Recent playing
Nov. 19th, 2004 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast weekend was all-theater (all-theatre?), all the time. Or that's what it felt like, anyway.
These are three one-acts, written and produced by MIT students (undergrad? not sure). It was my first time in Little Kresge, and it's a nice space.
The Trouble with Dating an Artist (Amy Fisher) is a young woman's speculations about how life would be if she started dating the cute waiter at the coffee shop, who's presumably also an artist. It's a cute piece, with her inner self acting out her suppositions (all about how the relationship will eventually fail, partly because she self-sabotages, except with the sculptor, or the painter, I don't remember which).
On the Fritz (Nancy Keuss and Aaron Tan) is a much longer piece, showing how Fritz, who has a crush on a cute neighbor, doesn't really appreciate his AI-like computer until she fails. He falls into a depression, but in the end, chooses time with the girl over the new computer. This, too, had a lot of humor in it, but it went on too long for what it was. Yeah, nice dialog, but when it didn't do any more than show us, again, that he didn't work up the courage to say something to the girl, it's not needed. The customer unservice rep/pop psychologist was funny, as was the poet friend. There's good stuff to pare down to, at least.
Arlo (Act 1)(Whitney Erin Boesel) is the first act of a longer play about the ripple effects of one guy's (prior to play time) suicide, and how it forces one woman to reevaluate her life. It was an interesting piece, but didn't show enough of the characters. Or at least, it didn't in that act. And a couple of the side characters were too one-dimensional, as well. I'd have to see the whole thing to get more of a feel for it, though.
The fall production of Theater@First was Murder in the Cathedral (TS Eliot). It's about the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who has refused to give in to Henry II's demands. I'm reasonably familiar with the story, though not with Eliot's interpretation. I didn't much like the play, actually. The poetry doesn't quite work as dialog, and turning it partly into an almost-allegorical morality play wasn't appealing either. Having the knights' justification scene in a totally different tone than the rest of the play was just jarring. And, well, the characters are all flat, essentially unchanging through the play. Thomas is determined to be a martyr, the priests and townswomen would like to save him by making him go, the knights are bent on murder. None of them seems very approachable, Thomas least of all. Though I admit that some of that might be based partly on his religious homilies, which didn't appeal to me.
The production didn't suit me, either (I feel awkward saying it, since a couple of people likely to read this were in the play, but it didn't. Which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy seeing my friends on stage.). I felt like I had to keep turning around to see what was going on with the women's chorus, but the pews weren't easily designed for that. I could hear people going up and down stairs (up to the choir loft?), which was distracting. Also distracting was how the tempters first appeared, out of the pews. I don't know if there wasn't a backstage, really, but I started focusing on that rather than the play. Oh, and I think one of the doors was open, and the cold breezes were unpleasant.
The Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club put on Albanian Softshoe (Mac Wellman). It's weird. Very weird. I'm not even sure how to describe it.
The first act is about a couple and their neighbor, all of whom are more like caricatures of themselves than real. And all the while a scantily clad woman is slowly moving around a little box-space above the rest of the wholly-cardboard set (cardboard sofa and chair, cardboard table, cardboard slats for blinds covering the back of the not-deep stage they were using. At one point, the couple cannot escape the consequences of his actions by another name change, and the house is repossessed.
During intermission, the air-popper in the rafters above rained hot, freshly-popped popcorn down on us. I believe Queue caught a fair amount in his mouth.
The second act had the same actors as the first act. And that was about it, other than a reference or two to Albanians. The stage opened up behind the blinds to show an area adrift in all sorts of white packing peanuts, or foam, or something like that, in a variety of shapes. The furniture that had been on the little strip of stage during the first act had been replaced with a rolling bathtub. And the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense, either, some of it literal gibberish, some of it just sounding like it. I know there was something about a quest to deliver a fake cheese (unless they could find a real cheese) to Pancake, a hard-to-find person, so the two American women had to travel the universe (in the bathtub), guided by the Man of Shala. Um, drugs, anyone?
The second act went on too long, visiting many many planets, with no particular point, but I was impressed overall with the abilities of the actors. I'm not inclined to see another play by this playwright, however.
(According to the notes, it's a play about homelessness, and it's one of the playwright's favorites of his plays. Hm.)
