Reviews for Everyman

The average rating for Everyman based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-07-26 00:00:00 Tommy Tucker I found this by way of Carol and Drina, both of whom play the part of Margaret. Which is to say I already had an idea of the play's direction even before I read it, and a certain degree of approval, too, given the way two separate authors had glowingly described it. Here, for example, from Carol Goes on the Stage: Carol took a deep breath, flung back her head, and sprinted out into the moonlight, calling over her shoulder, "Daddy! Daddy! I have won! Here is the place!" She was dimly aware as she made her entrance that somebody was doing something to the lights. The tree, as she approached it, glimmered with an increased, dazzling brilliance, and a moment later a soft spotlight fell upon her, following her, so that wherever she went the eerie sinister green of the wood was blotted out by radiance.If all you get from that is that Margaret's a part good enough for the protagonist of a novel, along with an emphasis on lighting and an evil wood, you've got the gist of it. Though that's not quite the full experience of reading the play, it turns out. Dear Brutus is Barrie's elaboration on the Caesar quote, how the fault is in ourselves. It presents a wood that only appears at Midsummer, in the garden of a puckish little man name Lob, in which characters get those second chances they always imagine having. Mostly, they make the same decisions all over again, even in different circumstances, which is spun out really well once they get out of the wood and recognize these truths. But then there's Dearth, who wanted a child, and gets a daughter - just for an hour - and comes out of the wood knowing exactly what he's missing. It's a heartbreaking bit of poignancy in a play that's largely satirical. What's that phrase - so sharp you don't realize you've cut yourself? That's the degree of wit here. The satire is helped by the stage directions. A big chunk of the text is stage direction; I'd like to see an adaptation just to see a) how directors handle Barrie's instructions and b) how the work stands without those directions, which lend the work such a strong sense of place and mood. I mean, just look at this writing: The scene is a darkened room, which the curtain reveals so stealthily that if there was a mouse on the stage it is there still. Our object is to catch our two chief characters unawares; they are Darkness and Light. The room is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of the obscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's garden bathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room and garden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is only the pause in which old enemies regard each other before they come to the grip. The moonshine stealing about among the flowers, to give them their last instructions, has left a smile upon them, but it is a smile with a menace in it for the dwellers in darkness. What we expect to see next is the moonshine slowly pushing the windows open, so that it may whisper to a confederate in the house, whose name is Lob. But though we may be sure that this was about to happen it does not happen; a stir among the dwellers in darkness prevents it. These unsuspecting ones are in the dining-room, and as a communicating door opens we hear them at play. Several tenebrious shades appear in the lighted doorway and hesitate on the two steps that lead down into the unlit room. The fanciful among us may conceive a rustle at the same moment among the flowers. The engagement has begun, though not in the way we had intended.I know this isn't as famous as Peter Pan - no movie or Broadway musical about the writing of this one! - but Dear Brutus is funny and smart and beautifully written, and just a little bit devastating. Which means I like it much more than I've ever liked Peter Pan.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-14 00:00:00 Suzanne Gray Description: AIn a magic wood, on Midsummer's eve, a second chance is offered to those who believe they've taken the wrong turning in life. Some will take the same path, while others will have a precious glimpse of what can now never be... Written in 1917, JM Barrie's play was adapted by Jeffrey Segal. Starring Bernard Hepton as Dearth; Frances Jeater as Jenny Dearth; Jenny Quayle as Margaret; Lob as Jeffrey Segal; Geoffrey Beevers as Jack Purdie; Carole Boyd as Mabel Purdie; Jane Knowles as Joanna Trout; Stephen Thorne as James Matey; Brenda Kaye as Lady Caroline Laney: Anthony Newlands as Mr Coade; and Katherine Parr as Mrs Coade. Written over a decade after Peter Pan, JM Barrie's title is taken from a line in 'Julius Caesar' summing up Shakespeare's argument that we should take responsibility for our own actions: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves that we are underlings.'