Elizabeth Fair – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:58:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Elizabeth Fair – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” transports audience to rural Mississippi https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/07/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-transports-audience-to-rural-mississippi/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/03/07/cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-transports-audience-to-rural-mississippi/#respond Fri, 07 Mar 2014 08:00:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1083051 For her senior project for Stanford Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), producer and actress Safiya Nygaard '14 chose to take on “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,“ Tennessee Williams’ most famous work. The production, directed by Michael Hunter Ph.D. '13 and put on by the Stanford Theater Laboratory in conjunction with the Department of Theater & Performance Studies, provides a good, if sometimes uneven, introduction to the classic.

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Courtesy of Frank Chen.
Courtesy of Frank Chen.

For her senior project for Stanford Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), producer and actress Safiya Nygaard ’14 chose to take on “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,“ Tennessee Williams’ most famous work. The production, directed by Michael Hunter Ph.D. ’13 and put on by the Stanford Theater Laboratory in conjunction with the Department of Theater & Performance Studies, provides a good, if sometimes uneven, introduction to the classic.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” tells the story of the Pollitt family, which has gathered for the birthday of the patriarch, Big Daddy (James Everett ’13), on his 28,000-acre Mississippi plantation. Big Daddy is dying of cancer, though he and his wife have been misled as to the results of medical tests and thus have a more optimistic outlook. Brick (Max Walker-Silverman ’15), the younger son, and his wife, Maggie (Nygaard), center the play, as Williams examines complicated family dynamics and the despair and tenacity of living life in American society. The play explores complicated, rich themes through this family at a critical point, drawing out into the open their lies, deceit, sexual tensions, love, avarice and fear.

The play is an actors’ showcase: the action takes place in one room, focusing the audience’s attention on the characters, their relationships, and most of all, language. While the 1950s set by Katy Ferron ’14— complete with a large bed smack in the middle of the space and an old television set playing Disney cartoons that feature plenty of deceit and tricks— is beautiful in its detail, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” hinges instead on what the director calls “an incredible lightness of language.” Williams spins poetry of the American vernacular. Lines like “smother her in minks and choke her with diamonds” are rich and playful: a portrait of ownership and desperation but also a zest for life in a few key phrases.

The focus on language and talking to conceal and reveal provides an incredible opportunity but also a great burden for the actors, who despite some unevenness rise to the occasion. When the play kicked off, the actors seemed occasionally overwhelmed by all that they had been asked to juggle. Accents sometimes slipped, and it felt as if the actors were rushing to get through their lines. As the play progressed, however, the actors appeared to relax and feel more comfortable in their skins. They allowed the lines to unfold slowly, settling into the cadences of Williams’ lines and their Southern drawls.

As the actors lost self-consciousness, the characters came to life. The audience consequently became more invested in their relationships and conversations, and the second and third acts were engrossing as we watch old relationships unravel and new ones forged.

The actors did best when playing out confrontational moments with one another; Big Mama (Raine Hoover ’11)’s attempts to reclaim her old position as the ground shifts beneath her feet are particularly affectingly played. Moreover, Alison Valentine ’16 as Mae is perfectly cast and fully inhabits her character, while Nygaard does a fine job with a difficult role.

 

Contact Elizabeth Fair at enfair “at” stanford.edu.

 

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Stanford Theater Laboratory produces Eurydice https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/17/stanford-theater-laboratory-produces-eurydice/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/02/17/stanford-theater-laboratory-produces-eurydice/#respond Mon, 17 Feb 2014 22:49:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1082419 Stanford Theater Laboratory’s production of Eurydice, a one-act play by the contemporary playwright Sarah Ruhl, asks us to consider weighty themes of death, remembrance, and identity through one woman’s choice between a husband and a father. Performed three times last week under the direction of Allison Gold ’15, this unusual and frustrating play draws the audience into an off-kilter world where the mundane becomes magical.

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Courtesy of Alison Valentine.
Courtesy of Alison Valentine.

Stanford Theater Laboratory’s production of Eurydice, a one-act play by the contemporary playwright Sarah Ruhl, asks us to consider weighty themes of death, remembrance, and identity through one woman’s choice between a husband and a father. Performed three times last week under the direction of Allison Gold ’15, this unusual and frustrating play draws the audience into an off-kilter world where the mundane becomes magical.

Ruhl’s Eurydice builds on the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, adding new characters to better flesh out Eurydice’s character and to more effectively explore types of love and remembrance. Setting the action partially in an afterlife that mirrors our own world but diverges sharply in unsettling ways, the playwright attempts to draw out ideas about identity through different refractions. As in the original, Eurydice dies after her wedding to Orpheus, a musician, and he subsequently goes down to the afterlife to recover her.

He is told that Eurydice will follow him out of the underworld if he does not look back. He can’t help it, however, and Eurydice fades back into the land of the dead. Ruhl’s play adds a new piece in the form of Eurydice’s father, who helps her to recover her memory in the land of the dead after she swims through the river of forgetfulness. When Orpheus comes to bring her back, Eurydice now must choose between the father she has reconnected with through childhood memories and the husband who represents growing up.

Much of the theatergoer’s experience of this production will depend on his or her feelings about Ruhl’s works, which can be polarizing. Eurydice resembles Ruhl’s play Dead Man’s Cellphone (put on at Stanford last spring) in that Ruhl attempts to bring out the whimsy in the mundane through tone, often, it seems, at the expense of emotional depth. She combines modern phrasing with poetry and emphasizes the sound of words as much as their meaning.

This can be alternatively transcendental and grating. Ruhl’s dialogue, for instance, often works better than her monologues, since the latter are more susceptible to flights of fancy that lose touch with the emotional center of the play, the relationships between the characters. She also often handles these relationships simplistically, developing her themes with bits of pseudo-philosophy like “Weddings are for fathers and daughters.” This, for me, became tiresome. Nevertheless, the actors seemed to relish Ruhl’s often nonsensical lines. Lucie Fleming ’17 is a standout as Eurydice, offering energy and intent in a role that encompasses both childlike innocence and romantic passion.

Ruhl’s script leaves much of the work of embodying the world to the designers, who do a beautiful job situating the audience in her reality. The set, designed by Keenan Molner ’15 (also the lighting designer) was vibrant and otherworldly, and I particularly enjoyed the slow intimacy of the creation of a room from string. Costume designer Juliet Charnas ’15 and sound designer Brigitte Wittmer ’16 also excelled. Overall, Stanford Theater Laboratory’s production of Eurydice – given the challenges of such a difficult and uneven play – is a thorough and thoughtful one.

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