Summer, 20th Season: New Century Theatre

New Century Theatre, 20th Season: Michael Frayn, Noises Off. Jack Neary, To Forgive, Divine. Lynn Nottage, Intimate Apparel. Daniel Singer, Adam Long, and Jess Winfield, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).

A wonderfully successful season. I have some reservations about the Nottage play, the one serious work among the four, regarding its structure and the bearing of that on its ethos. But the three comedies (the last, the spoof of Shakespeare, being more properly speaking pure farce) were excellent, and had the advantage of sparkling performances by well-chosen casts. The fact that Noises Off is by the same dramatist as Copenhagen continues to fascinate me. Can it be said that in some ways these two plays bear the deeper mark of an author who understands genre extremely well and who knows how to exploit its essential characteristics to the full?