Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "When Rich Keitel agreed to direct 'Room Service,' he became a ghostbuster.
When many older movie fans hear the title 'Room Service,' it calls up images from the classic 1938 Marx Brothers film.
That madcap comedy finds Harpo, Groucho and Chico Marx playing desperate theater professionals who have run out of money and are trying to avoid eviction from their Broadway hotel room while they try find a backer for their show."
4 comments:
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this production to me in a meta sense is the idea of reviving old works with actors who are unfamiliar with previous iterations of the script. The director is completely justified in telling them not to watch the movie because I have seen many instances where a performance simply becomes an imitation of the "master" who made the role popular. Any actor brings something different to a role, and that can cause myriad interesting interpretations of the same text. Some may work better than others, and may be more well-informed by the text than others, but the range of characterizations that can result from interpretation on a blank slate is what makes the process of exploring a character so amazingly captivating for an actor, director, and eventually for the audience.
I saw this production on Friday and thought that it was exceptionally well done. I would question whether this was necessarily the best play to do from a design perspective, because the farcical nature of the play will require a fairly typical placement of scenery. However, I thought that the performers were all very good and were able to keep the show running smoothly at its fast pace. I like that the director didnt have the actors look at old versions of the play itself; rather, he had them study other works that could inspire them to creatively work with certain elements in the script, like the moose head, which I thought was highly amusing and used well by the cast. I think his fresh approach definitely gave the performance energy and appeal for the audience.
It has been my wonder; whether the past produced shows or original movies should be referred to as a research for the design of well-know shows? This article is a good guidance for me to explore the solution.
As far as the musical productions I have designed at school go, the directors have their own experimental ideas, which was very inspirational. They rather wanted to be different from just what Broadway show did. That challenge somewhat brought more effective results more suitable to our theatre.
There happened to be a discussion that Broadway productions were not necessarily perfect in terms of the artistic expression/interpretation of text. That was true. The quality should be perfect, but the interpretation can be different among directors, designers, and actors. As long as the essence of the story was preserved as it should be, the difference might be what all revival production should be enjoyed.
I think the director's method of going about the adaptation was very smart. Typically, when things are translated from the screen to stage, they become boring because the concept wasn't engineered, so to speak, for theatre. Same goes for the actors, they just bring an already existing character onto the stage, and it falls flat. I think the best example is Legally Blonde the musical. At first I was turned off by the idea of the story being changed, but after I saw it I realized it really worked. Yes, it wasn't the same fun loving Elle Woods that I originally had in mind, but it worked nonetheless. I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that taking a movie word for word and turning it into a play isn't always the best option. If the adaptation is good, then you've got a good thing going.
Post a Comment