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Showing posts from August, 2011

I Do Believe in Theatre . . . and Pookas? — HARVEY at TAG

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As I sit in the audience at TAG, waiting for Harvey to begin, Lauren Ballesteros steps out in costume to give the preshow announcements: thank you all for supporting the theatre, turn off your cellphones, etc…, and then remains on stage as the lights dim and rise, and the play begins—she is now Mrs. Johnson, the maid. Moments like this are clues for me about what sort of production has been created. A production that blurs the walls between reality and fiction, between performance and truth. A production in which choices made by the cast and crew reflect themes and content written into the script. Smith, Silipa, and Polson I don’t recall ever reading Harvey or seeing a production of the play before. Mary Chase, the playwright, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1945, and I can understand why. The script is smart and funny, and very poignant. The heart of the matter lies in the character of Elwood P. Dowd, flawlessly embodied by Sam Polson. Dowd chums around with a pook

The Knight and the Butterfly — HENRY IV.2 by HSF

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Oh what a Knight—Sir John Falstaff that is, the biggest character I saw at the preview for Henry IV, Part 2 , the third and final offering of this season’s Hawaii Shakespeare Festival. The biggest in girth for sure, but not necessarily in personality, which is to say, there was a lot going on in Hawai‘i’s “Globe” last night. Goto as Falstaff's Page This play, as director Tony Pisculli mentioned in the preshow announcements, is a sequel and a history—not necessarily up there on people’s must-see list with, say, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream . There’s definitely more work for the audience at this show, trying to figure out what the fat knight Falstaff has to do with the war going on, and why there’s a war going on, and who’s on which side of the war. It’s all there in the lines the characters speak, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simple matter of listening, because this is Shakespeare we’re talking about. So, yes, be prepared to pay attention and still be a little (or a