Question

Theater Critic: The play La Finestrina, now at Central Theater, was written in Italy in the eighteenth century. The director claims that this production is as similar to the original production as is possible in a modern theater. Although the actor who plays Harlequin the clown gives a performance very reminiscent of the twentieth-century American comedian Groucho Marx, Marx’s comic style was very much within the comic acting tradition that had begun in sixteenth-century Italy.
The considerations given best serve as part of an argument that

(A) modern audiences would find it hard to tolerate certain characteristics of a historically accurate performance of an eighteenth-century play

(B) Groucho Marx once performed the part of the character Harlequin in La Finestrina

(C) in the United States the training of actors in the twentieth century is based on principles that do not differ radically from those that underlay the training of actors in eighteenth-century Italy

(D) the performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in La Finestrina does not serve as evidence against the director’s claim

(E) the director of La Finestrina must have advised the actor who plays Harlequin to model his performance on comic performances of Groucho Marx

Answer 1

Answer: I would contend that the right answer is the (D) the performance of the actor who plays Harlequin in La Finestrina does not serve as evidence against the director’s claim.

Explanation: Since the director’s claim is that his modern production is "as similar to the original production (18th century) as possible," and even though the performance of the actor recalls that of 20th-century American comedian Groucho Marx, the fact that Marx's comic style was actually inspired by the Italian comic acting tradition—begun in the sixteenth-century—serves to support the argument that the actor's performance cannot be used as evidence against the director’s claim. Quite the opposite, that performance, if only indirectly, supports that claim.