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Speaking of Inexplicable Conservatism ...
This was going to be a comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maliwane's post, but then it got long so I moved it.
I have always loved, loved, loved The Crucible -- for all its high drama and extreme Millerian lack of subtlety. There's them what prefers Death of a Salesman, but that's a whole different kind of play for me. The agony in Salesman is quiet and excruciating; in Crucible it's unstoppable and terrifying.
It is always profoundly satisfying to me when Elizabeth, bless her, gets the attention she deserves. She has some of the by-god best stuff in the whole play, but way way WAY too many directors see it as a play about John and Abigail and give Elizabeth short shrift. A damn shame, that.
The film with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder (and Joan Allen as Elizabeth! [g]) pissed me off, frankly, because I've been raised to disapprove when film versions of plays aren't faithful to the original. I'm less resistant to changes from novels to movies, because prose and film are different media -- but live theatre and film are far less different, and I therefore expect more correspondence. I know it's not rational. I know there have been excellent film versions that differed from the live versions. Cabaret is the logical extreme example of this -- but really, the movie is so different from the stage version they're really almost two different things by the same name. (Almost. Not quite.) But I don't like it.
Ordinarily it wouldn't be so frustrating -- I'd just disapprove and move on, or file it under "interesting choice" and move on, or whatever. (It's a nice touch to have Donalbain go meet the witches on the heath, Mr. Polanski, but the thing about Shakespearean tragedies is that they resolve at the end. That's what makes them more emotionally bearable than the Greeks. The closure. The next-cycle-begins thing is dramatically effective, but it ain't right. On the other hand, Messrs. Zeffirelli and Luhrman did interesting things with their respective Romeo and Juliets -- Romeo passing Friar John on the road, Juliet waking up and seeing Romeo just after he's swallowed the poison -- of which I heartily approve.) But what compounds the trouble with The Crucible is that it was Miller himself who did the messing-around with it. Grr. Arrgh.
maliwane's post, but then it got long so I moved it.I have always loved, loved, loved The Crucible -- for all its high drama and extreme Millerian lack of subtlety. There's them what prefers Death of a Salesman, but that's a whole different kind of play for me. The agony in Salesman is quiet and excruciating; in Crucible it's unstoppable and terrifying.
It is always profoundly satisfying to me when Elizabeth, bless her, gets the attention she deserves. She has some of the by-god best stuff in the whole play, but way way WAY too many directors see it as a play about John and Abigail and give Elizabeth short shrift. A damn shame, that.
The film with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder (and Joan Allen as Elizabeth! [g]) pissed me off, frankly, because I've been raised to disapprove when film versions of plays aren't faithful to the original. I'm less resistant to changes from novels to movies, because prose and film are different media -- but live theatre and film are far less different, and I therefore expect more correspondence. I know it's not rational. I know there have been excellent film versions that differed from the live versions. Cabaret is the logical extreme example of this -- but really, the movie is so different from the stage version they're really almost two different things by the same name. (Almost. Not quite.) But I don't like it.
Ordinarily it wouldn't be so frustrating -- I'd just disapprove and move on, or file it under "interesting choice" and move on, or whatever. (It's a nice touch to have Donalbain go meet the witches on the heath, Mr. Polanski, but the thing about Shakespearean tragedies is that they resolve at the end. That's what makes them more emotionally bearable than the Greeks. The closure. The next-cycle-begins thing is dramatically effective, but it ain't right. On the other hand, Messrs. Zeffirelli and Luhrman did interesting things with their respective Romeo and Juliets -- Romeo passing Friar John on the road, Juliet waking up and seeing Romeo just after he's swallowed the poison -- of which I heartily approve.) But what compounds the trouble with The Crucible is that it was Miller himself who did the messing-around with it. Grr. Arrgh.