2008 Woodie Awards
'Favour' Finds Tom Stoppard Production Deservedly So
Allison Quady Arts Editor
Issue date: 12/5/01 Section: Arts
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"Every Good Boy Deserves Favour," directed by Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli, opened late Friday evening in Wright Theatre, allowing ample time for the audience to gaze at the entire Middlebury College Orchestra assembled onstage. With glistening instruments, the orchestra, tuned up and played at their whim. Conductor Evan Bennett's tuxedo tails lay undisturbed, waiting for the moment when he would take charge.
The actors looked incredibly uncomfortable. Sitting with intense consternation or aimlessly wandering with a triangle, Jesse Hooker '02 and Sean Nelson '02 were dwarfed by the spectacle behind them. Forced into such a small downstage position, so close to such a vast audience, with their upstage retreat blocked by many musicians, the playing space mimicked the physical and mental entrapment in the play's content.
"Every Good Boy Deserves Favour," written by Tom Stoppard circa 1978, more than a decade before the downfall of the Soviet Union, is unlike most other Stoppard plays because it was intended for a specific political purpose. According to Professor of English and Film John Bertolini's program note, Stoppard believed less in political theatre as a means to enact a concrete objective, than as a medium for establishing a greater morality from which future political ideals are formed. However, the incarceration of political prisoners in Soviet mental hospitals struck a chord with Stoppard and this play was written specifically in support of their release.
As an audience, we first meet the madman, Alexander Ivanov, played comically and well by Nelson, listening to the orchestra in his head. The orchestra is, of course, present to the audience in like manner as it is to Ivanov, rising upstage behind him. He has only to lift his triangle and the orchestra begins. Guided in theory by the madman, in reality by the conductor, the entire orchestra is understood to somehow fit inside the head of Ivanov.
Having met the madman, the audience is introduced to another prisoner with the same name. The confusion of identity is one of the numerous ways in which Stoppard's sense of humor encourages his political aim. By confounding the identity of the two men we compare the sanity of each and, in turn, the sanity of their imprisonment. Hooker plays Alexander in a straightforward manner, delivering the lines regarding his history and the specific politics surrounding the play directly into the audience. The political agenda cannot be mistaken and is clearly intended for debate amongst the public. As a result of Hooker's focus on the audience while delivering his story, a marked distinction of focus is inevitably made when the story turns inward in working out the relations between the characters. It is a clear and necessary separation between the political and the personal needed for the audience interest and for the success of the play.
The actors looked incredibly uncomfortable. Sitting with intense consternation or aimlessly wandering with a triangle, Jesse Hooker '02 and Sean Nelson '02 were dwarfed by the spectacle behind them. Forced into such a small downstage position, so close to such a vast audience, with their upstage retreat blocked by many musicians, the playing space mimicked the physical and mental entrapment in the play's content.
"Every Good Boy Deserves Favour," written by Tom Stoppard circa 1978, more than a decade before the downfall of the Soviet Union, is unlike most other Stoppard plays because it was intended for a specific political purpose. According to Professor of English and Film John Bertolini's program note, Stoppard believed less in political theatre as a means to enact a concrete objective, than as a medium for establishing a greater morality from which future political ideals are formed. However, the incarceration of political prisoners in Soviet mental hospitals struck a chord with Stoppard and this play was written specifically in support of their release.
As an audience, we first meet the madman, Alexander Ivanov, played comically and well by Nelson, listening to the orchestra in his head. The orchestra is, of course, present to the audience in like manner as it is to Ivanov, rising upstage behind him. He has only to lift his triangle and the orchestra begins. Guided in theory by the madman, in reality by the conductor, the entire orchestra is understood to somehow fit inside the head of Ivanov.
Having met the madman, the audience is introduced to another prisoner with the same name. The confusion of identity is one of the numerous ways in which Stoppard's sense of humor encourages his political aim. By confounding the identity of the two men we compare the sanity of each and, in turn, the sanity of their imprisonment. Hooker plays Alexander in a straightforward manner, delivering the lines regarding his history and the specific politics surrounding the play directly into the audience. The political agenda cannot be mistaken and is clearly intended for debate amongst the public. As a result of Hooker's focus on the audience while delivering his story, a marked distinction of focus is inevitably made when the story turns inward in working out the relations between the characters. It is a clear and necessary separation between the political and the personal needed for the audience interest and for the success of the play.