A Servant To Two Masters (Modern Plays)

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This production remained staunchly faithful to the play’s roots in Italian commedia dell’arte in every respect, from costume (apart from the lack of masks) to acting style.

The next morning, Arthur wakes in his chambers to find a stranger wearing similar clothes to Merlin. The stranger turns out to be Arthur's new manservant, George, who is highly efficient, albeit dull and obsequious.Still troubled over the ambush, Sir Leon also concludes that, since their route had been a secret, there must be a traitor in their midst. In Arthur's chambers, Merlin prepares a bath for the king and pours in a jar of corrosive salts, which turns the bath into acid strong enough to corrode steel. You could dismiss this as being the curse of the West End, but a more reasoned explanation is that it is about the complex alchemy of productions and spaces. This, combined with marriage arrangements, love affairs and even some cross dressing, serves to create a hilarious confusion from which it seems impossible for even the wily Arlechinno to escape!

Carlo Goldoni's 18th century comedy about a wily servant who gets the best of his masters by hook and crook is one of the great classic commedia dell'arte scripts of world drama. Full marks to Dominic Kinnaird, who also plays a camp waiter, for choreographing such convincing fight scenes, and to John Candor who plays perky period Italian music on his clarinetto. Not all the complications are of his making; one of his 'masters' is in fact a lady in disguise, and the other master is her lover, but Truffaldino doesn't know this. Their actions are laughably melodramatic, and they are often driven to the point of hysteria if they are kept apart from each other.The plot is full of mishaps and mix-ups, confusions, disguises and mistaken identity, before the murder and entangled romances can be resolved. The three tall chimneys on the right-hand side are the tell-tales here as all the other buildings in the vicinity have been replaced! He is portrayed as an egotistical know-it-all, who is given to lengthy ramblings that frequently (and irritatingly) slip into classical Latin. Young Directors Training Programme - StoneCrabs on Why should a young person apply to the Young Directors Training Programme? Whereas Pantalone satirizes the wealthy merchant class, Il Dottore pokes fun at the intellectual elites.

A highlight of the evening was the hilarious rapid series of humorous tableaux commencing the second half, to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy (yes, a genuine hurdy-gurdy player onstage!This was actually the original name for the episode when the script was going through various redrafts. True commedia dell'arte is more or less improvised without a script, so The Servant of Two Masters is not true commedia. But if my enthusiasm for Two Masters is now more measured than it was, it is still a far more enjoyable and worthwhile evening than an awful lot of West End pap.