His Brides cherish their illusions at the same time that they are demolishing them, and they do so with the same verve Beckett’s people exhibit, burning with life and humor as they sink slowly into death. Modern Bride magazine and The Newlywed Game.
Kondoleon’s premise merely provides an excuse for the playwright to indulge his wildly romantic imagination while zestfully investigating the tacky myth of American women perpetuated by And the lines Kondoleon has fashioned for them are like little pearls – polished, precious, lovingly crafted, each a self-contained item unconnected to the next but together forming a beautiful necklace, utterly decorative yet stunning to behold.Ī play by a man about women’s fantasies could be many things: exaggerated, satirical, campy, bitchy, hateful, misogynistic.ĭisrobing the Bride is none of these. It is as if the missing head of the begowned tailor’s dummy had been transmogrified into a small, tidy chamber inhabited by three of the Bride’s selves contemplating their plight in stories, songs, choruses, and monologues. This rococo musical fantasy apparently takes place in the mind of the mythical Bride moments before she enters the chapel to meet her Groom in marriage. Imagine, if you will, a cantata composed by Kurt Weill for a libretto by Ronald Firbank. The sum total is something exactly the likes of which I’ve never seen before in the theater. Parts of the script have been set to exquisite, equally ephemeral music for violin, cello and guitar by Gary S.
When it’s over, you feel not as if you’ve been told a story but as if you’ve just been given a guided tour of a cloud. Almost as soon as they begin to speak, it becomes clear that Harry Kondoleon’sĭisrobing the Bride is not so much a play as a poetic event. Behind them stands a tailor’s dummy wearing an old-fashioned wedding gown, and they are surrounded on three sides by flimsy walls papered with a hallucinogenic, pale-gray floral pattern. Three attractive women in expensive undergarments take their places at small wooden dressing tables.
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