Editor's note:
The following is an intentionally ironic and exaggerated review of the 2005 production of "A School for Scandal." The article's title is meant to show that in addition to being "of" or about the play, it is written in the school of the play; the reviewer acts as a scandalizing student in the School for Scandal. This piece, then, is a tongue-in-cheek approach to causing a scandal around the production.
- Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"
I will toss into this steaming teabag nothing but the truth, so help me Jumbo, as I see it; and I encourage you to let it steep before burning your tongue by quaffing thirstily what ought to be enjoyed, for now, in its olfactory elements alone. Whiff it lightly and let the moist warmth of its heated activity relax the uptight muscles of your mask-of-a-face.
"The School for Scandal" has no business but its showy business being a Tufts production at all. A confused attempt at moral idiocy, the writing aims at "transparency" amidst a world of masks. Who is so naive as to buy into, in our current social context, a slogan like "Be true to yourself?" If you are, then your antediluvian misery will find company at the theatre this weekend with an outdated author dressed in fancy costumes. Which points to the production's high point: Aesthetically, it's brilliant. Here is the irony: Every blatantly artificial element of the show - which sports the motto of natural self transparency - is nothing short of fabulous.
Thanks to the stylish Luke Brown, the costumes, particularly the way in which their antiquarian designs blend smoothly, subtly, sexily with the modern aspects of the set and sound, amount to an exemplum of the periods that are at play in the play by and large. One can't blame the designers for leaning toward Victorian rather than Georgian flares (the play was written in the Georgian era, a century before the subtly dark extravagance of Victorianism) - the ostentatiously sexy reserve of the Victorian, as it is properly impersonated and propelled into contemporary contexts by the play, shoves the show into the showy arena in which it thrives.
Owing to the cutting eye of scenic designer Ted Simpson, its profligacy even announces itself in the sleek expanse of shiny white space used as the play's stage: This show can afford to go all out and glitter naked right beneath the actors' moves. I wonder if any one of the players can forget that they dance the whole night on that bare ass of a sexy stage. Or can they remember anything in their two-hour-long jouissance with the set? Here are "Scandal's" superlative, most scandalous scenes: the hot, dark (dare I say wet?) crevices betwixt its more traditionally (and traditionally boring) theatrical segments.
Much beholden to Paul Toben and Aaron Held, the Lighting and Sound Designers - here the actors have some f-king fun - a welcomed relief from the strained stay of amateurish discomfort that litters the otherwise grandiloquent atmosphere. Otherwise grandiloquent, save, for the smell. The theater, last weekend at least, reeked of something like wet paint. Probably for the better: Surely the snaky forces behind the show were trying to make us loopy so we wouldn't lock on to the lagging performances that permeated the entire play.
On that note, to the drama department: Tufts just does not have enough talent to support such ensembles. Cut off some characters, for Christ's sake, and cut and mold better the ability of the few able-bodied talents at Tufts (we'd like some of our best to go on to better venues, after all). You should more forcefully, shall we say, give the clue to those who don't have one about acting. I was just not surprised enough by my lack of attention during what should have been major movements in the play. No doubt, this speaks about the writing (thus to the choice of this play in the first place, dear director), but also to the insufficiency of many of the prime performances. Can we please see less acting and more risky embodiments of attractive characters? If I hear one more gaudily theatrical voice in the Balch Arena, performing its insensate (or all too sensate, whichever way you look at it) idea of acting, I might as well spend my time sifting through soggy trash in the dumpsters behind Anna's Taqueria. Both activities are a waste in the least attractive sense of the word.
But "Scandal" wastes in another way as well: financially. Where, after all, did all the money used to create such an elaborate show design come from? Our tuition? Private funding? Both, no doubt; but in either case - what a waste! What a wonderful waste! It is only the show's egregious expense of money on the tantalizingly tawdry that makes it worth anyone's while. If the actors can't fill the bill, Daddy's bucks definitely can. Scandalously wasteful, "Scandal" pleasingly exemplifies excess and artifice whilst promulgating its pithy message of truth and transparency and openness. What a fun turn on itself - the only intrigue the show offers, unless you aren't as inclined as myself and my friends to peruse the audience, the lights on the ceiling, the program or anything else, during the dull guts of it. The only thing that keeps your attention, and keeps it well, is its extravagant mask! If the show took off its scandalous mask, as it asks its audience to do, it would be such a flop it wouldn't even make it into campus gossip! As it is, I, without hesitation, recommend that this weekend, you put on your favorite social mask and go see "The School for Scandal." Laugh at how poor some of the performances are, but enjoy the awesome displays of light, sound and seduction that it offers on the side, as it were, in the smelly cracks between its blandly theatrical body parts.
Benjamin Hilb is a senior who is majoring in English.
