Night Over Taos, a play by Maxwell Anderson
Seeing Maxwell Anderson’s play, "Night Over Taos" at The Theatre for New City is a rare treat not to be missed. Estelle Parsons, the director, and Intar, the producers, are to be congratulated for presenting a work in a way that few dare to do in today’s theatre – a 25 multi-cultural cast in a 2-1/2 hour show in the style and spirit of The Group Theatre, our country’s earliest serious group of artists to usher in a modern American theatre. It’s refreshing to experience theatre like we did in the "good old days" when theatre was something more than one to five characters and the producer’s push is "let’s get them in" and "get them out" in an hour and a half so they can go home and pay the babysitter.
The playwright Maxwell Anderson emerged from The Group Theatre and is still considered one of America’s most eminent dramatists who brought verse drama back onto the stage, and "Night Over Taos" must be seen and appreciated in the spirit of the 30s; it cannot be judged in 21st century quick, clip, and move-on standards. It is essential to look and experience with the deeper awareness and understanding that we give to Shakespeare and Eugene O’Neill.
What absorbs us is the atmospheric sweep of the story, the fictionalized, imaginative account based on an historic event largely forgotten, a window into the lives of Spanish conquerors giving their lives in a doomed attempt to hold onto Taos, threatened to fall to the Americans as has the remainder of New Mexico.
The raised rectangular stage with a high step creates confined living quarters in the power magnet, the hacienda, and the actors sitting on benches around the stage give the sense of class structure, of masters being eternally surrounded by illiterate Indian peons and slaves who not only serve them but watch them. That the acting is uneven is irrelevant because this production doesn’t pretend to compete with Broadway experience and budgets. The acclaim is in the use of a multi-cultural group who all give their all.
It is not often we have an opportunity to experience theater like this, and we should take advantage of it while it is here.
The playwright Maxwell Anderson emerged from The Group Theatre and is still considered one of America’s most eminent dramatists who brought verse drama back onto the stage, and "Night Over Taos" must be seen and appreciated in the spirit of the 30s; it cannot be judged in 21st century quick, clip, and move-on standards. It is essential to look and experience with the deeper awareness and understanding that we give to Shakespeare and Eugene O’Neill.
What absorbs us is the atmospheric sweep of the story, the fictionalized, imaginative account based on an historic event largely forgotten, a window into the lives of Spanish conquerors giving their lives in a doomed attempt to hold onto Taos, threatened to fall to the Americans as has the remainder of New Mexico.
The raised rectangular stage with a high step creates confined living quarters in the power magnet, the hacienda, and the actors sitting on benches around the stage give the sense of class structure, of masters being eternally surrounded by illiterate Indian peons and slaves who not only serve them but watch them. That the acting is uneven is irrelevant because this production doesn’t pretend to compete with Broadway experience and budgets. The acclaim is in the use of a multi-cultural group who all give their all.
It is not often we have an opportunity to experience theater like this, and we should take advantage of it while it is here.
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