City Limits, May 10, 1990, by Tim Robinson. ----------------------------------------------------------- "The opposition of the epicure against the puritan, virtue versus vice, ascetic versus bawd is the true dialectic of history" writes Salman Rushdie on Buchner's "Danton's Death." Hebbel, Buchner's contemporary, also places this conflict at the centre of "Maria Magdalena" written in the 1840s, revealing the destructive, almost sadistic power of the pious. But while Buchner enacts the battle through grand historical figures, Hebbel concentrates on the parlour, constructing a tragedy through domestic minutiae, through which the lives of a sister and brother are destroyed less by the machinations of the evil than by the merciless judgements of the virtuous, personified by their ultimately loathesome father, the town's saint. The company's decision to transport the action to the '50s rural Deep South is surprisingly effective, lending the production a guilt- ridden Tennessee Williams feel, though the duel scene seems a little out of place. The intensity of the performances mostly adds to the atmosphere of emotional claustrophobia, only Robert Jezek as the father tending towards melodrama. Good thought-provoking, wrist-slitting fun. ----------------------------------------------------------- Bentley's Bedlam http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.