Stop Modernizing Classic Plays!
Rupert Christiansen argues: George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman” — starring Ralph Fiennes (pictured, with Elliot Barnes) — is just the latest production “to make no sense when it tries to be relevant to a modern audience.” Further: “What directors need to accept and embrace is pastness – the fact that while a drama must always live in the theatrical present of the performance, it simultaneously speaks to us from another time and place which doesn’t need ‘relevance to us’ to validate it.”
