Having abandoned the symbolic stage-trappings, Bergman had to find, to invent for himself, a valid way of dealing with "the agony of the couple," as he called it.
I hear up-tempo, five-piece-band rock with lyrics about Jesus, and I instinctively look for oversize video screens; hip, youthful ushers; and headset-miked preachers in jeans stalking a stage — all the trappings of the market-tested mega-church.
But the piece, performed at the David H. Koch Theater on Thursday evening, is fairly ordinary: a purposely obscured affair for a dimly lighted stage, where the trappings of modern dance meet those of ballet — in other words, a fluid spine becomes entangled with sharp point-work.
Truth be told, there's something about his words all by their lonesome that smacks of taxidermy: their pulse depends not only on the visceral artistry of vocal delivery but on the stage personas and narrative trappings so vital to Porter's collaborative medium.
One of the most famous venues in the Western world, the Colosseum, "dedicated AD 80 with a hundred days of games, held fifty thousand spectators," and in it audiences "enjoyed "blood sport with the trappings of stage shows".
Hedgecock and Nowrick have the same goal as Andrews and Adams — they want to see jousting divested from its Renaissance-fair trappings and staged as a competitive equestrian sport.
Both dramas played out on stages decked with the trappings of wealth and privilege — palaces and country estates — interwoven with considerations of a nation's destiny that were surely in the public interest: a constitutional crisis at the heart of the monarchy in 1936, and questions of Britain's security in the Cold War battles between East and West.
In this case, an arena rock grandeur is found lurking within the decidedly lo-fi Beasties track, long after the group had left the trappings of big stage rock-influenced anthems (like on their first record) far behind.
Here were great big stories told in music, but which needed no staging and none of the trappings of theatre.
He said he was exploring the possibility of staging special events with literary trappings, including one with a book-of-the-month theme.
English Touring Opera's latest presentation is Bach's St John Passion, but their approach is not operatic in the sense of staging the work with the trappings of costume and props.
