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re: 3
The Pops have already played their season on the Esplanade.
However, the MDC conducts a concert series which is very varied.
On friday nights, they play a movie on the Esplanade. Saturday
evenings is usually classical, Sunday afternoons is Jazz, Thursday
night is Swing night, Monday is International night, Wednesday is
Country and Western. This times and dates are listed in the Calender
section of the Globe and also in Friday's Herald.
Also the No Name restaurant has closed. We went by last week
and there was nothing there. If they have relocated, it was not
posted anywhere. There are many things to do in Boston. One of
the best is to take a harbor cruise. They have hour lunch cruises
during the business week for a dollar. Give Bay State Cruises a
call for more info. Also , if you like lobster The Spirit of Mass
offers clambake cruises that are only $20.
You should also look into the conference on Boston.
Delni::Boston
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| re: .2
I'm in Detroit and the nearest place to buy a Globe is about 6 miles
in the wrong direction from here, so I'm going to check the Note
file on Boston (thanks, .4 and .5).
re: .6
Well, as fate would have it, the Tigers meet the Sox, tied for first,
this weekend in Detroit. I'm heading out to Saturday's game, and
if the series were closer together, I'd be sure to catch the rematch
at Fenway...Se La Vie' (I took Spanish, not French, so I probably
misspelled this.)
CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT'S AT THE SHUBERT? I'm more for theatre
than concerts.
ANY HARBOR FESTIVALS?
I'll check this note before I leave Sunday...Thanks to all so far
and those to come...
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I hope there isn't an "events" topic into which this would better
fit. I was discouraged from searching by the lateness of the hour
and the slowness of that activity at 2400 bps.
This is a review from tonight's issue of the Boston (MA) Phoenix.
It's quite a good review of Inanna Theatre's production of
Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona.
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TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Sue
Downing. Set designed by Gretchen Bowder, Sue Downing, and Helen
Wheelock. Lightening by Ken McDonald and Robbie Smith. With Wendy
Leigh, Ivanna Cunningham, Karina O'Malley, Kate Caffrey, Claudia
Traub, Elizabeth O'Gara, Brigid O'Connor, Daphne O'Neal, Drea
Brandford, and Catherine Gibson. Presented by Inanna Theatre at the
Leland Center, Boston Center for the Arts, Thursdays through Sundays
through August 26.
. . .
If you scan the cast list above, you'll notice that Ivanna Theatre's
Two Gentlemen of Verona is conspicuously lacking in the all-important
title element. No gentlemen, indeed, no men of any description. Of
course, in Shakespeare's time, there were no women in Gentlemen of
Verona, or any other play given in the theater: women weren't
permitted on the stage, so their parts had to be taken by boys.
Citing this practice as precedent, Inanna Theatre is giving us its
own version of single-sex casting: ladies only.
Authentic or not, the idea should go by the boards -- and I don't
mean the theater boards. If women had been allowed on stage at the
Rose or the Globe, we can assume Shakespeare would have been glad to
have them. And if mixed-sex casting in the theater is messy, it's
just as confusing in life. Which is what Shakespeare wrote about.
No, what makes this Two Gentlemen of Verona worth a visit isn't the
casting gimmick; it's the acting. You don't get many chances in
Boston to see Shakespeare this decent.
You don't get many chances to see Shakespeare this close-up, either.
Inanna's playing area in the Leland Center turns out to be a 20-by-25
foot space in the corner of a large room, so you're rubbing elbows
with the cast. The set comprises a couple of flowered pieces of
fabric that cover the wall, some satiny stuff draped around the
doorway through which the players appear, and a single four-legged
stool. It's like watching Shakespeare in an unfurnished living room.
Two Gentlemen of Verona is an early play, possibly Shakespeare's
first comedy, and he seems to have changed his mind as he went along,
for you get shuttled from Verona to Milan to Padua to Mantua in a way
that makes no sense. Director Sue Downing sensibly puts this right
with a little judicious emending of the text. But she can't improve
the writing, which is about five years short of the Bard's other
Verona play, Romeo and Juliet. The plot is thin, too: Proteus falls
in love with best friend Valentine's girl Sylvia, whereupon he
forsakes his own Julia, gets Valentine banished, and tries to move in
on Sylvia; only when Julia intervenes does everything get
straightened out.
As so often in Shakespeare, the lady characters are smarter than the
men. But Ivanna Cullinan and Wendy Leigh are smart enough to do
justice to Proteus and Velentine. Leigh offers a forceful,
take-charge Valentine. She might do more to express the Bard's
parody of this love-sick adolescent, but she does not make you forget
she's not a man. Cullinan is less convincing but more interesting:
her boyish Proteus is sly, hip, ingratiating (maybe too
ingratiating), a rotter who asks us for understanding and gets it.
She'd make a good Viola, not to mention an intriguing Richard III.
There are also good turns in Catherine Gibson's measured, imperious
Duke, Drea Brandford's snarling Sir Thurio, and Elizabeth O'Gara's
elegant Sir Eglamour.
The women who play women do alright for themselves too. Kate Caffrey
is a determined Julia, perhaps a little strong for her Proteus.
Daphne O'Neal makes Sylvia into an awkward-but-full-of-grace ingenue,
unexpected but rather touching. Claudia Traub chips in with a
cat-that-swallowed-the-canary maid, Lucetta -- she'd be a great nurse
in Romeo and Juliet.
But it's Launce and Speed who make this show. Shakespeare's clowns
are androgynous figures anyway, so there's no reason women couldn't
play them in more conventional treatments. Claudia Traub and Karina
O'Malley would do well in any production. O'Malley's Mary Martinish
Speed is a little breathless; she could give her talent more room.
Yet the rapidity with which her face and body move from one
completely realised expression to the next is a delight. I found
myself looking forward to her appearances.
Traub, having doffed her Lucetta's weeds, trudges in with a trunk and
a staff and her dog Crab (actually one of those giant stuffed
Snoopys) and takes the stage as if it were "The Launce Comedy Hour".
Nothing makes her hurry. She'll sit down and pull out an oversized
spotted handerkerchief and blow her nose and sort out her things --
Launce as bag lady. And when she talks, it's mesmerizing, she never
lets you out of her sight. She makes you laugh, and when you do, she
gives you a withering look. Shakespeare wrote this part for Will
Kempe, the premier clown in his company. Somewhere Kempe must be
smiling.
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