Tony, in the tangerine polo shirt, plopped down next to me at BETRAYAL and nudged my arm. "Hey, quiet! Can't you see we're trying to sleep?' I smiled and said "I hope that's not the case.' A co-worker gave me his very expensive orchestra seat for the performance tonight. Tony was there with his wife and started hitting me up about my opinion on the musicals he saw. He loved AIN'T TOO PROUD across the street, thought HADESTOWN was 'okay good,' gushed about seeing MOULIN ROUGE tomorrow, and was sad that he was going to miss THE ROSE TATTOO due to flight plans back home to Chicago. I told him that I went to Northwestern and he was at Depaul. He had never seen Pinter before and wanted to know what he should expect. 'Well...there won't be as much dancing as in AIN'T TOO PROUD.' Tony joked that they should open the show with a Motown number and that would win over the crowd. Yes, I think that would do it. We talked about Chicago, theatre and then oddly switched over to the Miami Dolphins since he loved coach Don Shula. I love Don Shula too so we talked about strategy and his legacy for a while.
Anyway, the play begins. It's very well acted. It's also very very...pretentious. Like 1990s OBSESSION perfume commercial pretension in the design element. Stark lighting, bare stage, fluorescent tracks to emphasize the hopelessness. It was an awful telegraphing of 'MESSAGE' by design and directing. The text is already sparse. We don't need sparse on top of sparse. These people have obviously never read BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS where Professor David Ball excoriates designers who create a show that tells you exactly how everything ends in the first minute...thus sucking all the fun and magic out of the play. The key example used in the book is when MACBETH'S castle in the opening scene is designed to look like a haunted house with blood dripping from the ceiling. In the actual text the King remarks on how wonderful everything is, which makes the audience think the King is an idiot. We know he's going to die but the lines imply that there has to be some hope. Bad design ignores the lines and creates a concept which telegraphs the end. Well, that's what BETRAYAL'S design did: it robbed the actors and audience of the ability to go on the journey. it was a classic example of 'Bad Ivo Van Hove' which thinks directing is bludgeoning the audience with metaphors...and then drowning them in red dye...so DEEP. Wow, that was SO SO interesting how you just shat on all the text and took over the play and turned it into a conceptual exhibit.
At the end of the play, we are told that an 'important artistic event' has happened through music, stark lighting, and lots of artisty catatonic stares. Of course, the audience -which had been dead-ass asleep, snoring, fidgeting, and sighing- gives it a standing ovation because it's so so important. I realize the standing ovation is for the audience, not the performers. It's an acknowledgement of their patience for 'important art.'
Tony, in the tangerine polo, had been sighing and fidgeting throughout. At the end, he asked me what I thought and I said that it was 'ok and a bit of a letdown.' He seemed shocked that I didn't love it like everyone else. He loved it..or the standing ovation had convinced him that he loved it...or the ticket prices convinced that he better fucking love this play considering how much time, effort, and money was spent for this weekend. He ambled out with his wife and I wished them well. May we stay true to our own thoughts, and not betray them for the safety of the flock.
Anyway, the play begins. It's very well acted. It's also very very...pretentious. Like 1990s OBSESSION perfume commercial pretension in the design element. Stark lighting, bare stage, fluorescent tracks to emphasize the hopelessness. It was an awful telegraphing of 'MESSAGE' by design and directing. The text is already sparse. We don't need sparse on top of sparse. These people have obviously never read BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS where Professor David Ball excoriates designers who create a show that tells you exactly how everything ends in the first minute...thus sucking all the fun and magic out of the play. The key example used in the book is when MACBETH'S castle in the opening scene is designed to look like a haunted house with blood dripping from the ceiling. In the actual text the King remarks on how wonderful everything is, which makes the audience think the King is an idiot. We know he's going to die but the lines imply that there has to be some hope. Bad design ignores the lines and creates a concept which telegraphs the end. Well, that's what BETRAYAL'S design did: it robbed the actors and audience of the ability to go on the journey. it was a classic example of 'Bad Ivo Van Hove' which thinks directing is bludgeoning the audience with metaphors...and then drowning them in red dye...so DEEP. Wow, that was SO SO interesting how you just shat on all the text and took over the play and turned it into a conceptual exhibit.
At the end of the play, we are told that an 'important artistic event' has happened through music, stark lighting, and lots of artisty catatonic stares. Of course, the audience -which had been dead-ass asleep, snoring, fidgeting, and sighing- gives it a standing ovation because it's so so important. I realize the standing ovation is for the audience, not the performers. It's an acknowledgement of their patience for 'important art.'
Tony, in the tangerine polo, had been sighing and fidgeting throughout. At the end, he asked me what I thought and I said that it was 'ok and a bit of a letdown.' He seemed shocked that I didn't love it like everyone else. He loved it..or the standing ovation had convinced him that he loved it...or the ticket prices convinced that he better fucking love this play considering how much time, effort, and money was spent for this weekend. He ambled out with his wife and I wished them well. May we stay true to our own thoughts, and not betray them for the safety of the flock.
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