More playing around
Mar. 11th, 2005 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidIn the last week or so I've seen a couple of other plays, too; I've been remiss.
So. I went to the BU production of The Rimers of Eldritch (Lanford Wilson). I've seen it before; it was done a couple of years ago at Brandeis. I had a slightly different memory of the play than what happened on stage; I think I conflated it with another play, or something.
Anyway. It's the story of a small, dying town, and what people believe to be true about each other. Everyone has their appropriate role, which is frequently not related to their more private selves at all, but the shell they choose to show the town, or don't bother to construct. Who's better, a straight-laced housewife who gossips mercilessly about everyone, or a functionally single woman who takes a lover? The town knows, of course. And in that sort of town, even when something bad happens, actions will be misunderstood, people misjudged, and the truth won't out.
I like how the script works, with different coversations picking up, then continuing later, rather than whole dialogues followed by other dialogues. The space was deep enough to allow a lot of different areas, so the lighting could cut back and forth with the shifts. The eerie part of the set was some of the visible lighting, attached to crossbars of wooden posts, all of which were just sewed enough to make the image more of a gallows than a cross.
Nicely done, with especial kudos to the actor who played Skelly, the town drunk/dirty old man. The whole cast also managed southern accents that didn't feel over-exaggerated.
The other play was at the Loeb Ex, Three Tall Women (Edward Albee). I'd heard his name before, but this was the first play of his I'd seen.
The first half of the play has an old, rich woman, her middle-aged companion/caretaker, and a young woman from the solicitor's office. In between querulous demands and repetition brought on by senility (or some other memory-loss), the old woman becomes more sympathetic, telling stories of her past. In the second act, things have shifted, and they're all her, at different ages (which lead me to wonder how much of the first act was imagined, and having questions of time-travelish nature, the inherent paradoxes). How much can we change ourselves, how much can we keep, in the face of dilemmas and challenges, decisions and change? Even knowing, and not wanting, yet becoming anyway. Interesting stuff.
The set was complex, a fancy bedroom, with a mantlepiece, horse portraits, other paintings on the walls. And above, there were five cartoons, depicting the woman in better days, out riding, or dancing, and so on. And as the stories came out, the ones that were not so filled with light, they flipped over to show more crudely drawn pictures, of more crude topics. I thought that a very interesting touch.
So. I went to the BU production of The Rimers of Eldritch (Lanford Wilson). I've seen it before; it was done a couple of years ago at Brandeis. I had a slightly different memory of the play than what happened on stage; I think I conflated it with another play, or something.
Anyway. It's the story of a small, dying town, and what people believe to be true about each other. Everyone has their appropriate role, which is frequently not related to their more private selves at all, but the shell they choose to show the town, or don't bother to construct. Who's better, a straight-laced housewife who gossips mercilessly about everyone, or a functionally single woman who takes a lover? The town knows, of course. And in that sort of town, even when something bad happens, actions will be misunderstood, people misjudged, and the truth won't out.
I like how the script works, with different coversations picking up, then continuing later, rather than whole dialogues followed by other dialogues. The space was deep enough to allow a lot of different areas, so the lighting could cut back and forth with the shifts. The eerie part of the set was some of the visible lighting, attached to crossbars of wooden posts, all of which were just sewed enough to make the image more of a gallows than a cross.
Nicely done, with especial kudos to the actor who played Skelly, the town drunk/dirty old man. The whole cast also managed southern accents that didn't feel over-exaggerated.
The other play was at the Loeb Ex, Three Tall Women (Edward Albee). I'd heard his name before, but this was the first play of his I'd seen.
The first half of the play has an old, rich woman, her middle-aged companion/caretaker, and a young woman from the solicitor's office. In between querulous demands and repetition brought on by senility (or some other memory-loss), the old woman becomes more sympathetic, telling stories of her past. In the second act, things have shifted, and they're all her, at different ages (which lead me to wonder how much of the first act was imagined, and having questions of time-travelish nature, the inherent paradoxes). How much can we change ourselves, how much can we keep, in the face of dilemmas and challenges, decisions and change? Even knowing, and not wanting, yet becoming anyway. Interesting stuff.
The set was complex, a fancy bedroom, with a mantlepiece, horse portraits, other paintings on the walls. And above, there were five cartoons, depicting the woman in better days, out riding, or dancing, and so on. And as the stories came out, the ones that were not so filled with light, they flipped over to show more crudely drawn pictures, of more crude topics. I thought that a very interesting touch.