Webster based his White Devil on the historical news-worthy tale of the rise and fall of Vittoria Accoramboni. His dramatization of all that preceded her demise attempts to elevate the Italian corruption scandal into a high-octane tragedy, turning Webster’s accusatory finger at the political and moral state of England at the time of the play’s writing. From the first scene of in-your-face video banishment, The White Devil feels classic and Shakespearian in its importance, engaging in mischief, plots, and schemes that ricochet outward with a campy pulp fiction high intensity. Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg.īacked by cool sleek glass sliding doors and stark white walls, their White Devil has a captivating visual appeal, presenting with an Ivo Van Hove-esque use of video projection and design by Yana Birÿkova (NYTW’s Dead Are My People), surprisingly harsh lighting by Jiyoun Chang (NYTW’s The Slave Play), and startling music and sound by Chad Raines. Lisa Birnbaum, Tommy Schrider, Derek Smith. Red Bull‘s White Devil.
Here at Red Bull, she has grabbed hold of this timely classic with the same bloody vibrato, parceling out the aggressiveness on a clever modernist stage designed with strong appeal by Kate Noll (Rattlestick’s Utility). Looking at her resume, it’s not surprising that Proske is prolific in this slant, directing opera with aplomb for the stage Agriippina at the Lincoln Center, and La Bohème at the Pittsburgh Festival Opera. The play has always been considered grand, dense, and over the top, jumping from passionate temperament to enraged ferocity eagerly and without pause, and Proske has decidedly chosen to dive head first into the dramatics, barely taking a moment to wade in through the moderation of human feeling. She has amplifying the antics with a wicked Tarrantino touch, while sadly divesting it of all intrinsic subtlety and humanistic emotionality. It’s a brave choice, and a daring return especially as reimagined by director Louisa Proske (Barrington Stage’s Gaslight), who has taken the disturbing and diabolical conglomerate of a play and piled it high to overflowing with melodramatic intrigue and deception, upping the ante in violence and operatic appeal. With that in mind, the very modern-day Red Bull Theater has wisely chosen to tackle and produce this very play, in tandem with their upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, boldly marking the red-blooded return to their thematic cornerstone the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, at the time of their take over of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, now that MCC Theater has made its way uptown to their new digs.Īt top, Robert Cuccioli below, Derek Smith, T. As the history books also report, it was performed by an acting troupe by the name of the Queen Anne’s Men, who were, by all accounts (including Webster’s), a poor fit for the play’s complexity, sophistication, and satire. It was considered at the time a “ notorious failure“ with Webster, who is likely more well-known for his classic, The Duchess of Malfi, complaining that the play was produced in “ the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience“. With The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtisan), a tragedy by English playwright John Webster (c.1580–c.1634) first premiered at the old Red Bull Theatre in Clerkenwell, London in 1612.
Oddly enough, or maybe appropriately enough, The White Devil (full original title: The White Devil or, The Tragedy of Paolo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano.
0 kommentar(er)
