The Art Room
Nov. 2nd, 2007 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I saw The Art Room (Billy Aronson) at the Loeb Ex. The story follows six people over the course of a day in a mental ward. A nurse is ready to leave, starting a new life with a new job and a new boyfriend, a businessman who is too busy. Who, as it turns out, is already married, to a new patient, a model who has lost her self in all the images of herself in the media. Who is flirting with one of the other patients. Who is already in some kind of relationship with yet a third patient, one who polishes the floor with a sock, and absolutely needs truth. And then there's the dreaming lice-checker.
The set was a room with four doors, all of them quietly unusual: one too tall, one too short, one that rotated on a middle vertical axis (and had two doorknobs), and one with at least a dozen doorknobs, lining the door both left and right. Of course, all those doors made me think of farces, with people coming and going abruptly (though through less unusual exits), and this play had that. It also had a lot more at the core, about what love is, and how to communicate that, and about getting what one needs in a relationship.
I'm always impressed by actors who can do word salad well; this wasn't quite that, but there was a lot of disconnected, unusual dialogue, and done well. Most of the cast was quite good, and the one who wasn't as impressive didn't pull the rest of the show down.
Other notes: everyone got 'pills' in little plastic cups upon entering (jujubes of some sort). Straightjackets and restraints are used, and there is screaming.
I'm glad I went.
Also yesterday, in the morning: a turkey sighting. I was lucky to see him; he walked off between two buildings a moment after I passed by.
The set was a room with four doors, all of them quietly unusual: one too tall, one too short, one that rotated on a middle vertical axis (and had two doorknobs), and one with at least a dozen doorknobs, lining the door both left and right. Of course, all those doors made me think of farces, with people coming and going abruptly (though through less unusual exits), and this play had that. It also had a lot more at the core, about what love is, and how to communicate that, and about getting what one needs in a relationship.
I'm always impressed by actors who can do word salad well; this wasn't quite that, but there was a lot of disconnected, unusual dialogue, and done well. Most of the cast was quite good, and the one who wasn't as impressive didn't pull the rest of the show down.
Other notes: everyone got 'pills' in little plastic cups upon entering (jujubes of some sort). Straightjackets and restraints are used, and there is screaming.
I'm glad I went.
Also yesterday, in the morning: a turkey sighting. I was lucky to see him; he walked off between two buildings a moment after I passed by.