The end product could be laughable and even plainly disastrous (yes, Asylum's Princess of Mars, I'm looking at you), but the actors, against all odds, sell the play quite brilliantly, playing their characters very straight, excelling in "make believe". The fighting is mimed, since the actors do not even have fake swords at their disposal. The Red Martians, to evoke the skin color of their people, simply wear a half-red mask that reveals the lower part of their face and their eyes. The Green Martians, as you can see on the cover, are actors with a pole on which is sticked the head of their alien character. The play takes place in just one set, a rocky floor, three rocks, and a painted canvas for a background. This work of art is a true ode to the power of suggestion of the theater, as it can not be limited to the broad comedies, or the painful tragedies that are generally associated with it. The fiming of the play took place in the presence of quite a hard-edged audience, namely Edgar Rice Burroughs fans! And yet there seems there are still some small miracles in this world, like this adaptation crafted in 2006. It was conceived by Steve Schroer from Hardcover Theater in Minneapolis. If someone had told me that the best live adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars would be a play, I would not have believed it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |