#1
Posted: 11/20/08 at 11:34am
Last night, at about 9:45, I said a little prayer. I prayed that I could get the last hour and forty-five minutes of my life back. I prayed that I could reverse the flow of time and NOT click the "buy" button on Ticket Central. I prayed that I could snap my fingers and get my sixty-five dolalrs back. I prayed that Craig Lucas would have just left his horrible new play, A PRAYER FOR MY ENEMY in whatever sludge heap it came from. And I prayed that no ticket buyer in this terrible economy would be tempted to plop down money to suffer my same fate.
A PRAYER FOR MY ENEMY is a rambling, nonsensical, pretentious, directionless, and mind-numbingly dull piece of garbage. It is the worst kind of play - a play that thinks it has a lot to say but instead says nothing at all...and takes nearly two intermissionless hours to do so.
The saddest part of all is that the actors are absolutely fantastic. To saddle pros like Victoria Clark with this kind of inferior material is just criminal.
The plot is so slight that if you blink you will miss it. It is mostly just a clothes line of an excuse that Lucas uses to hang various preposterous monologues to show us how clever he is...or thinks he is.
The characters are stereotypes - the drunk; the troubled Iraq vet; the neurotic comic relief; the guy struggling with his sexuality; and these people do not interact with each other in any way that makes them feel even slightly real. The overall result is a big whoosh of "who cares".
I would be willing to bet that if this play were written by an unknown writer and submitted to any theatre company in the world, it would never be produced. The only reason this has received a starry Playwrights Horizons production is because undeneath the title, it said "by Craig Lucas". Were this his very first play, it may have also been his last.
If you are thinking about buying a ticket to this play, I would urge you to think again, or at least wait for the reviews.
A PRAYER FOR MY ENEMY is a rambling, nonsensical, pretentious, directionless, and mind-numbingly dull piece of garbage. It is the worst kind of play - a play that thinks it has a lot to say but instead says nothing at all...and takes nearly two intermissionless hours to do so.
The saddest part of all is that the actors are absolutely fantastic. To saddle pros like Victoria Clark with this kind of inferior material is just criminal.
The plot is so slight that if you blink you will miss it. It is mostly just a clothes line of an excuse that Lucas uses to hang various preposterous monologues to show us how clever he is...or thinks he is.
The characters are stereotypes - the drunk; the troubled Iraq vet; the neurotic comic relief; the guy struggling with his sexuality; and these people do not interact with each other in any way that makes them feel even slightly real. The overall result is a big whoosh of "who cares".
I would be willing to bet that if this play were written by an unknown writer and submitted to any theatre company in the world, it would never be produced. The only reason this has received a starry Playwrights Horizons production is because undeneath the title, it said "by Craig Lucas". Were this his very first play, it may have also been his last.
If you are thinking about buying a ticket to this play, I would urge you to think again, or at least wait for the reviews.
