra. Realmente todos nos sentimos Transportados con Zurdo y Diestro. Los Objetos de las maletas los veíamos en ese lugar. Las Actuaciones de Zurdo y Diestro son Geniales. El Joven Diestro , actúa muy natural . Va a llegar muy lejos, es muy natural. LOS Felicito a todos, y GRACIAS a todos Ustedes , ya que nos da Animos y Esperanzas a las personas con mas días de nacidas, QUE SI pueden hacer una Nueva Venezuela, con Valores y Cosas Bonitas como en otros países del Primer Mundo. Por favor nos avisas para las futuras obras. Fue Una Terapia para la mente. Mucho Exito !
Se lo merecen. Besos a todos y gracias de nuevo.
Cecilia .
Cecilia .
Salomón Benshimol - Crítica - Realidad Virtual
Domingo 9 de Agosto de 2009
CULTURA - La Voz
"Gimnasio de Actores se está
presentando en Teatrex,
en el Centro Comercial
Paseo El Hatillo, con la
excelente comedia “Realidad
Virtual”, de Alan Arkin, bajo la
acertada dirección de Matilda
Corral y las destacadas actuaciones
de: Gonzalo Velutini y Jesús
Nunes, con funciones los
viernes y los sábados a las 10 y
los domingos a las 8 p.m. De Realidad
Virtual, podríamos decir
que se trata de un adiestramiento exegético, dramatúrgico y de entelequia que invita a comprender lo sobrentendido que puede llegar a ser la propia realidad, y tendrá como fin la de seducir y cautivar por medio de la comedia al público caraqueño, ya que tiene una historia inteligente y además cotidiana. En Realidad Virtual, encontraremos a dos hombres, Diestro y Zurdo, que son encarnados por los reconocidos actores Gonzalo Velutini y Jesús Nunes. En la trama ellos no se conocen y son asignados en una operación muy delicada, aparentemente ilícita, y cuya verdadera naturaleza desconocen. Para esto, se encuentran de noche en lo que pareciera ser un galpón. Ambos esperan la llegada de tres cajas que contienen el equipo necesario para realizar ésta tarea, que pudiera poner en riesgo sus vidas. Diestro, muy atado a las normas y en vista de que las cajas aún no llegan, insiste en hacer una prueba de desempacarlas y chequear su contenido. Entretanto, Zurdo, bastante práctico, se niega a realizar tal prueba por considerarla absurda. Poco a poco, Diestro va logrando que Zurdo entre en su juego al punto que lo virtual se va volviendo cada vez más real. Matilda Corral es la encargada de traducir, versionar y dirigir ésta propuesta, quien logra su cometido debido a su profesionalismo. Matilda Corral - una destacada artista venezolana egresada del IUDET y de la maestría en Actuación del Actors Studio Drama School de Nueva York y quien en los últimos años ha dirigido exitosos montajes como “La Duda” de John Patrick Shanley- opina que se trata de una comedia inteligente con diferentes matices y estrategias, en donde se evidencia la lucha por el poder, afirmando que: “Si lo que molesta es la forma, queda entonces fondo para conocer”. Esta comedia en un acto es la parte central de una serie de tres piezas titulada “Power Plays” que, además de “Virtual Reality”, del destacado actor y escritor Alan Arkin, contiene dos escritas por la también reconocida dramaturga y actriz estadounidense Elaine May: “The Way of All Fish” e “In and Out of the Light”. Arkin y May, con una larga trayectoria en el teatro neoyorquino, unieron esfuerzos en 1998 para estrenar OFF Broadway, en el Manhattan Theater Club; éste montaje celebrado por la exigente crítica de aquella ciudad, que alabó el modo en que éste “ejercicio actoral adquiere un progresivo y racional tipo de locura que impacta y cautiva a la audiencia”, o con comentarios como éste: “El verdadero fin de la ‘realidad virtual’ es una especie de anticlimax construido entre momentos de inteligente humor que ponen a prueba la calidad actoral”. En la versión venezolana, la obra, presentada por el Gimnasio de Actores, cuenta además con la música original de Boris Paredes y Santos Palazzi, la producción de Eduardo Fermín, la iluminación de José Jiménez y el diseño original de Deisa Tremarias. "
