专八
"When I direct Shakespeare," theatrical innovator Peter Sellars once said, "the first thing I do is go to the text for cuts. I go through to find the passages that are real heavy, that really are not needed, places where the language has become obscure, places where there is a bizarre detour. And then I take those moments, thoseelements, and I make them the centerpiece, the core of the production."
In the sober matter of staging Shakespeare, such audaciousness is hard to resist--though a lot of Chicago theatre-goers have been able to. Typically, a third of the people who have been showing up at the Goodman Theatre to see Sellars' ingenious reworking of The Merchant of Venice have been walking out before the evening is over. It's no mystery, why? The evening isn,t over for nearly four hours. Beyond that, the production pretty much upends everything the audience has come to expect from one of Shakespeare's most troubling but reliable entertaining comedies.
The play has been transplanted from the teeming, multicultural world of 15th century Venice, Italy, to the teeming, multicultural world of 1994 Venice Beach, California, where Sellars lives when he isn't setting Don Giovanni in Spanish Harlem, putting King Lear in a Lincoln Continental or deconstructing other classic plays and operas. Shylock, along with the play's other Jews, is black. Antonio, the merchant of the title, and his kinsmen are Latinos. Portia, the wealthy maiden being wooed by Antonio's friend Bassanio, is Asian. But the racial shuffling is just one of Sellars' liberties. The stage is furnished with little but office furniture, while video screens simulcast the actors in dose-up during their monologues, (and, in between, display seemingly unrelated Southern California scene, from gardens and swimming pools to the L. A. riots). Cries of anguish come from the clowns, and the
playfully romantic final scene, in which Portia teases Bassanio for giving away her ring to the lawyer she played in disguise, is re-imagined as the darkest, most poisonously unsettling passage in the play.
Some of this seems to be sheer perversity, but the real shock of Sellars' production is how well it works both theatrically and thematically. The racial casting, for instance, is a brilliant way of defusing the play's anti- Semitism--tuming it into a metaphor for prejudice and materialism in all its forms. Paul Butler is a hardhearted ghetto businessman who, even when he is humiliated at the end, never loses his cool or stoops for pity.
Wrongheaded and tortuous as this Merchant sometimes is, the updating is witty and apt. The "news of the Rialto" becomes fodder for a pair of gossip reporters on a happy-talk TV newscast. Shylock's trial is presided over by a mumbling, superannuated judge who could have stepped right out of Court TV. With a few exceptions- Elaine Tse's overwrought Portia, for instance---the actors strike a nice balance between Shakespeare's poetry and Sellars' stunt driving. For the rest of us, it's a wild ride.
What's the main topic of the passage?
A．The Merchant of Venice adapted by Sellars
B．Success of the newly performed The Merchant of Venice
C．Peter Sellars's artistic style
D．The shooting of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
第二段指出在芝加哥很多经常去剧院的人都抵制这种大胆的改编，因为改编后的剧本颠覆了人们对莎翁戏剧的传统理解。
第三段具体介绍了PeterSellars对莎翁的剧作在舞台布置、背景、情节等方面所做的改动。
第四段指出Sellars的改编剧最令人震惊的是戏剧性和主体性的完美结合，改编后的剧本削弱了原剧中的反反犹太主义(anti-Semitism)的部分。
最后一段指出Sellars的改编剧很机智、灵巧。
试题解析
A。本题考查主旨，应着眼于全文。本文花了大量的篇幅介绍Sellars改编后的《威尼斯商人》，描述观众对它的反应，详细地介绍它在哪些地方对原作做了改动等等。A是对原文核心内容的概括总结。D在原文中并未提及，B和c则只是原文中的细节。故A为正确答案。
你可能感兴趣的试题
A．selects the key moments in
B．abridges
C．completely changes
D．keeps
A．The adaptation is awkward and meaningless.
B．It is popular with Chicago theater-goers.
C．It is not favored by the andienc.
D．It meets the audience's expectation.
A．is much more difficult to understand
B．is always clear in language
C．presents a negative viewpoint towards the Semitics
D．is not as popular as his tragedies
最新试题
Some famous athletes and entertainers earn millions of dolla
Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand th
中华民族历来尊重人的尊严和价值。还在遥远的古代，我们的先人就已提出“民为贵”的思想，认为“天生万物，唯人为贵”，一切社会
第（50）题__________.
第（49）题__________.
第（48）题__________.
第（47）题__________.
第（46）题__________.
第（45）题__________.
第（44）题__________.