So let this be my weekly blogging. Seen a lot of theatre! What have I seen, let's see, 28 Seeds, Much Ado About Nothing with a Twist, Trog and Clay oh and Troilus and Cressida. All of which I enjoyed for different reasons, and which I could find things to criticize. Actually I think this is an interesting excercise, I'm going to compliment sandwich them one by one, meaning a positive note, a critique and a positive note.
28 Seeds, I liked the music. Great songs and great instrumentalists who played with panache and style. Ok critique. I know the company spent some time workshopping the script, but I felt like it needed more. I felt the narrative was kind of disjointed and episodic, which was OK but I wanted a stronger narrative thrust to establish the characters, their individual conflicts and why we should care about them. As it was, they felt more like ideas and dare I say it cariactures although that feels harsh. Which isn't to say the actors didn't do some nice work. When I was in college Will Lebow had us watch a play and write two pages about a performance and if that actor had the three fundamentals be taught, intention, relationship amd high stakes. And they had that! So bravo.
Next up was Fresh Ink. I thought this show was solid, with some really nice character work and especially strong use of lighting (all the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling were pretty cool, and I liked the sort of sepia quality they gave off like it was a live action black and white photograph). I did feel like the script was inconsistent, there was a stronger arc then in 28 Seeds and although the people in the play were quirky, they felt more or less like people and not just quirky character tropes. That said, the tone was very all over the place, and when it landed at the climax it felt like "OK this is the climax" but I didn't feel like the script earned the catharsis that the playwright was after or really landed the ending. Despite those flaws and inconsistencies, their were fun characters and funny lines, which the cast pulled off nicely.
I sort of feel like I just made the same review sandwich twice in a row, amIright? Liked this design aspect, thought the script was flawed, liked the acting. Well, to be honest, Troilus and Cressida is much harder to nail down to a culinary metaphor. I liked the idea of the production, and Troilus and Cressida is probably worth considering as the Bard's satire of war and the politics involved, and also it has some great pieces of text. But as a play, I don't think it was ever really finished, similar to Timon of Athens. According to some quote somewhere in it's Wikipedia entry, the version we received may have been edited or updated at some point to the fairly dark piece we have today from a previously lighter treatment of the Iliad, but who really knows. Ultimately, all of these pieces and plot lines get thrown up and Shakespeare starts to juggle them, then the action accelerates like something is about to happen, in this case Achilles kills Hector and then the play ends. Troilus ran close to three hours, which is just way too long, and in my opinion it had too many characters. I think for the production to work, it needed more of what ASP pulled out when it did Timon of Athens a couple of years ago, a whole lot of textual and structural rejiggering. In the case of Timon, they only kept a few of the characters and then the rest were portrayed by an ambiguous ensemble in painter's outfits (which I frankly never really got why that was, but whatever) and much of the story's thematic push came from sound design motifs and a really bad ass set. For this production, they had the Modern which they used in the round. Kinda cool, but I don't really know what it added. The set was some grey blocks that got moved around. There really wasn't much in the way of sound or lighting design. It had some nice performances, I liked Ross Macdonald as Hector, but many of the performances didn't feel lived in, more like some character traits and choices imposed over text. I think the solution was to dump as many of them as possible, pick one or two storylines and really tell those stories and make them work, as the play itself is just an overstuffed mess.
Then again, I'm talking like I have the recipe to make Shakespeare work, and I certainly don't, I'm a guy with a blog. And that's a tricky thing, because in Shakespeare's plays almost everything exists in relation to something else, so knowing what to cut and how to cut it without detracting from the whole is extremely difficult! I don't know how to make that play work, or how to make anything work, so I applaud Actors Shakespeare Project for bringing the show to the stage and I'm glad I got to see it, even if just to say that I have.
Oh, and the other show I saw recently was Bad Habit's production of Much Ado About Nothing. That was show was pretty much theatrical chocolate, it was just great. And I don't know what else to say about it! And also it was like two weeks ago that I saw it. Thinking back though, really strongly delineated characters, really crisp pacing and plotting, fun music, fun cast, really fun show.
What have I been up to? Well, I've been rehearsing Three Sisters and had the pleasure this weekend of delving into my big act four showcase scene, you know the one I'm talking about, with the declarations and the coffee. Man, what a fantastic scene. You know how sometimes theatre feels like a giant pain in the ass, all the commuting and memorizing and waiting around but then you get to that moment where it's like "oh right fuck yeah this is awesome" and I had that working on this scene. So that felt good.
Oh and last week was the staged reading of The Last Jews by Larry Jay Tish with myself, my friend Chuck Schwager who brought me on board, the talented Amber Williams who I met that night and oh yeah BOBBIE STEINBACH who is of course awesome and it was kind of a dream come true being on stage with. I'm happy to say that it went really well, our audience of 30 or 40 people laughed a lot, had some great feedback and seemed to enjoy themselves throughly. For my part, I didn't blow it. So good on me!
Most immediately on the horizon... Crooked Arrows comes out this Friday. I'm excited and nervous to see myself, and also wondering how much of me you'll be seeing in the final cut. Whatever else happens with it, it will be a great cap to what was a fantastic experience. My fantasy of course is that it comes out and immediately Hollywood starts calling, but more likely it will give me some small piece of ammunition should I head that way, which I am actively considering. We shall see!
Sound is just such an important aspect what we should never forget even this is great even without! sound design
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