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Argonautika
Mar. 30th, 2008 04:52 pmAh, free tickets, the perks of being a prospective Classics major!
We went to Mary Zimmerman's Argonautika today. Because someone I trust liked it, and because it was free, I decided to give it a chance, even though I am (perhaps unfairly) biased against Ms. Zimmerman, since I was ambivalent about her Lucia overall and there were one or two details that didn't work at all, and her Sonnambula for next season looks absolutely terrible. In any case, this production was entirely different.
The word for it is "uneven." In tone and in the quality of both the acting and writing, it varied greatly from scene to scene. She wanted it to be either a straight retelling of the epic, or a comic variation - a dramma giocoso of sorts. And I know I had a post a while back about how hard it is to make that work - it's very easy to just divide the play into two parts, the "funny" parts and the "dramatic" parts. I felt too much that that was what happened here. There was also a lot of falling out of the "high style" in parts that were supposed to be dramatic. For example, when Medea implores Jason not to abandon her, she says "The others have sworn no oath to me; they can abandon me. But you don't have that option." "Option" is far too modern, too clinical, although that's not quite the right word. Maybe it's just that she has a tin ear for things like that - but she shouldn't. And sometimes it was just modern diction, which can work, but that's an all or nothing thing, I think.
It was also bloated. It ran almost three hours, and granted, there's a lot to tell, but not all of it contributes to the overall story, since the epic of the Argo is episodic. Did we really need to have a boxing match between the king of one of the islands and Castor? They took nothing lasting from it that either helped or hindered their journey. Did they really have to stop at Lemnos? It was entertaining, but again, it had no lasting effect.
The acting was all right, I suppose. Jason in particular sounded as though he were in his high school play - his lines were all slightly stilted. This was a common affliction. I do know how hard it is to speak as though it's natural, but they're professionals, and should be able to manage it.
There was narration throughout the play, provided by Athena, or by a chorus of Argonauts. It worked sometimes and not others - Athena's was fairly decent, although I didn't particularly like the actress, as her laughter was often too manic, and again the writing wavered between epic high-style and modern colloquial. I actually did like the chorus most of the time, though. There was a lovely choral part near the end that I thought should have been the end - it said what was going to happen more elliptically than the actual end did. Perhaps I just like open-ended endings, though.
However, I am emphatically against this ending. An epilogue of sorts had Athena and Hera discussing the events, with Athena providing metaphoric analysis as they prepared Medea for death. It broke the fourth wall a lot, which is also very hard to do and still maintain your dramatic anything. And the final scene was the goddesses explaining how all the constellations in the Zodiac relate to the characters in the play, and that you could see them wherever you are, even in - ha, ha - Princeton.
Finally, she altered the myths some, which, to be honest, I don't really have a problem with, since the ancient authors did it too. But some of it was just unnecessary - giving Heracles the rescue of Andromeda, for example, or letting Jason steal Cadmus' deed of sowing the ground with serpents' teeth, and my least favorite, killing Meleager during the voyage of the Argo. That last bothers me only because it screws up the Calydonian Boar Hunt, by the way.
Despite all my negativity, by the way, it was an enjoyable afternoon - my tendency is to be over analytical and over critical.
We went to Mary Zimmerman's Argonautika today. Because someone I trust liked it, and because it was free, I decided to give it a chance, even though I am (perhaps unfairly) biased against Ms. Zimmerman, since I was ambivalent about her Lucia overall and there were one or two details that didn't work at all, and her Sonnambula for next season looks absolutely terrible. In any case, this production was entirely different.
The word for it is "uneven." In tone and in the quality of both the acting and writing, it varied greatly from scene to scene. She wanted it to be either a straight retelling of the epic, or a comic variation - a dramma giocoso of sorts. And I know I had a post a while back about how hard it is to make that work - it's very easy to just divide the play into two parts, the "funny" parts and the "dramatic" parts. I felt too much that that was what happened here. There was also a lot of falling out of the "high style" in parts that were supposed to be dramatic. For example, when Medea implores Jason not to abandon her, she says "The others have sworn no oath to me; they can abandon me. But you don't have that option." "Option" is far too modern, too clinical, although that's not quite the right word. Maybe it's just that she has a tin ear for things like that - but she shouldn't. And sometimes it was just modern diction, which can work, but that's an all or nothing thing, I think.
It was also bloated. It ran almost three hours, and granted, there's a lot to tell, but not all of it contributes to the overall story, since the epic of the Argo is episodic. Did we really need to have a boxing match between the king of one of the islands and Castor? They took nothing lasting from it that either helped or hindered their journey. Did they really have to stop at Lemnos? It was entertaining, but again, it had no lasting effect.
The acting was all right, I suppose. Jason in particular sounded as though he were in his high school play - his lines were all slightly stilted. This was a common affliction. I do know how hard it is to speak as though it's natural, but they're professionals, and should be able to manage it.
There was narration throughout the play, provided by Athena, or by a chorus of Argonauts. It worked sometimes and not others - Athena's was fairly decent, although I didn't particularly like the actress, as her laughter was often too manic, and again the writing wavered between epic high-style and modern colloquial. I actually did like the chorus most of the time, though. There was a lovely choral part near the end that I thought should have been the end - it said what was going to happen more elliptically than the actual end did. Perhaps I just like open-ended endings, though.
However, I am emphatically against this ending. An epilogue of sorts had Athena and Hera discussing the events, with Athena providing metaphoric analysis as they prepared Medea for death. It broke the fourth wall a lot, which is also very hard to do and still maintain your dramatic anything. And the final scene was the goddesses explaining how all the constellations in the Zodiac relate to the characters in the play, and that you could see them wherever you are, even in - ha, ha - Princeton.
Finally, she altered the myths some, which, to be honest, I don't really have a problem with, since the ancient authors did it too. But some of it was just unnecessary - giving Heracles the rescue of Andromeda, for example, or letting Jason steal Cadmus' deed of sowing the ground with serpents' teeth, and my least favorite, killing Meleager during the voyage of the Argo. That last bothers me only because it screws up the Calydonian Boar Hunt, by the way.
Despite all my negativity, by the way, it was an enjoyable afternoon - my tendency is to be over analytical and over critical.
