La Bete

I feel like I would enjoy watching this more than reading it. La Běte has a very unique structure to it. It's basically rhymed, iambic couplets through out the entirety of the play. This made it practically insufferable to read, especially Valere's damn monologue. Valere's monologue was twenty pages......more

Brilliant. Witty. Funny. Theatrical. All in rhyming couplets! Bravo to David Hirson! The play is a cunning satire on popular tastes and public dictates, to which producers are enslaved. BETE also pokes fun at critics, at the foibles of actors, the vanity of writers, and so much more. Set in Moliere'......more

Upon finishing Act One, I was convinced that this was little more than a stunt--the rhyming couplets, the epic monologue--all entertaining but not really going anywhere. By the end of the play, though, I realized that everything Hirson was doing was for a larger purpose, that his play about the batt......more