Argonautika
Caught Argounatika, Mary Zimmerman's latest effort, last night at Berkeley Rep. Definitely worth seeing.
I forget sometimes that it doesn't have to take really large corporate budgets to create interesting, inventive, intelligent theatre with imaginative staging that is clever and not expensive to produce.
It's a modern take (in terms of language and attitude anyway) on the Jason and the Argonauts myth story.
Zimmerman is always very inventive in her adaptations. Her genre is always along the lines of adapting myth stories or ancient stories for modern audiences, and she hits the mark again here. I previously have seen Ovid's Metamorphases, and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at Berkeley Rep as well. Zimmerman always writes and directs her own productions and is very improvisational in her style of compiling a show - often writing much of the script, with the cast, during a 4 week rehearsal period (though after extensive research).
As stated, the most fun part for me was seeing how she brought to life things like sea monsters, dragons, a golden ram, big fleets of Greek ships, wind storms, mythological creatures in a way that was actually quite simple, but again, very inventive and imaginative, with an intelligent and funny script that always kept me interested in what was going on and what was coming next.
The acting was (mostly) very strong. The staging and lighting were perfect complements, and even though I did not have the best seat in the house (first row, extreme stage right, couldn't even see part of the stage right part of stage), I was into it the entire time - which is not often the case at theatre these days.
See it if you can.
I forget sometimes that it doesn't have to take really large corporate budgets to create interesting, inventive, intelligent theatre with imaginative staging that is clever and not expensive to produce.
It's a modern take (in terms of language and attitude anyway) on the Jason and the Argonauts myth story.
Zimmerman is always very inventive in her adaptations. Her genre is always along the lines of adapting myth stories or ancient stories for modern audiences, and she hits the mark again here. I previously have seen Ovid's Metamorphases, and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at Berkeley Rep as well. Zimmerman always writes and directs her own productions and is very improvisational in her style of compiling a show - often writing much of the script, with the cast, during a 4 week rehearsal period (though after extensive research).
As stated, the most fun part for me was seeing how she brought to life things like sea monsters, dragons, a golden ram, big fleets of Greek ships, wind storms, mythological creatures in a way that was actually quite simple, but again, very inventive and imaginative, with an intelligent and funny script that always kept me interested in what was going on and what was coming next.
The acting was (mostly) very strong. The staging and lighting were perfect complements, and even though I did not have the best seat in the house (first row, extreme stage right, couldn't even see part of the stage right part of stage), I was into it the entire time - which is not often the case at theatre these days.
See it if you can.
Labels: argonautika, berkeley rep, Mary Zimmerman, theatre
posted by Paul Salinger at 2:53 PM
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