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critics of
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Mishima's modern
adaptation relocates the action in a hospital.... Director George
Ferencz sees Mishima's significance as deriving from the latter's
ability to combine his obsessions with poetry. Ferencz wants audiences
to understand his plays, even if they do not speak the language spoken
by the actors. To accomplish this, he works strongly with actions
that render visible the interior states of the figures on stage -
a strategy that Ferencz also discovered in Japanese Noh theater. Spoken
utterances surrender the limelight to physical expression....
That Feels Good ... As in a poem,
every one of Mishima's words rings in one's ears, Ferencz says. And
this, he believes, is pure poetry. Together with his performers and
stage designer, Ferencz understood his task as the effort to use magic
to bring Mishima's poetic text to pulsating life. Time and space do
not exist.... Watoku Ueno created an abstract room.... White textiles
stretched above and around old construction masts symbolize the hospital....
Everyone should be able to understand, Ferencz says. That's why he
works with music and a strongly visual "language" of imagery.
And, naturally, he's also well acquainted with the electrifying feeling
that sex is in the air.
Sex as Enigma and Abyss ... What is reality,
what is fiction in this piece by Yukio Michima? The question remains
unanswered because no ontological frontier separates the two. Riddles
are deliberately left unsolved.... Meta Theater relies on symbolic
images rather than verbiage. Words are used merely to clarify contexts....
Aoi is an unusual piece. And Meta Theater has staged it in an unusual
way.
Love is a Chemical Process Theater that get
under the skin: piece that's fraught with obsessions and passion,
crackling with energy and aggression, in a staging whose tangible
corporeality pushes actors and audiences to the edge of pain.... A
theatrical event rich with archaic patterns.... The skillfully lit
stage supports the intimated metamorphoses. The lighting and the recorded
score unite to give contours to the planes of being.... Meta Theater's
troupe has successfully transformed Michima's play into an energy-laden
event that eschews pomp and leaves the audience breathless....
Darkly Luminous Apparitions ... The Meta Theater
troupe has successfully created a powerful, strongly expressive sequence
of imagery.... The piece manifests intermediate worlds in a staging
that's rich with nuances and that appeals to all of the senses....
The successful combination of visual and acoustic elements supports
the action, which is equally important as the dialogue.... On the
evening of its premiere, the staging and its many variations in tempo
enabled Meta Theater to create and maintain the excitement.
Sexual Complexes Exposed ... Peculiar,
playful and with uncommonly expressive images, director George Ferencz
from New York's La Mama Theater has recast Noh drama into a modern
form. And he's done it on a fantastic stage designed by his colleague
Watoku Ueno, likewise from New York. Despite its enormously elaborate
design, the wooden stage seems sleek and uncomplicated. Only in the
course of the performance does the spectator become aware of the many
possibilities that have cleverly been built into this extraordinary
stage set.... |
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 Meta Theater 9/ 2000 |
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critics