Comic Timing Research Articles

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre, London, Summer 2007 Othello May 4-August 19, 2007 As each generation's freshman lecture notes make clear, generic distinction is not only about thematic difference but about varieties of dramatic construction. Genre is unfair, for while comedies allow a more or less even spread of lines across the whole company, and therefore facilitate an ensemble effort (among which a single weak performance can be allowed to fade mercifully into the background), tragedies prioritise an individual--Richard III, Coriolanus, Lear. Occasionally two members of the company carry the productions weight upon their shoulders--Antony and Cleopatra, Juliet and Romeo, Iago and Othello. In the case of these pairings, the dramatic structure can make matters even worse. If the pair is not evenly balanced, the virtues of one performance can serve to magnify the shortcomings of the other. Likewise, a poor performance by one of a pair of protagonists will exaggerate the achievements of the other, while, at the same time, intensifying the deficiencies of the production as a whole. A mediocre Iago and a mediocre Othello may be better for a production than an excellent Iago and a lacklustre Othello. Genre is not fair to its players. Unbalanced pairings of players are not fair to the audience. Bluntly and not without reluctance, have to pronounce Eamonn Walker's performance as Othello to be unfit for the purpose. His rapid delivery, redundant enjambment and his tendency to deliver the speeches as though he were line-running in the privacy of his dressing-room made this a vocally under-powered performance. The rapidity of the reviewer's note-taking often necessitates the appropriation of textual fragments and commentary thereon. When the Duke pondered the eloquence and majesty of Othello's wooing he remarked thoughtfully: I think this tale would win my daughter too against which my notes say, no chance. When Desdemona asked her husband, Why do you speak so faintly?, jotted down quite. Walker's hasty and indistinct verbal delivery made his occupation of the role almost inconspicuous. a character of the supposed charisma of Othello, this was all but fatal to the entire production. (That the program credits Patsy Rodenburg as Voice Coach and Giles Block with Text Work makes the modest amplitude of Walker's performance all the more unfortunate.) To make matters worse, the strength and variety, sensitivity and intelligence of Tim McInnerny's Iago served to point up rather than downplay the shortcomings of his opposite number. McInnerny displayed a deft comic timing throughout and vocally, he moved from rapidly delivered repartee to a sonorous bass for I hate the Moor. McInnerny's multifaceted villain was as mercurial and quick-witted as the role demands, improvising his way around tricky situations and concealing his inner void behind a series of ingenious facades. As he lectured his master on the evils of jealousy or expressed his misgivings about the apparently subtle exit of Cassio, he staggered his words, as though the information was being wrung out of him--a device which made the confiding apparently all the more reluctant and so sincere. He discoursed in fits and starts as though he were struggling to censor himself. Perhaps most disarming of all was McInnerny's matter-of-factness when he addressed the audience directly. Alone onstage he turned to us and explained with utter reasonableness how he would displace Cassio, eliminate Roderigo and make Othello love him For making him egregiously an ass. His treatment of Roderigo, played by Sam Crane as a callow and useless sixth-former from an English public school, was comically superior. Roderigo would enter behind him, shrouded in his cape as though ingeniously undercover. Even without turning towards him, Iago would acknowledge his presence as though his omniscience provided him with 360-degree vision. There was more than a touch of the comic savagery of Toby and Andrew between the pair and McInnerny's Iago would frequently raise his eyes to heaven as though to suggest to the audience, How can this man be so gullible? …

The Convent of Pleasure (review)

Presented for the Sixth Biennial International Conference of the Margaret Cavendish Society at Convocation Hall, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. July 9, 2005. Produced and Directed by Gweno Williams. Assistant Directors Gillian Brownson, Monika Karpinska, Stephanie Morley, and Calli Armstrong. Music by Freddy Wilkes and Stephanie Wit-ten. Choreography by Monika Karpinska. With Gillian Brownson (Lady Happy), Ashley Petrovsky (Madame Mediator), Michael Atlin (Princess), Jayson Brown (Monsieur Advisor, Gentleman), Laura Pomeroy (Lady Amorous, Convent Lady), Calli Armstrong (Lady Vertue, Convent Lady), John Browning (Ambassador, Monsieur Facil, Gentleman), Peter Cockett (Mimick), Greg Cruikshank (Monsieur Courtly), Kristian Listrom (Gentleman, Dick), Amit Sharma (Gentleman, Monsieur Take-Pleasure), and Kathryn Allan, Max Goodie, Monika Karpinska, Kate Mackeracher, Kait MacMurray, Stephanie Morley, Stephanie Witten (Convent Ladies). Margaret Cavendish warned at the end of her 1662 volume of plays that believe I shall not go much further, finding my spirits of Fancy grown weak, and dull, and the vein of Wit empty, having lately writ 21 Playes, with 12 Epistles, and one Introduction, besides Prologues, and Epilogues. We can be thankful that she did persevere to write several more plays alongside her growing philosophical oeuvre. In fact, her greatest play, The Convent of Pleasure, was to be the penultimate work in the 1668 Playes Never Before Printed. Without the Convent (and a handful of other plays) it might be easier to argue that Cavendish did not write for performance. But with its concision, wit, and spectacular action, The Convent of Pleasure crystallizes all the dramatic talent scattered piecemeal in her other works. Its richness has generated in recent years a hefty volume of scholarship that has neither exhausted the play nor produced any major interpretive consensus. The Canadian premiere of The Convent of Pleasure took place at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, 9 July 2005. The production by Gweno Williams, Reader in Early Modern Drama at York St. John University College, marked the highpoint of the Sixth Biennial International Conference of the Margaret Cavendish Society and brought together about one hundred audience members from the conference and the wider public. In 1999, Williams founded the Margaret Cavendish Performance Project and has developed, produced, and recorded on DVD and video six hitherto unperformed Cavendish plays. This conference production drew upon her experience over a decade conducting research and workshops on Cavendish and early modern dramatic performance. The Convent was staged in Convocation Hall on campus, in a simple, open playing space surrounded by the audience. This staging suggested a private production in the hall of a great house such as Bolsover or Welbeck, and emphasized the fact that with simple costumes, a few hand-held props, and minimal musical accompaniment, Cavendish had all the materials necessary to conjure a vivid theatrical illusion. Cavendish's insistent interrogation of norms of gender and sexuality was the guiding principle behind Williams's production. The play's precipitating event is the death of Lady Happy's father, which leaves her an orphan and the prey of fortune-hunting men. In this way, the play appears to open with a plotline common to countless Restoration comedies--one J. Douglas Canfield usefully termed the tricksters and estates plot--but it soon becomes clear that Cavendish disappoints any expectations of a standard sex farce. Inspired by the chance of successfully wooing the handsome, young, rich, and virtuous Lady Happy, the gentlemen in this production were all comic energy, increasingly drunk and desperate as their hopes were dashed by the yard-thick walls of the convent and the self-contained pleasures of the all-female space. In stylish period white blouses and black satin breeches, the men showed excellent comic timing and physical acumen. …

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. By Thomas Doherty. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xvi, 430 pp. Cloth, $49.50, ISBN 0-231-11094-4. Paper, $19.50, ISBN 0-231-11095-2.) Get access Robert E. Snyder Robert E. Snyder University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 3, December 2000, Page 1085, https://doi.org/10.2307/2675386 Published: 01 December 2000