Feelin' Opinionated
I had a very nice weekend in Massachusetts seeing two plays at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Contrary to the newspaper review I quoted in my last post, Lucy and the Conquest by Cusi Cram was terrifically enjoyable. The play -- which explores, mostly comically, how one integrates ethnic heritage and family history with one's present life -- is kind of all over the place and not perfect, but I give it very high marks for pure inventiveness and taking chances. The cast was great, especially the lead actress, Jeanine Serralles. (It turns out she was in The Velvet Sky at Washington's Woolly Mammoth earlier this year. I now wish I'd seen that and will keep my eye out for her, though I don't think she's based here.)
Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Margaret Colin (whom I know I've seen in a sitcom or two over the years) was equally polished, even if I found it to be one of an already talky playwright's talkier works (I hadn't read or seen it before).
Beyond the thrill of seeing a theater company that I've heard so much about over the years, both productions were of a consistently even and professional quality. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I mean it as the highest.
Maybe it's just me, but one of my pet peeves, which I see way too much of in Washington, is actors who miscalculate the size of the space they're playing in. Most of Washington's theaters are relatively small, yet I repeatedly see at least one actor, sometimes a whole cast, come stomping out, overgesticulating and screaming into a nonexistent upper balcony. That happened this year in both the way overpraised Fat Girl by Neil LaBute at DC's Studio Theatre and the forgettable production of Hedda Gabler at Maryland's Olney Theatre. I hated Edward Albee's mystifyingly Tony Award-winning The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? so much when I saw it at Arena Stage last year -- and I mean I hated the play itself, which was about nothing except its own supposed provocativeness (a married man falls in love with a goat -- oooh, provocative) -- so my memory may be clouded, but I remember some overprojection there, too.
What are these actors and directors thinking? And why don't critics point this flaw out more often? Are they so used to it that they don't notice it anymore? I just don't get it.
The Williamstown productions were perfectly scaled in every way -- a pleasure to see.
I'll blog more about the rest of the weekend later, including (as much as it pains me to say a negative word about her) a contrarian review of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Margaret Colin (whom I know I've seen in a sitcom or two over the years) was equally polished, even if I found it to be one of an already talky playwright's talkier works (I hadn't read or seen it before).
Beyond the thrill of seeing a theater company that I've heard so much about over the years, both productions were of a consistently even and professional quality. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I mean it as the highest.
Maybe it's just me, but one of my pet peeves, which I see way too much of in Washington, is actors who miscalculate the size of the space they're playing in. Most of Washington's theaters are relatively small, yet I repeatedly see at least one actor, sometimes a whole cast, come stomping out, overgesticulating and screaming into a nonexistent upper balcony. That happened this year in both the way overpraised Fat Girl by Neil LaBute at DC's Studio Theatre and the forgettable production of Hedda Gabler at Maryland's Olney Theatre. I hated Edward Albee's mystifyingly Tony Award-winning The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? so much when I saw it at Arena Stage last year -- and I mean I hated the play itself, which was about nothing except its own supposed provocativeness (a married man falls in love with a goat -- oooh, provocative) -- so my memory may be clouded, but I remember some overprojection there, too.
What are these actors and directors thinking? And why don't critics point this flaw out more often? Are they so used to it that they don't notice it anymore? I just don't get it.
The Williamstown productions were perfectly scaled in every way -- a pleasure to see.
I'll blog more about the rest of the weekend later, including (as much as it pains me to say a negative word about her) a contrarian review of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
posted by Billy at 10:55 PM
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