103 posts
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Post by sondheimhats on Jan 28, 2017 11:22:43 GMT
I saw the first preview on Thursday. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I had read the play, but did not enjoy it at all (it doesn't read nearly as well as Duchess of Malfi). Seeing it live, however, was highly entertaining. The production is much funnier than I would have anticipated. It seems the director is aware of how ridiculous the play is, and has allowed some room for humour, without completely making a mockery of the text. In fact, the text is very clearly delivered, and the story is surprisingly easy to follow. The acting is sort of all over the place, but also fun to watch. Some of the actors (especially the man playing Brachiano) are wildly over the top, to the point of (probably unintentional) hilarity. It's almost campy in it's ridiculousness, but very entertaining. Purists may be offended by the campiness, but personally I think it's just what the text needs to break it out of it's stuffiness. Some bizarre directorial and design choices (I think it was supposed to be Steampunk-esque?), but nothing that bothered me. It works well in the intimate space, and the candle-lighting is beautifully utilized.
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1,245 posts
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Post by joem on Feb 10, 2017 21:29:21 GMT
This was done very much, for me, in what has become the Wanamaker house style. The play is what it is, a melodrama of its time. I don't understand people criticising it with 21st century values. Webster didn't write this play for us, he wrote it for his audience. This is what they expected and there a lot more messy deaths happening then, not just on stage.
Modern audiences don't like melodrama, which is why they laugh at gory deaths on stage. They laugh because they know it's not true however well it's done (I did jump when Danton's head was chopped off at the National though). But unless you're a Brechtian, which I most certianly am not, isn't the entire idea of the theatre about the suspension of disbelief? A death in a film drama is much more convincing but it's still fake.
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397 posts
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Post by altamont on Feb 22, 2017 14:26:47 GMT
I've just returned 2 seats in the pit for the 4th March matinee in case anyone is interested
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1,103 posts
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Post by mallardo on Mar 15, 2017 11:00:17 GMT
The best part of this play (and production) occurs toward the end of the first half when three family members, two brothers and their sister, are put on trial for the coincidental deaths of the sister's husband and her lover's wife. The brothers are quickly dismissed, but Vittoria, the sister, is not because, well, because she's a woman. And women, as every man in the play keeps insisting, are whores and seductresses and basically responsible for all things evil. But, and here's what's good, this woman fights back. Cross-questioned by the corrupt Cardinal (shades of The Duchess of Malfi) who is both judge and accuser, she shows herself more than capable of defending herself. In the battle of wits she crushes him.
In fact all (or most) of the women in this play are strong, and not because they're paragons of virtue. Vittoria herself is far from monogamous, she has enjoyed her lusty life to the full and doesn't mind letting us know it. But these women are not submissive, they are not about being controlled, especially by the menagerie of rabidly insecure, bloodthirsty males who hover around them, calling them names. At a time (now) when directors everywhere seem to be applying feminist spins to plays that can barely support them, here's a play where no spin is necessary - it's feminist, or proto-feminist, at its core. John Webster was a man ahead of his time.
If only he were a better playwright. But, alas, like The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil is a dramatic downhill ride. The very promising first half (encompassing the play's first three acts) descends, in the second, into a predictable, tension-free bloodbath in which the only issue is who goes next. I get it that the bloodbath is just what the original 1612 audience had come to see and that, for them, the powerful character stuff in the early scenes was time-wasting. But still... there must have been an audience for something better or we wouldn't have had Shakespeare.
Annie Ryan's production is inventive and well up to the house standards although at times it seemed to be more a play about lighting candles than anything else. The cast is uniformly fine with special kudos to Kate Stanley-Brennan as the sublimely articulate Vittoria. An actress to watch out for.
So, a hearty cheer for John Webster. Despite his dramatic deficiencies he was on to something important back in 1612. Let's give him credit.
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