Sunday, July 17, 2011

Review: "The Venetian Twins" in The Arts Fuse

Last week I took a road trip to Lenox, Massachusetts to review Shakespeare & Company's production of Carlo Goldoni's The Venetian Twins for The Arts Fuse. Goldoni, of course, had an interesting relationship to the commedia dell'arte tradition:

As a playwright, [Goldoni] saw himself on a mission to replace the commedia with comedy that proffers a more classical form: Instead of actors improvising upon a loosely sketched scenario, Goldoni wrote three-act scripts that adhered to the Aristotelian unities and even wrote librettos for the emerging genre of opera buffa. Still, though he rejected improvisation, Goldoni preserved many of the iconic characters of the commedia for centuries.
The Venetian Twins runs through to August 27th.