These are three one-acts, written and produced by MIT students (undergrad? not sure). It was my first time in Little Kresge, and it's a nice space.
The Trouble with Dating an Artist (Amy Fisher) is a young woman's speculations about how life would be if she started dating the cute waiter at the coffee shop, who's presumably also an artist. It's a cute piece, with her inner self acting out her suppositions (all about how the relationship will eventually fail, partly because she self-sabotages, except with the sculptor, or the painter, I don't remember which).
On the Fritz (Nancy Keuss and Aaron Tan) is a much longer piece, showing how Fritz, who has a crush on a cute neighbor, doesn't really appreciate his AI-like computer until she fails. He falls into a depression, but in the end, chooses time with the girl over the new computer. This, too, had a lot of humor in it, but it went on too long for what it was. Yeah, nice dialog, but when it didn't do any more than show us, again, that he didn't work up the courage to say something to the girl, it's not needed. The customer unservice rep/pop psychologist was funny, as was the poet friend. There's good stuff to pare down to, at least.
Arlo (Act 1)(Whitney Erin Boesel) is the first act of a longer play about the ripple effects of one guy's (prior to play time) suicide, and how it forces one woman to reevaluate her life. It was an interesting piece, but didn't show enough of the characters. Or at least, it didn't in that act. And a couple of the side characters were too one-dimensional, as well. I'd have to see the whole thing to get more of a feel for it, though.
The fall production of Theater@First was Murder in the Cathedral (TS Eliot). It's about the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who has refused to give in to Henry II's demands. I'm reasonably familiar with the story, though not with Eliot's interpretation. I didn't much like the play, actually. The poetry doesn't quite work as dialog, and turning it partly into an almost-allegorical morality play wasn't appealing either. Having the knights' justification scene in a totally different tone than the rest of the play was just jarring. And, well, the characters are all flat, essentially unchanging through the play. Thomas is determined to be a martyr, the priests and townswomen would like to save him by making him go, the knights are bent on murder. None of them seems very approachable, Thomas least of all. Though I admit that some of that might be based partly on his religious homilies, which didn't appeal to me.
The production didn't suit me, either (I feel awkward saying it, since a couple of people likely to read this were in the play, but it didn't. Which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy seeing my friends on stage.). I felt like I had to keep turning around to see what was going on with the women's chorus, but the pews weren't easily designed for that. I could hear people going up and down stairs (up to the choir loft?), which was distracting. Also distracting was how the tempters first appeared, out of the pews. I don't know if there wasn't a backstage, really, but I started focusing on that rather than the play. Oh, and I think one of the doors was open, and the cold breezes were unpleasant.
The Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club put on Albanian Softshoe (Mac Wellman). It's weird. Very weird. I'm not even sure how to describe it.
The first act is about a couple and their neighbor, all of whom are more like caricatures of themselves than real. And all the while a scantily clad woman is slowly moving around a little box-space above the rest of the wholly-cardboard set (cardboard sofa and chair, cardboard table, cardboard slats for blinds covering the back of the not-deep stage they were using. At one point, the couple cannot escape the consequences of his actions by another name change, and the house is repossessed.
During intermission, the air-popper in the rafters above rained hot, freshly-popped popcorn down on us. I believe Queue caught a fair amount in his mouth.
The second act had the same actors as the first act. And that was about it, other than a reference or two to Albanians. The stage opened up behind the blinds to show an area adrift in all sorts of white packing peanuts, or foam, or something like that, in a variety of shapes. The furniture that had been on the little strip of stage during the first act had been replaced with a rolling bathtub. And the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense, either, some of it literal gibberish, some of it just sounding like it. I know there was something about a quest to deliver a fake cheese (unless they could find a real cheese) to Pancake, a hard-to-find person, so the two American women had to travel the universe (in the bathtub), guided by the Man of Shala. Um, drugs, anyone?
The second act went on too long, visiting many many planets, with no particular point, but I was impressed overall with the abilities of the actors. I'm not inclined to see another play by this playwright, however.
(According to the notes, it's a play about homelessness, and it's one of the playwright's favorites of his plays. Hm.)
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 10:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 10:34 am (UTC)Total sense.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 02:39 pm (UTC)