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And So It Goes, a play by George F. Walker, is the story of Ned (played by Peter Donaldson) and Gwen (played by Martha Burns), who face their daughter Karen’s (played by Jenny Young) schizophrenia and subsequent death as well as their own financial ruin. Both Gwen and Ned possess an imaginary friend and therapist of sorts, the author (and very dead) Kurt Vonnegut (played by Jerry Franken). The play was written and directed by George F. Walker. A review of The Factory Theatre’s performance of And So It Goes, from the February 18, 2010 performance, will take into account the art direction, script and performances to assess the function of these elements in the play.

The art direction, specifically the set and many of the props, was the most disappointing element of the play. The set (designed by Shawn Kerwin) consisted of black flats of varying sizes, placed sporadically around the stage. They also had various paintings on them, which were supposed to be indicative of what was going on in that area of the stage, rather than a realistic portrayal of a location. For instance, the section of the stage that was supposed to be the home had a backdrop of children playing, as well as a crazy-looking eye and an equally crazy-looking baby. While it is easy to respect the artistic decision of painting representations of ideas rather than sets, it is the execution of it that was highly disappointing. The effect of the black, occasionally painted flats was reminiscent of the mazes they create at LazerQuest, and overall the look appeared to be very cheap. The set can be cheap; it just should not look cheap.

Although music has been a part of theater since ancient times, the musical theater we know and love today was born in the United States. America can lay claim to being the nursery of a unique form that used song and dance as a means of furthering the action of the text or revealing information about a character.

In 1866 the combination of a French ballet troupe without a performing venue and a newly written melodrama in need of enhancement produced a happy accident known as The Black Crook. Elevating respect for musical theater it generated a new audience and an unsurpassed box office. It contributed more to the public’s acceptance of musical theater than any work up to that point. The profitable success of The Black Crook proved that America had given birth to a new art form.

Musical theater in the United States has always informed itself in context with the fabric of American society. The waves of immigrants flooding into the United States at the turn of the twentieth century fueled the work of artists like George M. Cohan. Born of Irish descent, Cohan’s hit Little Johnny Jones, portrayed a Irish American patriot in Britain who was the epitome of a Yankee.

It’s not all about the West end! If you want a great theatrical experience in London that isn’t the pre-packaged musicals that come straight from Broadway (hardly a change of scenery for American tourists), then you might want to consider the other exciting London venues.

I’ll start with my very favorite, the first theatre I visited as a student in London:
The BAC, also known as the Battersea Arts Centre.

Its on Lavendar Hill, and you can get there by train stopping at Clapham Junction station, or by tube stopping either at Clapham Common or Stockwell. The tickets are between 5 and 10 pounds (10 to 20 dollars). Many physical theatre companies have started out there and come again for every new show. The strong point of the BAC is definitely its poetical slant on physical theatre, bordering between mime, dance, and straight acting. The atmosphere is also very friendly, and there are some great festivals throughout the year.

Mafia Daughter (The Play) is a three act comedy/drama written by Mike Ferruzza, Jr. Inspired by an idea from Erin Cohenour. Cohenour had appeared previously with the playwright in Die! Mommie! Die! and thought she’d like to play a role of a mafia princess. She was muse for the project in its writing stage. Ferruzza. directed the show and appeared as the character Don Angelina during the world premiere run in May 2009 at Theatre on the Square in Indianapolis, IN.

The play is set in the home of crime boss Vincent Angelina in New York City. Each of the three acts covers an era in Angelica Angelina’s life.The first act is set in the 1950s, when the crime family is at an impasse following the death of the Don’s wife. Angelica is a teen wallflower and bullied by her two elder brothers, Vince Jr and Paulie. They set Angelica up on a blind date with someone ‘outside the family business’. He turns out to be Tom Raines, a budding IRS agent.

The theater in ancient Greece was ancient even to the ancient Greeks themselves. By the time the works of playwrights like Aeschylus were performed in the Hellenistic heyday, Aristotle was reduced to guessing as to how it all began. And likely, many of the specifics are lost irretrievably to history. But the tradition that was left in place has influenced the theatrical tradition for thousands of years, and reaches into modern-day expectations of how a story is to be told.

GREEK THEATER’S ORIGINS

The two main types of Greek plays, comedies and tragedies, are thought to have evolved separately. Comedy was thought to have come out of the festivals honoring Bacchus and Dionysus, gods associated with the baser aspects of humanity such as food and fertility. By the fifth century, there would be an annual spring Dionysus festival where three selected poets would perform tributes on a sloped hillside, perhaps one of the earliest existing outdoor theater sites.

Tragedies evolved out of perhaps a nobler tradition, the desire to educate the public about important parts of local and world history. Tributes would be paid to various gods and battle warriors in a pageant-style fashion. Strangely, far more plays of Greek legend and myth survive than works dedicated to actual history, perhaps because their timeless quality caused them to translate better to future generations.

Satyagraha – M. K. Gandhi in South Africa
An opera in three acts by Philip Glass performed by the English National Opera (ENO) at the London Coliseum, Summer 2007.

Adapted from the text of the Bagavada Gita by Constance De Jong. Book by Philip Glass and Constance De Jong.

After last season’s spectacular performance of John Adams’ Nixon in China, one might be forgiven for having great expectations of ENO in this genre.

The Glass score did not disappoint, as a dazzling work of passionate and mystical intensity, with a worthy performance of it by the orchestra under Johannes Debus.

This production of Satyagraha though, had some serious structural flaws, both in the interpretation of the work as articulated artistically, as well as in the casting and performances by the soloists.

In general, there was a poor balance of forces between the soloists and the orchestra, with the soloists completely overwhelmed at times. While the props and set were indeed impressive, they sometimes seemed to lack any meaningful connection with the fundamental point of the work or indeed with Gandhi himself.

Good old Will has been out of copyright for a very long time, which means that anyone can take a pair of scissors to his stage work and reissue it with impunity. It’s been going on since the Restoration. The motives of editors and rehashers are many and varied. Yet overall, Shakespeare is revered. Bardolatry, Bernard Shaw called its excesses.

As for cutting his plays, well, consider how lucky we are to have reproducible Shakespeare plays at all. In the great man’s day it was a strange notion to have plays from the common stage published for the benefit of future generations. Plays were for experiencing, by a largely illiterate audience, not for studying off the page. As far as the commoners’ playwrights were concerned, their work was ephemeral. For example, scholars have tried in vain to find any copies of plays by known authors such as Henry Chettle or Tom Watson: the plays just weren’t preserved. The picture is complicated by the common practice of writing in teams. Elizabethan playwriting evidently was somewhat akin to churning out scripts for an insatiable TV series. It must have been messy to work out who owned what.