Author Topic: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see  (Read 27041 times)

Sandy

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 12075
  • "The life we build, we never stop creating.”
    • Sandy's Cinematic Musings
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #130 on: November 12, 2018, 08:57:09 AM »
Happy you had a great time with the show. It cracks me up just thinking about it. :)

Monty

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4375
  • "There is only one ball, so you need to have it."
    • TheMontyTweets
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #131 on: January 07, 2019, 12:58:59 PM »


True West

Opposites attack in Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play about two brothers with more in common than they think. Holed up in their mother’s California house,
lowelife Lee (Ethan Hawke) and screenwriter Austin (Paul Dano) wrestle with big issues—and each other. Order vs. chaos. Art vs. commerce. Typewriter vs. toaster
...Shepard’s rip-roaring classic returns to Broadway, gleefully detonating our misguided myths of family, identity and the American Dream.

Anyone in New York going to see this.


"And then it just becomes an industry of...cool."

Bondo

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 23082
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #132 on: March 21, 2019, 05:58:29 AM »
I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last weekend. Thought it was quite poor. But more notably, I was shocked how they made it rather less suitable for children. I imagine there are some surprised parents when Veruca, instead of being selected as a bad egg/nut is ripped into about six pieces and her head thrown into the bad nut pile or Violet literally explodes into a stream of blueberry viscera. I'm obviously not a child but I've always been particularly bothered by gore in stage plays. Even though the fakeness of it is clear enough, there is just something too immediate about it. It's an issue I had with Pippin previously, and something I particularly can't imagine if I were seeing The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Just seeing the images of a Chris Pine-led staging of that one was enough to scar me. Anyway, too much of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was pure nightmare fuel, including the Oompa Loompas.

It is on the whole a very inventive staging considering all the special effects necessary, but not a good product when it comes to the crux of a musical, the songs.

NedMeier

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1010
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #133 on: March 21, 2019, 07:18:27 AM »
Got to finally see Hamilton this past weekend. My daughter saw School of Rock on Broadway over the summer and became obsessed with musicals. We got her the Hamilton soundtrack for Christmas, which has been played on repeat for 3 months. We were lucky enough to snag tickets when it came to Detroit and it was amazing!!! We went Sunday, just saw the Lin Manuel Miranda showed on to the Tuesday performance  :(
Top 250  |  Great  |  Good  |  Mixed  |  Bad  | The Worst

FLYmeatwad

  • An Acronym
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28785
  • I am trying to impress myself. I have yet to do it
    • Processed Grass
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #134 on: March 23, 2019, 12:19:54 PM »
Yeah, figured that Inish and Pillowman could be rough to see, Marty M definitely pushes the boundaries in that regard. I wish someone would stage The Wolves. If anyone can track it down, it's worth the 60-90 minute read regardless, it's one of the best plays I've read in a long time.

FLYmeatwad

  • An Acronym
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28785
  • I am trying to impress myself. I have yet to do it
    • Processed Grass
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #135 on: May 11, 2019, 04:24:02 PM »
Been getting back in to the swing of reading, and I'm not ever in NYC, really, so unlikely I'll see these things staged, which means I'm going to spotlight the plays I read in here. Plan to do that tonight or tomorrow, probably, this is just holding me accountable.

Additionally, once again, everyone should read The Wolves.

FLYmeatwad

  • An Acronym
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28785
  • I am trying to impress myself. I have yet to do it
    • Processed Grass
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #136 on: May 11, 2019, 09:39:05 PM »
Hey! It's me, and I'm back to do that thing I said I was going to do.

Sweat - I ended up enjoying Ruined when I read it, but this one resonated more. Perhaps because we are still 'in it' when it comes to looking at how we got to Trump, though I'm wondering if that's more me inserting how it was pitched to me when it won the Pulitzer a few years back. The way it cuts between characters was cool, and, though it didn't immediately register to me (one, I was just getting back in to reading regularly, and also I'm sure it would have been plenty apparent seeing it staged), the way it contains the action to mostly one central location makes a lot of sense when looking at this community as a microcosm for communities as a whole and America at large. Haven't spent a ton of time in the rust belt, and likely got similar things from aspects of the game Night In The Woods, but I could recognize the authenticity from what little time I have spent there. Super impressed by the end.

