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A CurtainUp Review
Dead Poets Society

Carpe... Carpe... Carpe Diem. Seize the day, people. Make your lives extraordinary.
— John Keating's challenge to the boys in his English class at a New England prep school where what they're expected to seize is good grades to get them into Ivy League colleges and successful careers.
Dead Poets Society
l-r: Zane Pais, Thomas Mann, Bubba Weiler, William Hochman, Yaron Lotan, Cody Kostro, Jason Sudeikis.(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)
John Doyle, Classic Stage Company's new artistic director, sees the above expressed philosophy of teacher John Keating in the 1989 movie The Dead Poets Society as classical by nature. As he explains in CSC's always informative program guide, he aims to maintain classicism as CSC's center but to broaden that mission with examples from modern American culture to the mix.

To get that expanded mission right off the ground, Doyle chose Tom Schulman's stage adaptation of his 1989 Oscar winning screenplay as his inaugural production. Schulman, in another CSC enhancement feature, is more modest about claiming "classic" status for his beatnik Mr. Chips story.

It doesn't really matter whether you agree with Mr. Doyle that the story about a dynamic teacher using poetry to awaken his teen-aged boys to the spirit of carpe diem has genuine classics credentials. What will, however, determine how you feel about this stage adaptation is whether you loved the movie; and if so, whether your enthusiasm was for the story or mostly for Robin Williams' memorable John Keating.

Before I go any further, full disclosure. I thought Dead Poets Society manipulative and predictable even 27 years ago. I did think Robin Williams was the real deal, but there wasn't enough of him. The movie wasn't Keating's story as much as the boys who were so smitten with him that they decided to recreate the secret society he formed during his own student days at their prep school.

Popular as the movie was, I wasn't an outlier in my less than ecstatic opinion. Anyway, I didn't hate the movie, I just didn't love it or consider it an iconic addition to other boarding school stories. However, since I'm a fan of John Doyle's work as well as the Classic Stage Company, I looked forward to seeing this production.

Unfortunately, my hopes that Doyle could bring his flair for fresh new takes to familiar theater pieces didn't materialize in this instance; Neither did my wish that in adapting his film script for the stage, that Tom Schulman would have found a way to tone down the from the get-go predictability and perhaps ratchet up the role of the teacher. To his credit, Schulman has done a good job of making his work for a smaller cast and in less time.

The adaptation remains true to the screen script. The New England prep school where the scenario unfolds is still a fortress of an education focused on admission to an Ivy League college and from there a prestigious conventional career. The boys are still impressionable enough to be bowled over by the unconventional English teacher's approach to poetry specifically and life in general. The carpe diem exhortations are his, but it's they who launch a secret poets society on their own. Yet, as the most affected boy will inevitably come to a tragic end, so it's also inevitable that the teacher will suffer the blame for the secret society's shocking aftermath.

Mr. Doyle has assembled a sturdy cast. TV and film actor and writer Jason Sudeikis does a creditable job as the charismatic "seize the day" advocate. He may not have totally cast off Robin Williams' shadow, but he also doesn't try to ape him rather than to define his own persona. Doyle has also drawn solid performances from the current group of boys, most of whom are making their Off-Broadway debuts. Thomas Mann is quite touching as the father-dominated, doomed Neil Perry; so is Zane Pais as the super shy Todd Anderson who ends up bravely honoring the inevitably dismissed Keating.

But don't expect to see the stars in the making who were one of the special pleasure of the movie. Chief among these pleasures were Robert Sean Leonard's Neil Perry and Ethan Hawks's Todd Anderson. Josh Charles who played Knox Overstreet was still years before becoming Alicia Florick's sexy lover in The Good Wife. I couldn't help wishing that one of those actors had been available to play Keating at CSC.

Typical of so many boarding school dramas a school administrator and rigid parent are the villains and the experienced actors playing these roles here — Stephen Barker Turner as Mr. Perry and David Garrison as head master Paul Nolan — deliver the standout performances.

Director Doyle has done his best to create a feeling of being immersed in the world of the school. The CSC playing area is kept bare except for an imposing backdrop of book shelves that set designer Scott Pask has filled with collections of books that had me searching the program for a credit to the Strand Book store which often puts such collections together). The students are kept in motion climbing up and down the ladders needed to reach the top shelves and put together stacks of books to serve as seats.

Having the students assemble on stage before the play begins and hand out the programs is a nice but rather unnecessary attempt to connect audience and actors. Having Keating frequently interact with the students from the center aisle is more effective. While a live production like this can't produce a cave for the boys' Dead Poet Society meetings, lighting and sound designers Japhy Weideman and Matt Stine do imbue those scenes with the called for atmosphere.

If I haven't said much about the poetic works that Keating uses to kindle his students' independent spirits, it's not that there aren't plenty of tidbits: from Walt Whitman (it's his "O Captain, My Captain" that's used by Todd Anderson to have his final say) to David Thoreau to Shakespeare (It's the Bard's Midsummer Night's Dream that fires up David Perry's dream of acting). If only the poetry didn't come off here, as it did in the movie, well chosen but a well-intentioned but contrived device.

As promised in Mr. Doyle's mission statement, he'll be returning to a more conventional classic, Pierre Corneille's The Liar as adapted by a CSC favorite, David Ives. After that there's a chance to see Doyle once again tackle a Sondheim musical, this time the rarely performed South Pacific. And to bookend the current but not quite classic modern tragedy, what could be more fitting than Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.





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PRODUCTION NOTES
Dead Poets Society
Tom Schulman adaption from his screenplay
Directed by John Doyle
Cast: Jason Sudeikis will star as professor John Keating, Francesca Carpanini as Chris, David Garrison as Mr. Nolan, William Hochman as Knox Overstreet, Cody Kostro as Charlie Dalton, Yaron Lotan as Richard Cameron, Thomas Mann as Neil Perry, Zane Pais as Todd Anderson, Stephen Barker Turner as Mr. Perry and Bubba Weiler as Steven Meeks
set Design: Scott Pask
Costume design: Ann Hould-Ward
Lighting design: Japhy Weideman
Sound design: Matt Stine
Music: Jason Michael Webb
Hair: J. Jared Janas
Stage Manager: Sarah Hall Running Time: 100 minutes without an intermission
CSC, Classic Stage East 13th Street
From 10/27/16; opening 11/17/16; closing 12/01/16
Reviewed by Elyse Sommer at 11/12 press matinee


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