Even in French, the play's theatrical virtues are not immediately apparent.
My own inclination in the matter of celebrity casting is that I'm fer it -- with all due kow-towing to the value and virtue of theatrical craft.
The Mexican sculptor and conceptualist, forty-seven years old, is easily the best artist to have emerged on the era's global biennial circuit — a milieu whose chaotic demands for theatrical pizzazz and political virtue have wrecked innumerable promising talents.
These moments nicely combine theatrical practicality – making a virtue of the circumstance that a theatre such as the Kilburn Tricycle cannot afford large casts – with dramatic invention: a version of Bertolt Brecht's anti-realistic devices, but played for laughs rather than demonstration of theory.
It's only when we get past the interval that Pelly seemingly recognises the virtues of theatrical stillness, as Stéphanie d'Oustrac's Béatrice grapples with her feelings for Bénédict in sudden isolation, before their final spat takes place on a nearly bare stage.
The Mikado himself observes: "It's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances".
Some military analysts also think that the zone is slowly turning the FARC into a sedentary force, marked by internal dissension and corruption.With public confidence in the "peace process" vanishing, in early February Mr Pastrana made another of the bold theatrical gestures that are his chief political virtue.
Or is it better to heed the wise words of the Mikado, who told his luncheon guests that "I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances".
To these questions, Kneehigh provided the answers in the form first of an exhilaratingly theatrical celebration of all the film's virtues: its sincerity, sense of place and throbbing undertow of frustrated longing.
Like those early talkies "The Music Man" has the immense virtue of preserving a moment in theatrical history that otherwise would have faded away.
