Hippolytus Essay, Research Paper

HIPPOLYTUS

The acting is Hippolytus was very good. In particular, Caitlin Bopp, who played Aphrodite, and Keith Hale, who played Theseus, stood out. Caitlin did a great job in playing a seductive, vengeful Goddess. She fell into the role perfectly and I noticed little things such as eyes movements that made it seem like her character was in control of the scene. Keith did an excellent job playing Theseus. The audience really picked up on his characters pain when he found out that his wife had killed herself. And when he lost both his whole family at the end of the play, you can see that he was truly sorry for what he had done. The actress who played Phaedra unfortunately didn’t do that good of a job. It is hard to describe what was wrong with her performance but she made it seem like her character was acting. I wasn’t sure at first if Phaedra was supposed to be pretending to be sad or if she was really sad. But, I only saw one night of the play so it isn’t fair to base her talent on that.

The Choreography in this play was also great. The opening scene was really entertaining. It really matched the play well. The guys did the dances with the staffs and they worked in some fighting moved which was really cool. The women who worshipped Aphrodite did more sexual motions in their dances, which really fit the play nicely. It looked like a lot of work went into the choreography for this play. Everything went smoothly when I saw it, and there were no visible mistakes. The scene that I liked the most was the scene when Aphrodite was controlling the people. This was well choreographed. The people did what Aphrodite made them do; mean while Phaedra was going crazy from her guilt. That scene was good because the motions of the actors matched the motions of Aphrodite.

The set fit the play very well. It was a very plain set with only a wall with sliding doors, a fake stone structure, and a pond with a bush. I liked it because it didn’t distract us from the characters and their development throughout the play. The stone structure looked really cool, and is it used as an alter for the goddess Artemis; this is where she enters from at the end of the play. The bush and pond are used as the alter Aphrodite, and this is where she keeps visiting the people from. The wall with the sliding door is used as the entrance to the home of the king Theseus. I also like the colors of the set. They were mostly earth-toned colors. The stone was gray, the bush was green, and the wall was brown and tan.

If I were the set designer, I would change the alter for Artemis. I realized that the audience didn’t know that the stone structure was an alter until the very end of the play. I would make the alter a more distinguishable object such as Aphrodite’s. Maybe I would use something such as a statue or put symbols on the stone. Other than that, the set was perfect for the play. Every scene was well placed with the scenery