10 posts tagged “plays”
We went to see Into the Woods at an outdoor amphitheater as performed by Sandstone Productions.
I like this theater. There's something about watching theater outdoors that seems very real. After about two hours on the stone benches, though, and I've had enough reality. This show ran almost three hours long, and I would say that pretty much all of the slack was due to the over-rated song stylings of Stephen Sondheim. The songs in this musical are not that musical, not pleasant to listen to, and I can only imagine that they aren't pleasant to sing, either, though the cast did their best with the material at hand.
The story itself is cute, though I think it, too could have been shorter. I would have been very happy with the play as it ended in Act II, before the intermission. The play is basically a re-telling of several fairy tails - Rappunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella - weaving the stories together into one, inter-related überfairy tale. At the end of Act II, all of the stories are sufficiently interwoven, and have ended in more or less the traditional way. Act III tears all of our traditional stories apart and seems to have an overall theme of "there aren't really any happily ever afters," which, I don't know about you, but I already knew, thank you very much.
The theater group I've been involved in is now having weekly script readings to pick its shows for the 2009-2010 season. Yes, they pick them out a year and a half ahead. They do this because they operate partly off of a grant from Conoco-Phillips, and they have to have their shows planned before the grant application deadline, which is in June.
Basically, we all get together, pick parts, and read through a play that one of the members recommended. Tonight we read A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller. It's hard to say how a man who was having sex with Marilyn Monroe could write something so depressing. Depressing as it is, however, it's a good play. We'll see if it makes the final list.
Next week, we're reading The Foreigner. I recommended it. The play is almost overdone, but it hasn't played here for about ten years, and it's screamingly funny.
And, on a completely unrelated note...
Please...
Don't leave personally owned geese.
Seriously.
Man, I've been busy, and now that I've started rehearsing for the next play even though the current one isn't finished, it's likely to be like that for a while.
A few nights ago, Strix and I watched Finding Neverland. Johnny Depp plays J M Barrie, the Scottish playwrite who wrote Peter Pan and - not incidentally - Dear Brutus, the play I'm in right now. Finding Neverland is supposed to be about the inspiration that lead Barrie to write Peter Pan. The beginning of the movie says, "Inspired by Actual Events," or something along those lines, and that's all you can really say, because it's not a true story.
In the movie, Barrie meets Sylvia Davies when she is already a widow, in 1903. In reality, he met them when the patriarch of the family, Arthur, was still alive, in 1897. Arthur didn't actually die until 1907. Peter Pan was already written by 1903, based somewhat on the children in the Davies family, so the fact that the movie had poor Slyvia a widow four years before her husband actually died was the screenwriter's way of making her more of a love interest for Barrie.
We put this movie at the top of our Netflix list because I was interested to learn more about Barrie since I'm in a play written by him right now. The character I play, Mr. Dearth, is semi-autobiographical, I think. Barrie's relationship with his wife, Mary Ansell, was, at least according to some, a cold and possibly even sexless marriage. Mr. Dearth is in a marriage with a wife that hates him, apparently for failing to measure up to some unspoken ideal that she had set up. Dearth is an artist, and his wife is a model, whereas Barrie was a playwrite, and his wife was an actress. Barrie and his wife were childless, a fact that he apparently regretted since he romanticized childhood so much in Peter Pan, and Dearth and his wife are likewise childless, a fact which he regrets but she does not. There are a good number of parallels.
Despite the movie's playing fast and loose with the facts, it was very entertaining to watch, and had excellent performances from Depp (of course), Kate Winslet (Sylvia Davies), and an incredibly cold and unlikable Radha Mitchell (Mary Ansell, Barrie's actress wife).
So, at rehearsal last night, the director tells us to that only those of us with costume changes during the performance need to wear our costumes. This is what the costume manager also believes, so, no hurry, she's still got time to make those last-minute alterations, right?
Wrong. We show up tonight, and the first thing everyone hears is that the photographer from the local newspaper is coming, and we all have to be in costume. Terrific, so I put on my costume, which is not meant to be worn with a sweater underneath and with brown shoes, but hey, that's all I had, and of course the pants haven't been taken in, yet, and the hat hasn't been padded out, yet. Lovely.
Tomorrow, I'm bringing a belt. I don't care if it's not period. If my pants fall down around my ankles while I walk across stage, they'll have a very different kind of show on their hands.
Meet Bosworth.
Tomorrow is full dress rehearsal, and Friday is show time. There are still a good number of kinks to be worked out, and since this is my first play, I don't really know how normal that is. There are a large number of children in this thing, and keeping them under control is quite the ordeal.
I got a part in Dear, Brutus! The Director is aware, if she read my dossier, that I'm rehearsing for my first play now. At least, I hope she knows that. I haven't been in my first play, yet, and I've landed a part in a second play, which will take stage in February, and it has a hell of a lot more lines.
In A Christmas Carol, I have eleven lines, total. In Dear, Brutus, playing the role of Mr. Dearth, I have 147 lines (I just counted them). It's a real character, going through the whole range of emotions, not a one-scene stereotype. The play has several characters and parallel story lines, but if one character had to be picked out as the "lead," it would probably be Mr. Dearth. Please excuse me while I have a paralyzing anxiety attack.
Tonight, we saw a play called "Night Watch," performed by Theater Ensemble Arts, the same community drama group that is doing the version of the A Christmas Carol that I'm performing in in December.
The stage design was amazing, and the acting was good. A couple of the actors needed to learn to project a little more, but it was a dialog-heavy play, and the main characters did a great job of keeping it all together and got through it all perfectly, despite it being the first night of the first show of the season.
I am freaking amazed, however, at people who insist on talking and giggling during the live performance of a play. I realise it's "only" community theater, but show some respect. And I'm not talking about children, I'm talking about adults in their forties and fifties, people who should know better. I wanted to smack them in the back of the head.
[Pages 3-4, "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens, adapted for the stage by Ross Daniels]
As Bob lets Fred out, Two Gentlement (Bosworth & Crumbley) come in.
BOSWORTH: Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?
SCROOGE: Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago this very night.
CRUMBLEY: We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner.
At the word 'liberality,' Scrooge frowns.
BOSWORTH: At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.
SCROOGE: Are there no prisons?
CRUMBLEY: Plenty of prisons.
SCROOGE: And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?
CRUMBLEY: They are. Still, I wish I could say they are not.
BOSWORTH: A few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time of all others when Want is keenly felt and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?
SCROOGE: Nothing!
BOSWORTH: You wish to be anonymous.
SCROOGE: I wish to be left alone. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned - they cost enough - and those who are badly off must go there.
CRUMBLEY: Many can't go there; and many would rather die.
SCROOGE: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides - excuse me - I don't know that.
BOSWORTH: But you might know it.
SCROOGE: It's not my business!
Both Gentlemen stand frozen in amazement.
Good afternoon, gentlemen!
[Hear that? They cast me as a "gentleman." They don't know me very well, do they?]
[Pages 19-20]
The [third] spirit [Christmas Future] only points. Lights up on the Two Gentlement from the first scene.
[At this point, Scrooge is being provided a vision of the world after his own death.]
CRUMBLEY: No, I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead.
BOSWORTH: When did he die?
CRUMBLEY: Last night, I believe.
BOSWORTH: Why, what was the matter with him? It thought he'd never die.
CRUMBLEY: God knows. (He yawns.)
BOSWORTH: What has he done with his money?
CRUMBLEY: I haven't heard. Left it to the Company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know. (They both laugh.) It's likely to be a very cheap funeral for, upon my life, I don't know of anyone to go to it.
BOSWORTH: I don't mind going if a lunch is provided. (They laugh as the lights fade.) [They're walking off at this point...]
CRUMBLEY: Well! Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?
BOSWORTH: So I am told. Cold, isn't it?
CRUMBLEY: Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose?
BOSWORTH: No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning! (They are gone.)
Originally posted on my old blog on 5/6/06:
I haven't the slightest idea how we ended up with a copy of this play from 1970, but we did, and because we did, I read it. It's very typical of its time period, and reminded me quite a bit of a play I had seen staged once called The Curse of the Starving Class. It has little to no plot, and is basically just a collection of unlikable, borderline schizophrenic characters being mean to each other. This one will be bookcrossing right on out of here. The playwright is Paul Zindel, who won a Pulitzer for drama. I can only hope it wasn't for this play.
Strix and I have gone to see two outdoor plays recently at the Lions Wilderness Amphitheater. The first one we went to see was Cyrano de Bergerac. As most everyone knows the basic premise, I won't bore you with it, but it was very well done, and the lead role was very expertly played by Brian McCann, an actor from Philadelphia who is spending the summer in New Mexico. I was also quite impressed with the swordplay.
On a side note, I didn't know until I just looked it up know that the play Cyrano de Bergerac was based on a real person.
The second play we saw was Crazy for You. This is a cobbled-together musical, recycling a number of old Gershwin toons like "I Got Rhythm" and "They Can't Take That Away From Me." The plot of the play is that a young man who wants to sing and dance on stage, but really works for a bank that his mother owns, is sent to Nevada to foreclose on an already-closed playhouse in a little dying town called Deadrock. Predictably, he falls in love with the woman whose father owns the playhouse (the only woman in Deadrock) and decides to try to put on a play in the playhouse to raise enough money to save it from foreclosure. The woman won't have anything to do with him, and while she's secretly smitten with him she thinks he's a crackpot. The man then does what any sane person would do, and dresses up as a famous producer from New York and tells her that he is there to help her put on the play. Eventually, of course, the real famous New York producer shows up, and wackiness ensues.
I will say that I was in a bad mood at the amphitheater when we watched this play, anyway. There was a busload of ill-behaved teens from a church youth group there that night, and then the family in the row in front of us and to our left kept talking during the play and jostling the bench back. That being said, I don't think I would have liked this play under the best of conditions. It is just a contrived, empty way to reintroduce old songs from old plays. The lead character, Bobby Child (played by Robert Mitchell), was as ridiculous a character as I've ever seen, the total stereotype of the young man with stars in his eyes who just knows that if he got his break he could make it big!
That being said, the actor Robert Mitchell does know how to tap dance, quite well, and the actors did the best they could with the material they had.
The amphitheater itself is quite small, and the only seating is in the form of stone benches, so bring a cushion. If you're lucky, you can get one of the benches with a wooden back to it. Unless, of course, the people sitting in the same row as you keep jostling the wooden back, in which case you are unlucky again.
Originally posted on my old blog on November 20th, 2004:
We went to see a play at the Milwaukee Rep last night (Thursday). The play was The Story, a modern story much influenced by television. It's TV-like transitions were a bit distracting, if expertly executed by the cast. It's about journalism and its place in race relations, and how almost no one is unaffected in some way by racial tensions. The performances were very good.
