The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (996 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1559361735 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 300 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Charles Ludlam is a valiant theatrical renaissance man.” Frank Rich, New York TimesThe theatre of parody and travesty became art in the plays of Charles Ludlam, a writer and comedian who manifested in his many plays a truly Aristophanic joy, precision, wit, and shamelessness.”- Donald Lyons, Wall Street JournalFar from shying away from theatrical cliches, Ludlam indulges them to the dizzy limit; the familiar becomes the outrageous, and the result is good farce.” Chicago ReaderThe Mystery of Irma Vep is the most perfect expression of Ludlam’s approach to theatre: a play that simultaneously provokes terror, laughter and a grotesque mockery of all gender, literary and special boundaries.” Michael Feingold, Village VoiceCharles Ludlam's manic, ingenious gothic spoof The Mystery of Irma Vep may be the late author's most delightful creation, a tour de force for two actors that piles on the preposterous plot twists while spewing out a dizzying spray of high- and low-culture in-jokesexquisitely silly.” Charles Isherwood, VarietyBawdy, rip-roaring comedy, scintillating drama and plot twists that involve vampires, werewolves and men in drag, The Mystery of Irma Vep serves up all this and more in a sidesplitting two-hour show.” Chicago Theater BeatIn Camille, Charles Ludlam’s hysterical way with the Lady of the Camellias takes the doomed Dumas and Verdi heroinevia George Cukor and Greta Garboto unexpected heights of pathos and laughter.” San Francisco Chronicle
Visionary Playwright of the 20th Century Charles Ludlum should be read by anyone in the theater; or by anyone who loves theater, and its history. Ludlum combines farce, with wonderfully ridiculous characters in search of great love; in other words, he holds a mirror to the world, and to our society. His plays are brilliantly constructed, funny and sad; yet ultimately magical. As a pioneer in American Theater, Ludlum is due f
During his twenty years with the Ridiculous, he won Obie and Drama Desk awards as well as playwriting fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. As Ludlam himself put it, "This is farce, not Sunday school." This collection includes an introduction by Tony Kushner alongside Ludlam's most famous and celebrated works for the stage:The Mystery of Irma Vep: Ludlam's most famous play, this is a hilarious send up of Daphne de Maurier, Jane Eyre and Victorian cross dressing. The plays are funny, erudite, poetic, transgressive, erotic, moving, and so theatrical they seem the Platonic ideal of everything we mean when we use that word. The plays are the sublime expressions of what Ludlam insisted was not an aesthe