Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Fashioning himself a latter-day Oscar Wilde, Orton's artistic goal is nattily summed up in the picture's title. Taken from an uncompleted Orton script, it states exactly what Orton wanted to give his audience in plays such as Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot and What the Butler Saw. Through shock, Orton sought to shake up British society. We are given a hint of the stuffy British upbringing Orton received, but too little a taste of Orton's literary product. A snatch of dialogue here or there doesn't convey the playwright's reputed genius. We have to take...
Indeed, my biggest problem over the remainder of the performance was trying not to laugh, for the script was clever and the actors skilled. I managed somehow, and had my reward after the show. As I stood smoking a cigarette and watching the people file out, a friend from the audience came up and shook my hand. "You know," he said, "I've seen you do good work in other shows, but you were absolutely dead on stage tonight...
...true Moliere fashion, none of Arnolphe's carefully laid-out schemes work, and the chaos that ensues has only been matched these days by the best of Blake Edwards' movies. Sagal takes considerable liberties with the script, further fleshing out Moliere's humor. Scenes take on a cartoon-like quality in the spirit of Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes. At times, Oleson becomes an Elmer Fudd buffoon. He stumbles over tree stumps and brings out an armory of weapons to battle his imagined enemies, looking ridiculously anachronistic in a World War I helmet...
...middle of the play, Arnolphe forces Agnes to read a book of maxims about marriage, her schooling in wifery. Instead of having Robin read the ditties as the script calls for, Sagal sends in a troupe of "Maxim Players" (Jennifer Litt, Will Provost, Fiona Tingley, and Manson Yew) who proceed to act out eleven of them. Sagal turns a potentially boring segment into an amusing vaudeville skit. Other scenes like this punctuate the show, keeping the action fastpaced and the energy level high...
Written in verse, Shange's dialogue is powerful but occasionally seems to confound the actors. How does one convey the script's unpunctuated sentences or uncapitalized words? Only Jaqueline Hayes (Lily) is undaunted by the complexity of the figurative language. She is human and funny throughout...