All That Chat - re: DARKEN IT

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re: DARKEN IT

Posted by:	schauspieler 11:07 am EDT 08/08/14
In reply to:	DARKEN IT - sandcastle 05:55 am EDT 08/08/14

I disagree with you, Brantley and other reviewers who feel that the show pulls its punches and isn't dark enough, especially because it focuses more on the love between the two main characters. First of all, this is not the play Durrenmatt wrote, it's an adaptation with McNally's and Kander and Ebb's particular slant on the material. The show I saw was plenty dark, from the set and costume design, to the bitingly ironic songs by the townspeople, to Clare's retelling of her life story complete with eunuch chorus. If that wasn't sinister, I don't know what is. As for the denouement, and Clare's and Anton's last scene together - what could be darker than a woman who holds the life of a lover in her hands realizing that in spite of her lifelong quest for revenge, she still loves him, and a man who realizes that he threw away the only true love he would find in life for status and material comfort, and both of them accepting that she will follow through with her revenge in a twisted desire to possess him, and he will submit to it out of a sense of guilt and in the belief that his death is the only thing he has left to offer her. And all with heart stoppingly beautiful music.

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