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Murder by Timidity: BAM's Next Wave and Classic Revivals

Murder by Timidity: BAM's Next Wave and Classic Revivals MURDER BY TIMIDITY BAM’s Next Wave and Classic Revivals Brian Walsh Euripides, Medea, The Abbey Theatre, director: Deborah Warner; William Shakespeare, Macbeth, The Ninagawa Company, director: Yukio Ninagawa. Both presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Fall 2002. he Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival celebrated its twentieth year this season with two classical revivals conspicuous among its theatre offerings. Anchoring the festival were glitzy, large scale productions of Euripides’ Medea and Shakespeare’s Macbeth by prominent directors affiliated with major theatre outfits: Deborah Warner’s Medea, from Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre, and Yukio Ninagawa’s Macbeth, developed in his own Ninagawa Company in Japan. Both directors delivered sensational renditions of creepy old standards, but beneath a polished veneer of competence, these productions were strangely hollow and safe. A hallmark of innovative theatre is the ability to re-open classic plays and render them in creative and original ways, but these versions of Medea and Macbeth lacked the real boldness or fresh vision one hopes for from Next Wave. Improbable as it might seem considering their content, both of these murderous plays were presented as calculated crowd pleasers, leaving the im82 PAJ 74 (2003), pp. 82–87. T pression that as Next http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Murder by Timidity: BAM's Next Wave and Classic Revivals

Walsh, Brian
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 25 (2) – May 1, 2003
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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2003 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/152028103321781592
Publisher site
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Abstract

MURDER BY TIMIDITY BAM’s Next Wave and Classic Revivals Brian Walsh Euripides, Medea, The Abbey Theatre, director: Deborah Warner; William Shakespeare, Macbeth, The Ninagawa Company, director: Yukio Ninagawa. Both presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Fall 2002. he Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival celebrated its twentieth year this season with two classical revivals conspicuous among its theatre offerings. Anchoring the festival were glitzy, large scale productions of Euripides’ Medea and Shakespeare’s Macbeth by prominent directors affiliated with major theatre outfits: Deborah Warner’s Medea, from Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre, and Yukio Ninagawa’s Macbeth, developed in his own Ninagawa Company in Japan. Both directors delivered sensational renditions of creepy old standards, but beneath a polished veneer of competence, these productions were strangely hollow and safe. A hallmark of innovative theatre is the ability to re-open classic plays and render them in creative and original ways, but these versions of Medea and Macbeth lacked the real boldness or fresh vision one hopes for from Next Wave. Improbable as it might seem considering their content, both of these murderous plays were presented as calculated crowd pleasers, leaving the im82 PAJ 74 (2003), pp. 82–87. T pression that as Next

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PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art – MIT Press

Published: May 1, 2003

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