The Mandrake

I went to the performance of "The Mandrake" last Thursday night, and while apparently they were having technical problems with the lights it was pretty visually interesting. The set was full of bright and vibrant colors as if you were at a carnival or in a circus tent, and they had this overlapping theme of the mask. I think the concept of the mask had its negative and positive aspects. The masks made it easy to vary the actors ages and stage personalities. But at the same time the masks covered up the actors expressions, and with a straight forward plot line, like the one found in "The Mandrake", it is the actors visual expressions and gesturing that make the play visually interesting. Especially because it seemed like they were going for a simplicity in the set common to the plays preformed in Niccolo Machiavelli's time. While I think there were ways the director could have made the play a little more visually interesting, the play did bring together a slap-stick comedy full of laughs and good humored smiles.