"People have their opinions and that doesn't mean that their opinions are wrong or right. I just take it with a grain of salt because opinions are like as*holes, everyone has one".
-Felicia Finley-
Oh I forgot about SHINING CITY. From that list of great plays you listed, that one really bored the crap out of me. Good thing for the scare at the end that woke me up.
TEETH N SMILES, PLENTY, and STUFF HAPPENS excepted, David Hare is was and always will be the King of the Bores.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
Long Day's Journey Into Night - It went on forever, and even now I just have to picture James Cromwell's face when I can't sleep at night. I've subsequently grown to appreciate the actual play, however.
The Farnsworth Invention - I'm sorry, Aaron Sorkin, maybe it was me, but this is a lowlight of your career.
Betrayal, by Harold Pinter - awful.
Beyoncé is not an ally. Actions speak louder than words, Mrs. Carter. #Dubai #$$$
One more. Conor McPherson wrote and directed a sleep-inducing stage adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's The Birds in 2009, which so tedious an actual bird attack would be preferable.
Beyoncé is not an ally. Actions speak louder than words, Mrs. Carter. #Dubai #$$$
I love Arthur Miller, but when his plays are done poorly (which seems to be more often than not), they are just long and boring.
I also saw this play at the McCarter last season that was directed by Emily Mann (of current Streetcar fame) that was a snore and a half called Phaedra Backwards. I almost fell asleep and one of my friends who I went with DID fall asleep. The only thing keeping me up was the loud booming sound effects.
I didn't think it was the most boring play I've ever seen, but when I saw Jerusalem I went to the bathroom at the first intermission and someone in one of the stalls let out a huge fart and then said, "Yeah. That's about what I think of this play."
I thought that was hilarious.
Paradise Lost at ART a few seasons ago was one of the most painful things I've ever done to myself. I'll also jump on the Rock n Roll train. Gooooooodnight.
I saw a regional production of Rock n Roll (for free) and was totally prepared to hate it and take a nap based on the the reviews from here. It was so damn good. Maybe they cut a lot (I haven't read the script) but I just remember being swept up in it and never confused (rare for a Stoppard play). So, just putting my vote against it.
And, Eugene O'Neill done poorly can actually make you scream. When sitting through an AWFUL Moon for the Misbegotten, people behind me actually had to turn around and grimace because of the noises I was making.
I have to agree that stoppard is awful, I have never seen a play of his I liked. Actually after last years awful Arcadia I swore never to see another Stoppard play.
"I have to agree that stoppard is awful, I have never seen a play of his I liked. Actually after last years awful Arcadia I swore never to see another Stoppard play."
I can understand not liking Stoppard. I can understand finding him boring. I canNOT understanding thinking he's "awful".
He is boring. BOOOOOOOOOORING. And someone is so bored with him that they can barely get through it, they have every right to think he's "awful". As I said before, I find his plays to be nothing but literary masturbation. Maybe he does have something important to say but, for me, I stopped listening a long time ago.
"He is boring. BOOOOOOOOOORING. And someone is so bored with him that they can barely get through it, they have every right to think he's "awful"."
Very, very true.
He's one of those critics' darlings, perhaps their most cherished darling, who has been foisted on a luckless public, much to their everlasting regret.