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TheaterDecember 2007 Group aesthetic by Brooke Allen On the Wooster Group's Hamlet, the Manhattan Theater Club's The Receptionist, and Things We Want at the New Group. In writing about The Misanthrope last month, I had the occasion to think about the nature of very extreme modernizations of classic plays, and the tailoring of such plays to fit whatever esoteric concept directors impose upon them. It struck me that this type of production can work quite well as long as the play itself does not get entirely subsumed by the alien concept. When that happens, then the director might as well write a brand-new vehicle, or hire a writer to do so—something that fits more smoothly into his particular agenda. The Wooster Group’s production of Hamlet, playing this fall at the Public Theater, was conceived on a premise that at first sounds intriguing, but when translated into dramatic terms has proved deeply perverse. Here is the Group’s program note, explaining their idea: Richard Burton’s Hamlet, a 1964 Broadway production, ... This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26 December 2007, on page 40 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/group-aesthetic-3711
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Already a print subscriber? click for online access by Brooke Allen On Conversations in Tusculum at the Public Theater, The Cherry Orchard Sequel at LaMaMa ETC., Gray Area at the Barrow Group, and Next to Normal at the Second Stage Theater. by Brooke Allen On Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall, The Lifeblood at the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, New Jerusalem at the Classic Stage Company, and Two Thousand Years at the New Group. by Brooke Allen On the revival of Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, the Steppenwolf production of August: Osage County, and the return to Broadway of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming forty years after its debut. by Brooke Allen On Of Thee I Sing at Bard Summerscape, and The Understudy & Broke-ology at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. by Brooke Allen On Gypsy at the St James Theatre, Boeing-Boeing at the Longacre Theater, and The New Century at Lincoln Center. by Brooke Allen On In the Heights at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Almost an Evening at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, Parlour Song at the Atlantic Theater, and The Four of Us at Manhattan Theatre Club. New from The New Criterion: ‘Free speech in 
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