Cost Of Living - The Pulitzer winner from two years ago, I was pretty hesitant to read this because, given the description and title, I figured that I 'got it' before even opening the book, but boy was FLY wrong. Some cool aspects in the stage directions, adjusting minor parts for the part of the world from which certain characters have their roots, and great to see a play willingly casting people with disabilities, but also insightful in how it explores different strata of society without sacrificing the emotional aspects of being human. Does have an NJ! NJ! NJ! feel, deliberately so, with a big focus on north/central(this probably exists, but I get why it's debatable) Jersey feel in most of the language. Not on board with how all of it's written, but they get a bunch of aspects right. Not surprising, given the location/title of the playwright's previous one, which I haven't read, but sounds super compelling as well. However, it would certainly make me cry earlier than this one did for some of the same reasons, but probably other ones that have to do with the text itself. This thing takes a turn that reframes things in a way that left me pretty floored. Again, would be cool to see staged, but well worth a read if anyone gets the chance as it works mostly on the page as well.

Dance Nation - One of the runner ups for the Pulitzer this year, apparently this sucker has been staged/kicking around since some time in 2017. I don't know what the qualification rules are, and the comparison would be easy to make with The Wolves (as I have seen done), because it's about a group of girls one the cusp of adolescence engaging in a communal sport, but, of the three I'm writing about proper, this would be the one I'm most interested in seeing staged. Unlike Wolves, there's a lot more going on with the way actors are cast, it makes a note that actors should be roughly ages 12-65 or something like that because we should be seeing these characters as girls, but also the actors as shadows of the women they will become. Plus there are some stage notes that seem almost impossible to pull off in a theatrical setting. Might have been my least favorite of the three, but still very good, especially in the moments where it monologues, and reading it the final page or two looked so fun and amazing on paper!

And, finally, I won't be writing about this in full, but I do hope I'll have a chance to see The Wolves staged at some point. That play is likely one of the best I've read in recent memory, and would have picked it for the award over Sweat that year. If you have a library, order it, check it out, whatever. Super quick read, the whole thing is supposed to be staged at a hard 90 minutes to mirror a soccer match, and just the best.

Got What The Constitution Means To Me, the other Pulitzer runner up, presumably coming to me at some point this month.

Bondo

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 23082
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #137 on: June 08, 2019, 10:31:51 AM »
I saw Dear Evan Hansen last weekend and I thought it was a phenomenal play. It was a so-so musical. It isn't a particularly music-heavy musical, in contrast to something like Hamilton that is essentially 100% sung through. The songs are not bad but I'm not sure any of them would be the type of thing I'm jazzed to have pop up on my iPod on shuffle to sing along to in the car. Still, there aren't many characters in the realm of musicals that has been more personally relatable than Evan Hansen. Perhaps on the spectrum, depressed/awkward/lonely, and in his attempt to be helpful gets in over his head. This last aspect made the whole play seem like a more emotionally fraught version of a Jeff storyline in Coupling. Anyway, highly recommended.

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36129
  • Marathon Man
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #138 on: June 25, 2019, 04:16:21 PM »
The Investigation - A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts
★ ★ ★ - Very Good

Surprised this wasn't better promoted before and after. A live reading of the Muller Report starring Annette Bening, Kevin Kline, John Lithgow,  Michael Shannon, Noah Emmerich, Justin Long, Jason Alexander, Gina Gershon, Joel Grey, Alyssa Milano, Kyra Sedgwick, Alfre Woodard, Piper Perabo, Zachary Quinto and Aidan Quinn. No new information, but events brought to dramatic life. MVP is Lithgow as Trump, not doing an impersonation but capturing the personality and making every word salad quote convincing. (In a very smart decision, he always steps on the last line of the person speaking before him.)

Most of the work belongs to Lithgow, Kline (as Robert Muller) and Annette Benning (as the narrator). Joel Grey does a great Jeff Sessions and Jason Alexander is an inspired choice for Chris Christie, as is Kyra Sedgwick for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Some of the smaller roles seem unprepared, especially Aidan Quinn as Michael Cohen. They didn't knock it out of the park and some of the information if you don't know the names and dates this doesn't make it clear. What is clear are the Ten Acts, one for each charge of Obstruction against the President, and the reading effectively puts everything in the hands of Congress at the end.

Bondo

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 23082
Re: Theatre - The last play you saw, or are about to see
« Reply #139 on: September 22, 2019, 05:52:14 PM »
Miss Siagon is bad. Like, all the problems of Madame Butterfly (since it steals the bones of that story), but worse music. Coming from the same creative team as Les Mis, this seems like a La Croix version. Vaguely familiar style but without actually producing anything memorable.

 

love