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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: When the play's NOT the thing
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The Intrepid Mrs S
Shipmate
# 17002
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Posted
I once saw Guy Masterson do a one-man version of Under Milkwood. It was AMAZING. Mind you, I much prefer plays with only a few actors in them, or with something else weird about them (mask theatre is a favourite, or something with film or puppets as well as a human cast).
I think the crunch came when I went to see a production featuring underwater marionettes - something so weird that none of the family would accompany me ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
Mrs. S, getting used to going to the theatre alone
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Don't get your knickers in a twist over your advancing age. It achieves nothing and makes you walk funny.
Prayer should be our first recourse, not our last resort
'Lord, please give us patience. NOW!'
Posts: 1464 | From: Neither here nor there | Registered: Mar 2012
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
The first production I saw of the three sisters was a very clever minimalist version where only one in three lines were used, and of the lines that were used only half the words were used.
It might have been very clever and meaningful for someone who new the play thoroughly but I didn't and was completely lost. There was no information on the flyers or posters to warn the audience about the need to read and commit the play to memory before attending. I and several others decided at the break that it was fitting to continue the theme and only use the first of the two halves of the play.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
At one line in three and then half of that line only, I'd have been tempted to have demanded ⅚ of my money back.
There was silence kept instead of the lines. Perhaps they would have charged for that instead? I felt a bit guilty actually - it was obviously a young company and some of the staff looked a little imploring (in a kicked puppy-dog sort of way) as a group of us made our getaway.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
There's a form of theater where the company (or the director at least) want to present an exciting new concept of theater rather than performing of play.
All well and good but if I'm not enjoying watching their theoretical play I don't feel obliged to remain. They can use the concept of an audience rather than an actual audience.
It of course is never nice to savage earnest intentions but it's a two way contract and sometimes you vote with your feet.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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cross eyed bear
Shipmate
# 13977
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Posted
The Magic Flute, performed in Austria and set in the 1950s. The second act was based entirely in a sci-fi, wooden-panelled set with people jumping out of wooden drawers and sliding down wooden flumes. This was compounded by the fact that my cheap, last-minute seat meant that I couldn't see anything on the right-hand of the stage. I'm not sure what the original plot of the opera was, but I suspect it is very different from the plot I wrote whilst listening to this version.
The extreme gothic version of the Barber of Seville, sung in Italian and subbed into Latvian was just funny. It made extensive use of a human-sized bird cage.
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"One false step in my direction, you'd better believe in the resurrection" Stillgoe & Skellern's "Mrs Beamish"
Posts: 120 | From: Southern Germany | Registered: Jul 2008
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
We went to a production of Salome. Salome was sung by a sturdily built middle aged woman. The Dance of the Seven Veils was more of a Dance of the Seven Tablecloths and the last tablecloth revealed Salome sensibly attired in thermal long johns and a thermal vest.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
We went to a production of Salome. Salome was sung by a sturdily built middle aged woman. The Dance of the Seven Veils was more of a Dance of the Seven Tablecloths and the last tablecloth revealed Salome sensibly attired in thermal long johns and a thermal vest.
The mind is duly boggling.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Phwoar. No wonder Herod was ready to give her half his kingdom....
I remember a production of The City of Mahagonny in which the director had decided the female chorus needed to undress ( such an original idea). What you had were half a dozen professional singers clearly Not Happy with having to appear in bras and knickers. Then at the end, everyone marched about in radiation suits since the opera was clearly all about living in The Shadder of the Bomb.
[ 05. April 2015, 21:20: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Banner Lady
Ship's Ensign
# 10505
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Posted
Some things are just wrong. There is a fine line between minimalist and ridiculous. I remember seeing a production of Hamlet once where the castle set was studded with dustbin/trashcan lids. I spent most of the evening wondering what happened to all the bins.
And then there are things like this: Joan Sutherland - well into her matronly sixties, playing
The Daughter of the Regiment
[code fix]
[ 06. April 2015, 16:11: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
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Women in the church are not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be enjoyed.
Posts: 7080 | From: Canberra Australia | Registered: Oct 2005
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
There was a Python-esque production of The Tempest a few years ago. Instead of an enchanted island it was set in the Arctic, with Patrick Stewart's Prospero as a sort of shaman. The most hilarious moment was the feast scene, where the spirits dragged on a dead walrus and Ariel erupted out of the middle of it. (Having a drink with some of the cast afterwards they revealed the walrus alone had cost £10,000, and were soon speculating on how the money could have been better spent.)
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Banner Lady:
And then there are things like this: Joan Sutherland - well into her matronly sixties, playing
The Daughter of the Regiment
You have a few extra letters in your link -- try this.
I'll be seeing The Daughter of the Regiment a week from today -- but not with a matronly 60-year-old.
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Banner Lady
Ship's Ensign
# 10505
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Posted
Thanks Pigwidgeon - it made me wonder if she was actually older than the singer playing her father!
By then she had a considerable girth, always cleverly de-emphasized by the costumiers; but I suspect they probably had to bone the things with steel to hold her in shape...
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Women in the church are not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be enjoyed.
Posts: 7080 | From: Canberra Australia | Registered: Oct 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
quote:
Originally posted by Banner Lady:
And then there are things like this: Joan Sutherland - well into her matronly sixties, playing
The Daughter of the Regiment
You have a few extra letters in your link -- try this. ...
Isn't that supposed to be being played for comic effect?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
There was a Python-esque production of The Tempest a few years ago. Instead of an enchanted island it was set in the Arctic, with Patrick Stewart's Prospero as a sort of shaman. The most hilarious moment was the feast scene, where the spirits dragged on a dead walrus and Ariel erupted out of the middle of it. (Having a drink with some of the cast afterwards they revealed the walrus alone had cost £10,000, and were soon speculating on how the money could have been better spent.)
Yes but it was a magnificent performance by Patrick Stewart and Prospero played as a megalomaniac rather than a nice old buffer worked surprisingly well... if one could get past the idea of travelling from Tunisia to Italy via Greenland!
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"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
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Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Patrick Stewart certainly did a decent job, but I felt he was hampered (as were the entire cast) by the idiosyncrasies of the production.
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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Teilhard
Shipmate
# 16342
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by georgiaboy:
Picking up on comments in 'The play's the thing', it seems there are many productions that treat lightly/ignore what the author wrote. (It's especially endemic in opera these days with 'concept' productions.) Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Your experiences?
Two Shakespeare shows that did NOT work at all for me were 'Titus Andronicus' (admittedly a terrible play IMO) which was given a Star Wars setting, and "Midsummer Night's Dream' which was played as if by a Bulgarian circus troupe. And as Anna Russell used to say, 'I'm not making this up, you know.'
But … So … If "the play is [not] the thing," then, "where's the 'rub'" … ???
Posts: 401 | From: Minnesota | Registered: Apr 2011
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
On Aladdin's lamp, perhaps?
Well, panto is theatre: oh yes it is!
[ 07. April 2015, 07:16: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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