Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: theatre

  • Two Out of Three Ain’t Good

    Tonight we went to go see Speed the Plow. When I saw that it was part of the 2007 season I was excited. I really enjoy Mamet and the first reviews of the show were solid. I wanted to go see it, but it was running for 3 months and I was busy and picking the night that I would have enough time to see it seemed like too much work. Then on Tuesday I realized that it was closing this weekend. That was it. I was out of time, and we have people in town this weekend that would not want to go see it with us. That left us with only a couple of days left. I got tickets for tonight, even though we were so busy it was difficult to imagine going.

    I really like both of the men cast in the play (Greg Germann and Jon Tenney). Alicia Silverstone is also in it, and even though I did not instinctively think she’d be a great stage actress, most of the reviews said that she was the reason to see it. That she really did a good job and was the best performance in the cast.

    We arrived and rapidly discovered that out of the huge cast of three, two of the roles were being played by understudies. I was so disappointed. Plus in this day and age, they could really be updating the website on a daily basis with casting changes. I bought the tickets the day of the show. I was at the site. I could have seen and made a choice about whether I still wanted to go. In general I don’t mind seeing understudies. I often times find they are wonderful and talented and throwing themselves even more into the part because they are getting a big break when the regular can’t be on stage. Still, in such a small cast… Especially considering that the cast was part of the reasons I was looking forward to it. The man who took Jon Tenney’s place to a large extent seemed to be doing a Tenney impression, and doing it well. The woman… Well, frankly I just did not enjoy her at all. She was not *anything* enough. Now admittedly Mamet does not always write his female characters quite as well as I would like, but this was not about the dialog. I also don’t know what the director asked for, so to blame it all on the actress would not be fair. However, if she is playing a part that is getting mentioned in the reviews as the key performance from another actress, it makes me suspect that the something that went wrong here could not be squarely blamed on the direction.

    The character is rather pivotal, so that was definitely a let down. I did enjoy the play though. Greg Germann and Rob Kahn were both quite watchable.

    The seats were angled somewhat uncomfortably, and just completely wrong for the kid’s back. She was in pain throughout the show. I was cold, but when I leaned over to whisper that to the husband, he thought I said I was bored, so it didn’t occur to him to offer me his jacket. During the intermission I saw he had a jacket and borrowed it, but I only got to use it for a few minutes before we put it behind kfz to try to provide more support to her lower back.

    This was my first time seeing Speed the Plow, but I know Mamet, so we did discuss whether or not to bring kfz along, but we decided that taking her with us to see something by a playwright that I really like had enough value. As expected ,it was full of vast amounts of swearing and people hanging out somewhere between morally questionable and full on reprehensible. It will give us something to talk about tomorrow.

    We went out for dinner after the show, and the husband was putting his leftovers in a togo box as the waitress brought him a refill of iced tea. She suddenly grabbed her eye and went rapidly away from the table, with his iced tea still in hand. It turned out he had managed to splash spicy mustard directly into her eye. That hasn’t happened to us before.  Seems worth a few points.

    The rest of the day was busy and exhausting. I am amazed I could even stay away through the show. We had fourth row seats, so loud snoring probably would have been quite distracting to the actors. Now I just want to go to bed, but I still need to take care of some things. I am just going to power through the bare minimum.

  • Post 2 of The Things I Like Series

    When I was in the third grade, I wrote, directed and acted in my first play. Yes, I was a control freak from the start. When I got older I remained involved with theatre, but gave up on the acting part. As part of our program in college, you had to get on stage, so you knew what it was like from that side. I hated it from that side.

    From the other side, well it was quite a love/hate relationship. It continues to this day. At this moment I rarely do work, although I’ve had multiple people encouraging me to start volunteering at local theaters. It is tempting. I really love that line of work, except when I am hating it.

    Lately, I mostly remain an audience member. Often I am disturbed by the audience behavior. Turn off your damn phones. Don’t bring children if they cannot sit still and shut up. Don’t come yourself if you cannot sit still and shut up. Do they comprehend that the people up on stage can hear them?

    Some of the shows I watched in the past year were because I actively wanted a chance to see them. Others I saw based on the recommendations of friends. Others we attended because we knew somebody involved in the show. Sometimes I enjoy myself very little. Sometimes I enjoy myself immensely. Occasionally I can make it through an entire show without once thinking about how I would have done it differently. This year that actually happened multiple times, which was nice.

    A year in theatre (somewhat in order):

    “A Christmas Carol” (December 2005)
    “A North Hollywood Canteen Holiday”
    “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”
    “The Argonauts”
    “The Block”
    “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”
    “Don’t Dress for Dinner”
    “Hairspray”
    “Usher”
    “Urinetown”
    “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”
    “The Real Inspector Hound”
    “Black Comedy”
    “Wicked”
    “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”
    “Proof”
    “Sluts! The Musical”
    “Aesop’s Falables”
    “A Christmas Carol” (December 2006)

    The most recent “A Christmas Carol” that we attended (and we still have one more version of it to see this year) was put on at a private Christian school. I only found out where we were going an hour before we needed to leave the house. Not that knowing would have changed my agreement to go, it just would have changed my expectations a bit earlier. I thought we were going to a public high school production. It was a nice production. They obviously had a solid amount of money for costumes and actually did some very nice things with the set. I have to say I was impressed with the set. They were selling expensive jewelry outside to benefit the program and having a silent auction in the lobby as well. I suppose that is how they afford the nice costumes. There was the fairly typical mixture of talent levels for a school show. There were several nice singing voices. Overall, the whole accent thing did not go well, and I do not think the director should have had them attempt it. The show was performed in the school chapel. I have not been in a chapel since I worked as a wedding photographer. The pews were padded which was nice, but every little thump and movement carried all the way down, so the guy at the end of the row was irritating the crap out of me with his constant fidgeting. One of the many problems with having a very bad back is being quite sensitive to having seats knocked and shook. All in all, it was solid for a school production. They did Christian it up a, Jesus was mentioned multiple times during the play and the ghosts were termed “Angelic Spirits” first and thereafter were always referred to as spirits, never ghosts. I guess ghosts is a negative.

    When the play was finally over (this tale is one that I am extremely familiar with, and not one of my favorites to start, so it is no reflection on the show or anyone in it that I was happy to see it pass), I was thrilled because I was hungry for dinner, and more importantly I needed to find the restroom. I was unable to make a rapid exit because the lights immediately came up and the sermon and prayer session began. That hasn’t happened to me at a play before. I would seriously prefer it not happen again.