Saturday, July 2, 2022.
A Special Offer from the Invaluable Mint Theater to Screen One of Their Filmed Productions FREE
My first essay in this, my new digital platform will be along soon. In the meantime this test post of a very brief current opportunity for a free screening opportunity at the Mint's website at https://minttheater.org/
And as long as I'm posting it-- I'm including my review of the live press performance I attended in 2018.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6190137426986474891/8588247957832152662
Review of Conflict in 2018
Even
the Mint Theater's many fans of a certain age aren't old
enough to have ever seen any of British playwright-actor Miles
Malleson's plays. Actually, no one could have seen Malleson'sYours Unfaithfully since it was published but never produced, which made last year's production a world premiere .
Conflict unlike Yours Unfaithfully
did enjoy considerable success. It had a well received London run
in 1925, and was made into a movie in 1931. Still, given how long ago
that was, it fits Mint artistic director and chief archeologist
Jonathan Bank's mission to give forgotten plays the Mint treatment.
That means a handsome, well acted production. — which Conflict as astutely staged by director Jenn Thompson at the Mint's Theater Row home, certainly is.
Like George Bernard Shaw's "discussion" plays, Conflict,
though billed as a love story, also fits that Shavian genre since
it's something of a debate about multiple social issues. But, even
more than Shaw, Malleson avoided preachy polemics by skillfully
using romance and snappy dialogue to tackle the politics of
economic inequality, women's rights and less restrictive male-female
relationships.
What's more, given the increased empowerment
of the very rich and privileged all around us, as well as the
#MeToo movement, this love story set in the roaring 20s and revolving
around a hotly contested election, has a remarkably au courant flavor.
To keep things moving along at a fast, but still leisurely feeling pace,
Director
Thompson has streamlined the three-act play into two parts.
The first two acts are conflated with one scene to cover each act,
and the third act's two scenes winding things up following the
intermission.
Except for the third act's opening scene, the
entire 2-hour long scenario unfolds in the elegant sitting room
of Lord Bellingdon's (Graeme Malcom, a perfect lord of the manor who
gets to deliver some of the best lines in order to flaunt his prideful
belief in his enttled status). To start things off, we have a
scene that establishes the relationship between Bellington's
younger conservative friend, Major Sir Ronald, Clive (Harry Clarke,
a charmer but just as locked into his class and its mores as Lord
Bellingon) and Bellington's daughter, Lady Dare (a delicious spoiled
rich girl evokes a sense of being ripe for reform). Lord
Bellington welcomes Clive's romance with his daughter, but he's
unaware that they've been sleeping together for several years — very
much a no-no in those days. Lady Dare is perfectly happy this
illicit arrangement, which makes her given name slyly symbolic.
But Clive feels he is betraying her father and would like them
to get married.
Hovering over Dare and this late night eircle
is the ominous presence of a strange man mysteriously hanging out
in the garden. That mystery is entertainingly and enlightningly
ratcheted up in the next scene in which Lord Bellington and Clive
confront this stranger. The stranger turns out to be, not a burglar
but a down-on his luck fellow named Tom Smith (Jeremy Beck,
convincingly portraying a man journeying from total despair to man
with a mission), who knows Clive from their days at Cambridge.
As
for the above mentioned election campaign that drives the plot,
by the time the intermission rolls around, Clive, who's the
sure-to-win candidate of the firmly entrenched Conservative Party
candidate, has unwittingly enabled Smith to become his quite
formidable opponent. True to his gentlemanly value system, he as
well as Lord Bellingdon have promised not to reveal Smith's minor
(but to them major) unlawful act.
To ratchet up both the
political and romantic situations, hearing Smith's campaign
speeches, puts a dent in Lady Dare heretofore unquestioning
alliance with her priveleged class. Clearly, both personal and
political conflicts are bound to heat up for a slam-bang
ifinale.
While the opinionated Lord Bellingdon, his
daughter and the two rival candidates areConflict's pivotal
characters the cast also includes two minor characters who make
major contributions: Jasmin Walker as Lady Dare's sophisticated
and wise older friend and confidante Mrs. Tremayne and Amelia White
who is hilariously but amazingly on the mark as Smith's
landlady Mrs. Robinson sum up what they say.
Friday, June 10, 2022
Borgen — rebooted as Borgen-Power and Glory and updated at http://www.curtainup.com
Onscreen and Live Entertainment at http://www.curtainup.com
June 9, 20022 .
Borgen — rebooted as Borgen-Power and Glory
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment