Word: played
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...production of Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato's The Idiots Karamazov at the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) without feeling lost at least once, then you're well on your way to an encyclopedic knowledge of all Western literature. Talk about high cultural capital. It's not just any play that requires the equivalent of a doctorate in world literature for even cursory reference. But then again, Christopher Durang isn't just any writer. And perhaps only Durang could make a play so unabashedly laden with obscure references so unabashedly entertaining--and irresistibly funny--for everyone in the audience...
Director Karin Coonrod must be given credit for taming this tornado of a play. Performed as part of the A.R.T.'s CrossCurrents initiative, an ongoing attempt to "create and sustain a body of new music theatre works," The Idiots Karamazov intersperses cabaret-style singing with its mad dash through practically all the Western fiction and drama worth reading. But an experiment in Brechtian musical theater this is not. With love ballads about the loss of Christian morality that come across as even more depressing than Tom Stoppard's musings in Jumpers and show-stoppers about the benefits of being...
...Coonrod's direction is so focused and so obviously imbued with energy that it's almost impossible not to get caught up in the sheer joy of the production, even if you can't get that third reference to Freud. But in willing the play into a coherent whole, Coonrod seems to miss at points the sadness that lies beneath Durang's outrageous humor, his underlying pity for characters forced to drag the corpses of their fathers through scene after scene. Their actions may be laughable, but they're not so far from the pains we in the "real" world...
...argues that very few students get together to play team sports on an informal basis...
...Other than intramurals, there are no opportunities to get together and just play a sport casually," she says. "At other schools I feel like people get together randomly to go play football or other sports...