![]() ![]() I have been a big fan of Shostakovich and Gogol for aeons, and to have the two in bed together is almost too much. and CBC Orchestra had pulled off something great but the CBC "Opening Night" production adds a lot it really makes you feel as if you are in a dream (or nightmare). ![]() I saw one of the original performances at the Vancouver Playhouse a few years ago, and I knew that Panych & Co. Check out the scene where Akaky (the hero) is going to sleep, and a strangely refined character (apparently the god of sleep) comes to charm him into slumberland. This version pads it out with a few scenes from Diary of a Madman result- the apotheosis of the little guy. The story of the insignificant little clerk who achieves a fleeting moment of glory when he acquires a gorgeous new overcoat is too well known to need further explanation (alright then, read the book-it'll take you less than an hour). There is no dialogue, only movement more like mime than ballet- they claim to have taken their inspiration from silent movie technique. The story is re-set in the west, in the 1920s, in an architect's office. There have been attempts at dramatizing it over the years, and Humphrey Searle even wrote an opera on it but Morris Panych in Vancouver has created the version to top all others. The Overcoat (aka The Cloak) is one of Gogol's most accessible stories, by the same writer who gave us The Inspector-General. ![]()
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