Love for Love
Nov. 13th, 2002 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night, Queue and I went to Brandeis to see the next play in their season, Love for Love, by William Congreve. He wrote it in 1695, an English Restoration comedy. The dramaturg's notes mention how liberal things were at that time, and how much that changed soon after; the playwright stopped writing plays a couple of years later.
The plot circles around a spendthrift son pining for his lady-love, who gives him not the time of day. He has a variety of friends, there are many other subplots, all based on who is sleeping with whom. The plot itself wasn't incredibly compelling, but the dialogue and some of the characters were.
The two older actors were particularly excellent in their roles as Sir Sampson and Foresight. The rest of the company were decent. Many characters had descriptive names (Scandal, Tattle, Valentine), though not all... the women got off easier with this.
Dress was modified period, including wonderfully entertaining incredibly high in front wigs with jewels and pointing-straight-up combs in them. Long frock coats, bodices, medium-high heels, even for the men. The most outrageous costume was for Tattle, who had a pink (and orange?) checked frock coat, floral stockings, flowers on his shoes, a huge beige and red checked tie, and a silver curly wig that went halfway down his back... and had two large-ish light blue horns in front. A total fop, and perfectly so.
This play was on the main stage. The floor of the stage was tilted higher on the left than the right (straight across, not at all towards the audience), for no reason I could figure out. Two doors on each side, plus two other exits. Set changes were interestingly done, with people in costume bringing things in, then when all was done, each standing in a doorway, closing all four doors at once. There were two locations used, Valentine's study, and Foresights' drawing room (or similar such rooms). Other than the furniture changes, the former was indicated with a large stuffed alligator hung from wires (and which had some sort of brazier hung from it) that went on a track in and out of one wall (Miss Price's?), while the latter had a huge painting behind (really huge; taller than most rooms' walls...).
The play started and ended with brief scenes with period dancing, which worked pretty well. The script had nice wordplay, and I didn't have the first-few-minutes adjusting time that I need when seeing a Shakespeare production; the language was more easily grasped.
Not so many people in the theater, and the ones who were there seemed to be mostly undergrads and senior citizens (who had a great time, though the hour got late), which seemed strange.
"
The plot circles around a spendthrift son pining for his lady-love, who gives him not the time of day. He has a variety of friends, there are many other subplots, all based on who is sleeping with whom. The plot itself wasn't incredibly compelling, but the dialogue and some of the characters were.
The two older actors were particularly excellent in their roles as Sir Sampson and Foresight. The rest of the company were decent. Many characters had descriptive names (Scandal, Tattle, Valentine), though not all... the women got off easier with this.
Dress was modified period, including wonderfully entertaining incredibly high in front wigs with jewels and pointing-straight-up combs in them. Long frock coats, bodices, medium-high heels, even for the men. The most outrageous costume was for Tattle, who had a pink (and orange?) checked frock coat, floral stockings, flowers on his shoes, a huge beige and red checked tie, and a silver curly wig that went halfway down his back... and had two large-ish light blue horns in front. A total fop, and perfectly so.
This play was on the main stage. The floor of the stage was tilted higher on the left than the right (straight across, not at all towards the audience), for no reason I could figure out. Two doors on each side, plus two other exits. Set changes were interestingly done, with people in costume bringing things in, then when all was done, each standing in a doorway, closing all four doors at once. There were two locations used, Valentine's study, and Foresights' drawing room (or similar such rooms). Other than the furniture changes, the former was indicated with a large stuffed alligator hung from wires (and which had some sort of brazier hung from it) that went on a track in and out of one wall (Miss Price's?), while the latter had a huge painting behind (really huge; taller than most rooms' walls...).
The play started and ended with brief scenes with period dancing, which worked pretty well. The script had nice wordplay, and I didn't have the first-few-minutes adjusting time that I need when seeing a Shakespeare production; the language was more easily grasped.
Not so many people in the theater, and the ones who were there seemed to be mostly undergrads and senior citizens (who had a great time, though the hour got late), which seemed strange.
"