presentando en Teatrex,
en el Centro Comercial
Paseo El Hatillo, con la
excelente comedia “Realidad
Virtual”, de Alan Arkin, bajo la
acertada dirección de Matilda
Corral y las destacadas actuaciones
de: Gonzalo Velutini y Jesús
Nunes, con funciones los
viernes y los sábados a las 10 y
los domingos a las 8 p.m. De Realidad
Virtual, podríamos decir
que se trata de un adiestramiento exegético, dramatúrgico y de entelequia que invita a comprender lo sobrentendido que puede llegar a ser la propia realidad, y tendrá como fin la de seducir y cautivar por medio de la comedia al público caraqueño, ya que tiene una historia inteligente y además cotidiana. En Realidad Virtual, encontraremos a dos hombres, Diestro y Zurdo, que son encarnados por los reconocidos actores Gonzalo Velutini y Jesús Nunes. En la trama ellos no se conocen y son asignados en una operación muy delicada, aparentemente ilícita, y cuya verdadera naturaleza desconocen. Para esto, se encuentran de noche en lo que pareciera ser un galpón. Ambos esperan la llegada de tres cajas que contienen el equipo necesario para realizar ésta tarea, que pudiera poner en riesgo sus vidas. Diestro, muy atado a las normas y en vista de que las cajas aún no llegan, insiste en hacer una prueba de desempacarlas y chequear su contenido. Entretanto, Zurdo, bastante práctico, se niega a realizar tal prueba por considerarla absurda. Poco a poco, Diestro va logrando que Zurdo entre en su juego al punto que lo virtual se va volviendo cada vez más real. Matilda Corral es la encargada de traducir, versionar y dirigir ésta propuesta, quien logra su cometido debido a su profesionalismo. Matilda Corral - una destacada artista venezolana egresada del IUDET y de la maestría en Actuación del Actors Studio Drama School de Nueva York y quien en los últimos años ha dirigido exitosos montajes como “La Duda” de John Patrick Shanley- opina que se trata de una comedia inteligente con diferentes matices y estrategias, en donde se evidencia la lucha por el poder, afirmando que: “Si lo que molesta es la forma, queda entonces fondo para conocer”. Esta comedia en un acto es la parte central de una serie de tres piezas titulada “Power Plays” que, además de “Virtual Reality”, del destacado actor y escritor Alan Arkin, contiene dos escritas por la también reconocida dramaturga y actriz estadounidense Elaine May: “The Way of All Fish” e “In and Out of the Light”. Arkin y May, con una larga trayectoria en el teatro neoyorquino, unieron esfuerzos en 1998 para estrenar OFF Broadway, en el Manhattan Theater Club; éste montaje celebrado por la exigente crítica de aquella ciudad, que alabó el modo en que éste “ejercicio actoral adquiere un progresivo y racional tipo de locura que impacta y cautiva a la audiencia”, o con comentarios como éste: “El verdadero fin de la ‘realidad virtual’ es una especie de anticlimax construido entre momentos de inteligente humor que ponen a prueba la calidad actoral”. En la versión venezolana, la obra, presentada por el Gimnasio de Actores, cuenta además con la música original de Boris Paredes y Santos Palazzi, la producción de Eduardo Fermín, la iluminación de José Jiménez y el diseño original de Deisa Tremarias. "
La obra se lleva a cabo en el CC Paseo
El Hatillo, viernes y sábado a las
10:00 p.m. y domingos a las 8:30
p.m. Estará en escena hasta el 19
de septiembre. Valor de la entrada
Bs.F. 70.
El Hatillo, viernes y sábado a las
10:00 p.m. y domingos a las 8:30
p.m. Estará en escena hasta el 19
de septiembre. Valor de la entrada
Bs.F. 70.
La pieza es una comedia de Alan Arkin,
bajo la dirección de Matilda Corral y las
destacadas actuaciones de Gonzalo
Velutini y Jesús Nunes
bajo la dirección de Matilda Corral y las
destacadas actuaciones de Gonzalo
Velutini y Jesús Nunes
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