1,127 posts
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Jun 30, 2022 19:51:18 GMT
I do miss a good, proper set with rooms and staircases and furniture. Last year’s Blithe Spirit wasn’t that great but ooh it had a lovely set. I can forgive a lot if there’s a lovely set. Robert Icke: revolutionising British theatre or what you’d get if you bought Ivo van Hove on Wish? Don’t know but quite liked the wind tunnel effect in Oresteia. I don’t go to the opera much and hardly ever outside of London but whenever I do it’s always… interesting? I saw a wonderfully bonkers Merry Widow in Stockholm where the widow was a famed soprano and the three men courting her the artistic directors of three leading Scandinavian opera houses, and at one point a character who was supposed to be a British “enfant terrible” director directed a play within the opera that was literally that terrible NT Macbeth with all the black rubbish sacks. Didn’t understand a thing but great fun! Though it opened with Brunnhilde greeting the sun so I spent the first 15 mins panicking that I was in the wrong opera house. Paris Opera Les Troyens but set in a mental institute with a key aria performed while the leads were playing ping pong was a low light. Had never heard of Regietheater before (so thank you for contributing to my theatre education!) but googling it brings up this delightfully bitchy article www.city-journal.org/html/abduction-opera-13034.html
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2,702 posts
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Post by viserys on Jun 30, 2022 20:10:56 GMT
Fabulous read, thanks for that! And yes, all true - we had our own scandal here in Cologne some years ago when they did "Samson and Delilah" set in the contemporary Middle East with such graphic mass rape scenes, that half the opera chorus called out sick. And all that's written there about opera can just as easily be said for drama, which is just as idiotic.
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Post by Jan on Jul 1, 2022 6:43:06 GMT
Cheek by Jowl have been masters of wooden chair staging since the early 1980s - characters unstacking them, moving them around, sitting on them while they are not in the scene and so on. This has influenced many other directors, like Rebecca Frecknall mentioned above.
Katie Mitchell can be a bit of a chair merchant too but of course her trademarks are slow-motion, speed-up motion, long pauses, and reverse motion.
Philip Prowse used to dress every single character in black.
RSC house style, all directors, is to provide a helpful obscene mime when there is any sexual reference in the text. The hug and mutual back-pat must also always be deployed when two soldiers meet.
It is mandatory in a Richard Jones production that the set should be off-kilter and primary colours - preferably day-glo - should be used.
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Post by crabtree on Jul 1, 2022 8:26:37 GMT
And whilst i have absolutely no objection matthew bourne does usually include a gay couple or two or five in his scenarios. as well as a dance pastiche of Martha Graham or some such icon.
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4,993 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jul 1, 2022 10:16:48 GMT
Great read samuelwhiskers. I have seen a few of those productions and liked them. Perhaps because i haven't seen much of those directors other productions. Meanwhile Jones and Mitchell I generally now avoid having previously loved their work but it's all starting to look the same #wallpaper
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7,190 posts
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Post by Jon on Jul 1, 2022 14:36:06 GMT
Surely reinvention can be a good thing. I bet if all productions were cookie cutter and the same as previous productions then we'd be complaining about directors playing it safe. They are shows which are crying out to be reinvented like Blood Brothers and Rocky Horror for example.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jul 1, 2022 15:20:25 GMT
Reinvention is absolutely necessary but it has to be thoughtful and based on the text not in the whims of a director.
Decisions should taken in response to the script not in spite of it.
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4,156 posts
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Post by kathryn on Jul 1, 2022 20:18:48 GMT
Cheek by Jowl have been masters of wooden chair staging since the early 1980s - characters unstacking them, moving them around, sitting on them while they are not in the scene and so on. This has influenced many other directors, like Rebecca Frecknall mentioned above.. I seem to recall long drapes of material being a prominent feature of Cheek by Jowl productions as well. Of course that is partly a practical move - for a touring company wooden stacking chairs and some bolts of material are a lot easier to transport and a lot quicker to set up than a proper set. Sometimes the things you do out of necessity become a ‘style’.
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Post by sfsusan on Jul 2, 2022 19:32:38 GMT
There are so few visually beautiful opera productions nowadays & even fewer that are not only visually attractive but also set in the right period & keep entirely to the libretto For me, one of the joys of opera are (appropriate) settings and costumes. When you're charging the rates that are charged at the Royal Opera House, I want the complete package... great singing, lovely eye candy. Some productions (not just in London) are so minimal as to be bleak, regardless of the story. (I have a hard time just listening to music, so the symphony soon loses my attention, but with opera I can let my eyes wander while not distracting from the music.)
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