Word: staging
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...willingness to be executed in another person's place-very likely suggested by the end of Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities, where Sidney Carton goes to the guillotine in the stead of his friend Charles Marnay. Ironically, death did not, however, remain a matter of stage make-believe. Shaw wrote the play in 1896-97 at the request of the famous actor of melodrama Wiliam ("Breezy Bill") Terriss; but, before Terriss ever essaved the title role, he was murdered by a madman outside London's Adelphi Theatre...
...appetizer. We hear from one direction a B-flat fanfare for solo trumpet-rather lonely and Coplan-desque in effect-answered from elsewhere by woodwinds. Then, accompanied by some drummers. Ritchard in full general's regalia strides in and delivers a short prologue extracted from Shaw's lengthy opening stage direction. There is no objection to this, for Shaw was characteristically unable to keep from putting some of his best work-often quite irrelevant-into his prefaces, stage directions, and notes...
...arranged [the hanging] for 12 o'clock. Nothing remains to be done except to try him." At one point Shaw has him say, "You insolent-," breaking off after the adjective. Here Maher provides the noun "bastard"-which Shaw likely had in mind but could not have got by the stage censor...
...stupid brother Christy), the officer and soldiers, and the Indians all lend welcome color to the production. And where Shaw has called for the offstage sound of the Dead March from Handel's Saul, Ritchard has brought a real costumed band of piccolos, brass and drums right on stage. And he has appended a musical epilogue to Shaw's wildly cheering townspeople. After a performance of "Yankee Doodle," a group launches into William Billings' patriotic hymn "Chester"-a most fitting choice, for Billings was a Bostonian who had written the piece around the date of the play's incidents...
Although the Festival stage is not really designed for conventional box sets, the play demands them, and William Ritman has made the best of a difficult situation, so arranging the parts of the Dudgcon's main room that they can easily be shuffled about to become the main room of the Anderson household. John Gleason's lighting could be improved. When Judith arrives at the Dudgeon farm-house, it is morning; yet when the door is opened, we look through it into pitch darkness. And I find the too obvious use of follow-spotlights somewhat irritating. But such tiny blemishes...