Results tagged “jirizizka”

Perhaps the thing with which I've struggled most, when it comes to Terry Johnson's Hysteria, onstage through this weekend at the Wilma Theater, is how to describe it. What starts off as a traditional door-slamming farce—albeit one tinged with Freudian overtones—that presents the unlikely pairing of Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalí eventually vacillates between absurdism and the completely surreal, the farce all but forgotten by the show's close. Taken in parts, these elements work, but combined, it becomes difficult to determine whether the play is clever or disjointed, let alone to determine whether I actually enjoyed it.

I'm a bit of an Anglophile. I love British just-about-everything, except for the food. But I especially love British humor. And after attending and enjoying a staged reading of Roy Smiles' last spring, I figured I'd really love the fully-mounted production at The Wilma Theater.

Walking into the Wilma Theater's transformed auditorium, draped in white fabric with cardboard chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, all drawn aside and covered in artificial cobwebs, it's impossible not to feel completely immersed in the world of Peter Shaffer's , thanks equally to set designer Robert Pyzocha, costume designer Janus Stefanowicz, and lighting designer Jerold R. Forsyth. Soon enough, you'll discover that it's intentional: you feel a part of the play because you are. Antonio Salieri (Dean Nolen) will be addressing you this evening, invoking you, his visitors from the future, to bear witness to this, his final night. It's only fitting that you should be attending on his whims from within his decrepit home.

There are certain things that I'm willing to accept from books that I struggle with on the stage. That's why for me, stage adaptations don't always work. (Okay, so I love in high school—you knew they were all speaking Greek, even if you weren't reading Greek.)

The premise is simple and nothing new: a man, taken into custody for reasons he's not aware of. He is taken to a secret jail and interrogated, tortured even, by two police officers of a totalitarian state that seems like it could be Soviet but might not be. When he won't—can't?—speak, his only living brother, "special" in all the politically correct ways of speaking, is questioned too, used to bait the man who still doesn't understand how he could have been brought to that cell.