The Playgoer: REVIEW: Propeller's "Twelfth Night" (Time Out)

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Thursday, March 29, 2007

REVIEW: Propeller's "Twelfth Night" (Time Out)

Twelfth Night at BAM photo: Sara Krulwich

David Cote and I split duties this week on covering the visiting Propeller Company at BAM for Time Out New York. He went to Taming of the Shrew. I to Twelfth Night.

Propeller is an all-male Shakespeare ensemble run by Edward Hall (son of Sir Peter). I was mildly impressed with their Midsummer Night's Dream a couple of years ago, missed their recent Winter's Tale, and now was underwhelmed by Twelfth Night, though some aspects were admirable.

For my money, Declan Donnellan's 1994 As You Like It (with Adrian Lester as Rosalind) set the bar pretty high for modern all-male stagings. Propeller, by contrast, feels like very smart Drama School work, but, so far, rarely exciting or very different from what I've seen before of these plays.

Still, nice photo, eh?

1 comment:

J. Kelly said...

Despite your colleague's lukewarm response, I highly recommend you go see the Taming of the Shrew. That comedy (Merchant of Venice, too) is impossible to put on in this day and age, because you either have an unfunny comedy or have to put have the play in air quotes or you have to turn it into a tragedy. Propellor's production is fascinating: they got the framing device to work; they got to keep it a comedy; and they managed to make it disturbing nonetheless. It didn't all work, but it's the closest to a "playable" version I've ever seen.