The theater is out in the woods:
And you have to take a bit of a walk up a hill to get there:
But it's exciting to be out under the stars, and not a single mosquito appeared. They must spray the bejeezus out of the place when the Madisonians are not looking.
With a Moliere play, there's the whole problem of translation. Are you really going to try for the endless rhyming couplets? Some, not all, translations do. We heard the Richard Wilbur translation, which really was quite beautifully and cleverly rhymed throughout. At intermission, whenever I spoke one sentence I felt a strange compulsion to try to say a second sentence that would rhyme. I did resist this impulse.
The theme of religion and the lust for power has a lot of resonance today, so let me leave you with a passage:
These charlatans, I say, whose pilgrim souls
Proceed, by way of Heaven, toward earthly goals,
Who weep and pray and swindle and extort,
Who preach the monkish life, but haunt the court
Who make their zeal the partner of their vice --
Such men are vengeful, sly, and cold as ice,
And when there is an enemy to defame
They cloak their spite in fair religion's name,
Their private spleen and malice being made
To seem a high and virtuous crusade,
Until, to mankind's reverent applause,
The crucify their foe in Heaven's cause.
2 comments:
Your nature pictures make awesome desktop backgrounds. Keep posting them!
I'm headed to Spring Green in 2 weeks to see Merry Wives of Windsor. It's pretty much an annual trip and I'm rarely disappointed by APT.
Being a Milwaukee native, I really can only count on one performance. Sounds like Tartuffe is a winner.
Post a Comment