Sunday, November 30, 2008

Tall order


Went to see Black Watch last weekend (thanks, Bert!). The play, about a Scottish regiment in Iraq, closes in Brooklyn Dec. 21, then it's going on tour. If it comes to your neck o' the woods, go. Dramatic, funny, compelling, unique ... well, just go see it.

The locale, St. Ann's Warehouse, is the site of a lot of experimental theater. One of the problems with experimental theater is that it's difficult to read about without giggling. (For me, anyway.) Take this writeup from St. Ann's calendar:
Mabou Mines DollHouse will return to New York, completing a 30-city world tour that began five years ago with its award-winning premiere at St. Ann's Warehouse. With their adaptation of A Doll's House, Obie Award Winners Lee Breuer (Best Direction) and Maude Mitchell (Best Actress) transform Ibsen's bourgeois tragedy into high comedy with a deep bite. ... Breuer turns Ibsen's mythic feminist anthem on its head by physicalizing the equation of Power and Scale. The male characters are played by actors whose heights range from 40 to 53 inches, and the women by actors almost 6 feet tall. Nothing dramatizes Ibsen's patriarchal point more clearly than the image of these little men dominating and commanding women one and a half times their size.

That's right--nothing.

No comments: