The Playgoer: Poster of the Day

Custom Search

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Poster of the Day

Ok, not an unfamiliar one this time. But worth having at least one from the ubiquitous James McMullan, Lincoln Center Theatre's resident poster-man for the last umpteen years.

I agree with reader Brian that this is one of McMullan's best--for Nicholas Hytner's revisionist staging of Rodgers and Hamerstein's "Carousel," at the Vivian Beaumont, 1994.

Says Brian:

In a sense it's a traditional American musical image, but it conveys the sense of underlying darkness and menace that Hytner's direction brought out in this great great musical. Like the production itself...I think it cuts through a lot of the accumulatedcultural baggage of how Rodgers and Hammerstein have come to seem to contemporary audiences and returns us to the primal (and youthful) energies and passions that drive this show.

Must be that campfire-like, low front-lighting effect, eh? And those out of control horses. Which I just realize recall that classic Platonic image (from the Phaedrus?) of the passions as an unruly chariot, don't they?

No comments: