A lot since the last entry... my Augustana College 20th Reunion, the Spooky Trail, but first the promised theatre reviews:
1. The Constant Wife by Somerset Maugham (performed at the Boulevard Theatre, Milwaukee).
Basically a study of marriage dynamics, this play struck me as extremely 'period.' I feel this way usually when there are confrontations and assertions in the text of the play that probably made sense in some other context but are hard to follow in the current day and age. Plot? Man cheats on wife with wife's best friend. Everyone knows except the constant wife (named Constance !?!?!). Constance is finally confronted, only to reveal that she has known all along and had avoided acting like she knew so she could go on with a comfortable existence, since she had resigned herself to the transformation of her marriage from passionate to predictable. All of these twists and turns, complicated by the return of a man who loved Constance before her marriage, leave plenty of space for monologues on the role of women and men and honesty and love and passion and,... well, I think you get it. I liked all of the actors and the tones they struck, but I lost my program, so I can't (and won't) go through each one. In the end, a good performance of a mediocre text.
2. State of the Union by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (performed by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theatre, Milwaukee).
Politically pertinent plays performed playfully. The setting is reversed from this historical moment: in 1948, the Republicans are desperate to find someone to help them break the Democratic streak in the White House. They happen upon a charismatic businessman whom they convince to make some preliminary speeches, to test the waters. In front of this backdrop, we encounter the man, his outspoken wife, the cogs in the political machine, his mistress who happens to own a newspaper, and a wide variety of business and labor types.
Lindsay and Crouse, most famous for writing the story for Sound of Music, give us a mostly-subtle love story rather than just bashing us with politics. The Rep actors did an excellent job selling the characters and giving them 'arc' or transformation throughout the action. Those who hate come to tolerate, those who ignore come to notice, those who have lost love manage to find it again. This play, which won a Pulitzer, was made into a film (starring Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Angela Lansbury). I am anxious to see what Frank Capra did with the text and the characters. I hope he did as good a job as the Rep did.
3. Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (performed by Milwaukee Shakespeare at the Broadway Theatre Center, Milwaukee).
To start at the end, what I really like are 'talk-backs.' I love it when the actors (and perhaps the director) come out after a performance and answer audience questions. Not every question is lit-crit-worthy, but many press the actors to verbalize their (character's?) motivations and their experiences. If I were Emperor of Things, I would make it a rule that every run of every play had to do these more often. This performance happened to have a talk-back, so it automatically starts with a B+. Hey, I'm emperor.
Anyway, this rendition of the play has the novel update of being recast as a 'reality show' in which the King of Navarre and his 3 friends are followed around by a Greek Chorus/Comic Relief group sporting TV cameras and microphones. No text is added to the Shakespeare, though some of the non-main-arc sections are heavily deleted. The result is a loud, hilarious, mostly-accessible version of the play. The disconnect between the Shakespearean language and the TV monitors evaporated for me almost immediately [ah, a victory for my high school English teacher's mantra of 'willing suspension of disbelief']. When the play-within-the-play leaked over into American Idol, I was temporarily irritated, but they recovered nicely. A difficult play was rendered cleverly accessible.
4. I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright (performed by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre at the Stiemke Theatre, Milwaukee).
Doug Wright irritates me. I read Quills, and, frankly, didn't like the play. So I went into this production with a chip on my shoulder, prepared to declare my ticket money wasted.
It wasn't.
Doug Wright still irritates me, because he has forced me to reassess, to change my original evaluation - which means, to quote that venerable philosopher, Fonzie, that I was wrrr..., I was wrrrrrr..., I may have been premature in my negative evaluation. This play was excellent, partially because of the real-feeling writing and partially because of Michael Gotch's absolutely virtuoso performance of this one-man play (with over 30 different characters). I was blown away.
Plot: Doug Wright writes himself into this play about how he negotiates the writing of a play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an openly gay transvestite who survived Nazi Germany and the Soviet period of Eastern Germany.
Whoa. Yeah, I know. Amazing. Wright chronicles his evolution from naive admirer to horrified spectator to mature author in relation to the life she led. Life is not as clean and clear as characters and action often appear in plays. Wright's injecting himself as a character can look a bit narcissistic, but this allows for the two layers of action (Charlotte's navigating her life and Wright navigating his research and realizations). Really well-written and well-acted. I am glad that I am forced to give Doug Wright another chance.
More on the other stuff later. Drop me a note or a comment.
1. The Constant Wife by Somerset Maugham (performed at the Boulevard Theatre, Milwaukee).
Basically a study of marriage dynamics, this play struck me as extremely 'period.' I feel this way usually when there are confrontations and assertions in the text of the play that probably made sense in some other context but are hard to follow in the current day and age. Plot? Man cheats on wife with wife's best friend. Everyone knows except the constant wife (named Constance !?!?!). Constance is finally confronted, only to reveal that she has known all along and had avoided acting like she knew so she could go on with a comfortable existence, since she had resigned herself to the transformation of her marriage from passionate to predictable. All of these twists and turns, complicated by the return of a man who loved Constance before her marriage, leave plenty of space for monologues on the role of women and men and honesty and love and passion and,... well, I think you get it. I liked all of the actors and the tones they struck, but I lost my program, so I can't (and won't) go through each one. In the end, a good performance of a mediocre text.
2. State of the Union by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (performed by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theatre, Milwaukee).
Politically pertinent plays performed playfully. The setting is reversed from this historical moment: in 1948, the Republicans are desperate to find someone to help them break the Democratic streak in the White House. They happen upon a charismatic businessman whom they convince to make some preliminary speeches, to test the waters. In front of this backdrop, we encounter the man, his outspoken wife, the cogs in the political machine, his mistress who happens to own a newspaper, and a wide variety of business and labor types.
Lindsay and Crouse, most famous for writing the story for Sound of Music, give us a mostly-subtle love story rather than just bashing us with politics. The Rep actors did an excellent job selling the characters and giving them 'arc' or transformation throughout the action. Those who hate come to tolerate, those who ignore come to notice, those who have lost love manage to find it again. This play, which won a Pulitzer, was made into a film (starring Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Angela Lansbury). I am anxious to see what Frank Capra did with the text and the characters. I hope he did as good a job as the Rep did.
3. Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (performed by Milwaukee Shakespeare at the Broadway Theatre Center, Milwaukee).
To start at the end, what I really like are 'talk-backs.' I love it when the actors (and perhaps the director) come out after a performance and answer audience questions. Not every question is lit-crit-worthy, but many press the actors to verbalize their (character's?) motivations and their experiences. If I were Emperor of Things, I would make it a rule that every run of every play had to do these more often. This performance happened to have a talk-back, so it automatically starts with a B+. Hey, I'm emperor.
Anyway, this rendition of the play has the novel update of being recast as a 'reality show' in which the King of Navarre and his 3 friends are followed around by a Greek Chorus/Comic Relief group sporting TV cameras and microphones. No text is added to the Shakespeare, though some of the non-main-arc sections are heavily deleted. The result is a loud, hilarious, mostly-accessible version of the play. The disconnect between the Shakespearean language and the TV monitors evaporated for me almost immediately [ah, a victory for my high school English teacher's mantra of 'willing suspension of disbelief']. When the play-within-the-play leaked over into American Idol, I was temporarily irritated, but they recovered nicely. A difficult play was rendered cleverly accessible.
4. I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright (performed by the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre at the Stiemke Theatre, Milwaukee).
Doug Wright irritates me. I read Quills, and, frankly, didn't like the play. So I went into this production with a chip on my shoulder, prepared to declare my ticket money wasted.
It wasn't.
Doug Wright still irritates me, because he has forced me to reassess, to change my original evaluation - which means, to quote that venerable philosopher, Fonzie, that I was wrrr..., I was wrrrrrr..., I may have been premature in my negative evaluation. This play was excellent, partially because of the real-feeling writing and partially because of Michael Gotch's absolutely virtuoso performance of this one-man play (with over 30 different characters). I was blown away.
Plot: Doug Wright writes himself into this play about how he negotiates the writing of a play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an openly gay transvestite who survived Nazi Germany and the Soviet period of Eastern Germany.
Whoa. Yeah, I know. Amazing. Wright chronicles his evolution from naive admirer to horrified spectator to mature author in relation to the life she led. Life is not as clean and clear as characters and action often appear in plays. Wright's injecting himself as a character can look a bit narcissistic, but this allows for the two layers of action (Charlotte's navigating her life and Wright navigating his research and realizations). Really well-written and well-acted. I am glad that I am forced to give Doug Wright another chance.
More on the other stuff later. Drop me a note or a comment.
2 comments:
ahoy,
I like talk-backs, too! It's the "DVD extras" of theater, to my mind. I'm lucky in that: Living with a director of plays, I get a "walking talk-back" for just about everything (she's a veritable fount of knowledge).
The "reality show" setting of the play sounds intriguing, I'll point it out to R.
Take care,
awiz
It's been a couple of weeks... you really should get back to the theater, man.
Sherry
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