Theater review: Vanity Fair
Mar. 30th, 2019 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxLast night, D. and I went to see Kate Hamill's adaptation of Vanity Fair at the Shakespeare Theater Company, which was really, really fun. It was, according to the playbill, inspired by Victorian burlesque, the sort of rambunctious middle sibling of vaudeville and traditional theater. There were musical numbers! Cross-dressing! Characters breaking the fourth wall to argue with the Narrator and the audience! A catfight between pregnant women in regency ballgowns!
The entire cast was only six people, who – except for the actresses playing Becky and Amelia, but including the Narrator – played a bunch of different characters, and were occasionally supplemented by handheld puppets and/or cardboard cutouts. As a result, everyone played both male and female roles: Amelia's fiance George was played by a woman, for example, and Miss Pinkerton and Aunt Matilda by men. The set was kind of a stage-within-a-stage, with the scenery set by painted backdrops on, like, big wooden frames rolled on and off stage and occasional other furnishings brought on/off by the actors themselves.
The staging was especially creative. A dinner party where Becky tries to seduce Amelia's shy, foppish brother was acted out in exaggerated, repetitive movements, like animatronics; only Becky broke the rhythm, growing more and more frustrated and exaggeratedly flirtatious, pulling "can you believe this dude?" faces at the audience. There were also a few times when two scenes took place onstage at once, with the lines of the two separate conversations alternated to form their own, ironic dialogue or overlapped in significant ways. This was used most significantly in the last scene, to end on a kind of ambiguous note about the characters' possibilities for future happiness.
For all the overall manic, comedic energy of the show, the more serious scenes were well-played, and made all the more impactful by the contrast. A major theme of the play was judgement: Becky and Amelia both broke the fourth wall a few times with monologues on how the audience probably perceived them, and to justify their choices, which were, uh, admittedly not always good ones. But then again, who were we, the comfortable 21st century audience, to judge them? (This was stated almost verbatim, multiple times, by three different characters. Juuust in case we'd missed the point.)
I've never read and/or seen any adaptation of Vanity Fair before this one, and had only cultural-osmosised the vaguest idea of the plot, so this was a fun introduction to the story and good motivation to actually get around to reading it. I downloaded the free iBooks version as soon as I got home!
The entire cast was only six people, who – except for the actresses playing Becky and Amelia, but including the Narrator – played a bunch of different characters, and were occasionally supplemented by handheld puppets and/or cardboard cutouts. As a result, everyone played both male and female roles: Amelia's fiance George was played by a woman, for example, and Miss Pinkerton and Aunt Matilda by men. The set was kind of a stage-within-a-stage, with the scenery set by painted backdrops on, like, big wooden frames rolled on and off stage and occasional other furnishings brought on/off by the actors themselves.
The staging was especially creative. A dinner party where Becky tries to seduce Amelia's shy, foppish brother was acted out in exaggerated, repetitive movements, like animatronics; only Becky broke the rhythm, growing more and more frustrated and exaggeratedly flirtatious, pulling "can you believe this dude?" faces at the audience. There were also a few times when two scenes took place onstage at once, with the lines of the two separate conversations alternated to form their own, ironic dialogue or overlapped in significant ways. This was used most significantly in the last scene, to end on a kind of ambiguous note about the characters' possibilities for future happiness.
For all the overall manic, comedic energy of the show, the more serious scenes were well-played, and made all the more impactful by the contrast. A major theme of the play was judgement: Becky and Amelia both broke the fourth wall a few times with monologues on how the audience probably perceived them, and to justify their choices, which were, uh, admittedly not always good ones. But then again, who were we, the comfortable 21st century audience, to judge them? (This was stated almost verbatim, multiple times, by three different characters. Juuust in case we'd missed the point.)
I've never read and/or seen any adaptation of Vanity Fair before this one, and had only cultural-osmosised the vaguest idea of the plot, so this was a fun introduction to the story and good motivation to actually get around to reading it. I downloaded the free iBooks version as soon as I got home!
no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 07:47 am (UTC)I keep meaning to read that book! Maybe I'll get around to it at some point. :-) A good adaptation would probably be an effective inspiration.
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Date: 2019-03-31 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-31 10:02 am (UTC)