VOA标准英语2011--Classic Dramas Strike Chord With Modern

Even in the age of the Internet and DVDs, classical theater is flourishing in New York.
Some of the plays in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2011 classical theater season are over 400 years old but ticket sales have been brisk. Joe Melillo, BAM's executive producer, says theatergoers are hungry for a diet of Ibsen, Gogol and Shakespeare.
"They're flying, they have, like, little wings," he says. "The tickets are flying out of the box office."
The artists presenting the plays say that's because they resonate with contemporary audiences. Take "John Gabriel Borkman," playwright¹ Henrik Ibsen's 1896 drama in which the title character, a banker, has been imprisoned² for illegally investing his client's money. Ibsen could have been writing about financier Bernie Madoff, now serving a 150-year prison sentence for orchestrating a decades-long swindle that took tens of billions of dollars from his unwitting investors³.
"You see the byproduct of these legal battles that the families fall apart, because financial difficulties, or financial shame, produces a terrible fallout in families," says actress Fiona Shaw, who plays Borkman's wife.
On an even more universal level, Ibsen's three central characters are imprisoned by their own delusions⁵ and bitterness, says Alan Rickman, who plays Borkman, and Lindsay Duncan, who plays the woman he abandoned.
"They're just very exaggerated versions of people we all know," says Duncan.
Rickman agrees. "We all know them. We've all grown up with these people."
BAM
Academy and Tony Award-winner Geoffrey Rush stars in BAM's adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's, 'The Diary of a Madman.'
Delusional⁶ characters are also at the heart of BAM's next presentation, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story, "The Diary of a Madman." Academy and Tony Award-winner Geoffrey Rush stars. Even though Gogol wrote about a mid-level bureaucrat⁷ in 1835 Russia, Rush says it feels like modern absurdist writing.
"Gogol walks this very knife-edge, fine-line between a very sharp observation of someone's descent into madness and, at the same time, playing fairly deliciously with their own sense of delusion⁴."
If Rush's character descends⁸ into madness, the same is true of Shakespeare's "King Lear," which Derek Jacobi is bringing over from England. Director Michael Grandage observes that, while the play has large political dimensions, Shakespeare has tapped into something more primal⁹.
"The center of the play is a great domestic drama and he clearly was a man who was writing with a huge degree of knowledge about the nature of an aging parent," says Grandage. "We have different words for it now - of course, in Shakespeare's time it was called madness and it's called madness throughout the play. But, for madness now, we have dementia."
And it's these universal human experiences, which most people can identify with, that continually draw audiences and artists back to the classics.

1 playwright   

n.剧作家，编写剧本的人

参考例句：

• Gwyn Thomas was a famous playwright.格温·托马斯是著名的剧作家。
• The playwright was slaughtered by the press.这位剧作家受到新闻界的无情批判。

2 imprisoned   

下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was imprisoned for two concurrent terms of 30 months and 18 months. 他被判处30个月和18个月的监禁，合并执行。
• They were imprisoned for possession of drugs. 他们因拥有毒品而被监禁。

3 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

4 delusion   

n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑

参考例句：

• He is under the delusion that he is Napoleon.他患了妄想症，认为自己是拿破仑。
• I was under the delusion that he intended to marry me.我误认为他要娶我。

5 delusions   

n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想

参考例句：

• the delusions of the mentally ill 精神病患者的妄想
• She wants to travel first-class: she must have delusions of grandeur. 她想坐头等舱旅行，她一定自以为很了不起。 来自辞典例句

6 delusional   

妄想的

参考例句：

• You became delusional and attacked several people trying to escape. 你产生了错觉并攻击了许多人还试图逃走。 来自电影对白
• He is incoherent, delusional, suffering auditory hallucinations. 他出现无逻辑的，妄想的，幻听的症状。 来自电影对白

7 bureaucrat   

n. 官僚作风的人，官僚，官僚政治论者

参考例句：

• He was just another faceless bureaucrat.他只不过是一个典型呆板的官员。
• The economy is still controlled by bureaucrats.经济依然被官僚们所掌控。

8 descends   

v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite. 这个节日起源于宗教仪式。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The path descends steeply to the village. 小路陡直而下直到村子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 primal   

adj.原始的；最重要的

参考例句：

• Jealousy is a primal emotion.嫉妒是最原始的情感。
• Money was a primal necessity to them.对于他们，钱是主要的需要。