#1
Posted: 12/6/07 at 12:34am
I found this a strange show. It has some very fine things about it and some things I have trouble with that interfered with my enjoyment.
First up, the best things. The cast and the acting are very fine. The pacing is also on target. The three plus hour play goes right by quickly, no drags, and holds your attention. There are some good one-liners, though many are sick--like the "you never know when you may need a kidney" one (a groaner). And some absurd happenings like the outburst of the three "where's the beef?" squeals.
[SPOILERS]
When I saw the family tree in the program and it got to cousins I immediately thought, ok, so there's going to be incest in this plot. And there it was, though I preferred the way the comic and satirical musical "Bat Boy" handled it. It just seemed such an obvious setup here.
The play for me was creaky with exposition. As when Johnna gives the little spiel about the umbilical cord in the turtle pouch. It just sounded like something the playwright learned and was just dying to put somewhere in the play to teach it to the audience rather than being integral to play. Then there was the conversation between sisters where one chirps up "oh, I wasn't here then" as an excuse to hear the story told again. And there were a lot of little philosophical one-liners sprouting here and there which were interesting of themselves and often unusual ways of looking at things, but seemed to be stuffed in rather than being discovered by the characters during the events in the play itself.
By the time I had sat through alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, child molestation, self-help "I'm happy", adulteries, sibling rivalry, parent-child abuse, child-parent abuse and who knows what else all supposedly being conveyed with realism despite the humor, I'd lost respect for the structure of the play itself and found its message convoluted. I had fatigued of its plot if not its actors. And I feel it was the nature of the writing, overwritten. It was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, I give it that. And like a soap opera and the daytime TV talk shows in subject matter content.
And I sat back after and thought, I enjoyed Cymbeline much more than this even though Cymbeline dragged in its pacing. The visuals in Cymbeline were stunning, set, lights and costumes and overall design and the play was bouyed by Shakepeare's lofty, and at times, tender language and humanist philosophy.
Since the mother is doing her drug addict thing immediately one thinks of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. However, the Osage County mother is not even trying to hide it, but brazen with it, it is much different Journey and Letts is no O'Neill. Journey was infused with love as well as various failings and vices in the family members. That love carried O'Neill forward to write, for it is obvious he loved his mother and she him. (His mother went on to conquer her addiction later in real life, by the way, drying out at a convent with the help of nuns.)
Love does not underlie Osage County, and I can't feel a unity about the play. Hence it hits me as soap opera.
This general subject matter handled in satire as by Durang in Betty's Summer Vacation or Busch in Die, Mommie, Die (a fine play, go see it) gives the whole mise en scene an aplomb that elevates the art out of soap opera and also the humor becomes delightful. And both Vacation and Die are infused with the love of absurdity in life and the creation of absurdity in the play.
Do you find Osage County similar to a soap opera (with more jokes) or how would you differentiate it?
© 2007 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved
First up, the best things. The cast and the acting are very fine. The pacing is also on target. The three plus hour play goes right by quickly, no drags, and holds your attention. There are some good one-liners, though many are sick--like the "you never know when you may need a kidney" one (a groaner). And some absurd happenings like the outburst of the three "where's the beef?" squeals.
[SPOILERS]
When I saw the family tree in the program and it got to cousins I immediately thought, ok, so there's going to be incest in this plot. And there it was, though I preferred the way the comic and satirical musical "Bat Boy" handled it. It just seemed such an obvious setup here.
The play for me was creaky with exposition. As when Johnna gives the little spiel about the umbilical cord in the turtle pouch. It just sounded like something the playwright learned and was just dying to put somewhere in the play to teach it to the audience rather than being integral to play. Then there was the conversation between sisters where one chirps up "oh, I wasn't here then" as an excuse to hear the story told again. And there were a lot of little philosophical one-liners sprouting here and there which were interesting of themselves and often unusual ways of looking at things, but seemed to be stuffed in rather than being discovered by the characters during the events in the play itself.
By the time I had sat through alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, child molestation, self-help "I'm happy", adulteries, sibling rivalry, parent-child abuse, child-parent abuse and who knows what else all supposedly being conveyed with realism despite the humor, I'd lost respect for the structure of the play itself and found its message convoluted. I had fatigued of its plot if not its actors. And I feel it was the nature of the writing, overwritten. It was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, I give it that. And like a soap opera and the daytime TV talk shows in subject matter content.
And I sat back after and thought, I enjoyed Cymbeline much more than this even though Cymbeline dragged in its pacing. The visuals in Cymbeline were stunning, set, lights and costumes and overall design and the play was bouyed by Shakepeare's lofty, and at times, tender language and humanist philosophy.
Since the mother is doing her drug addict thing immediately one thinks of A Long Day's Journey Into Night. However, the Osage County mother is not even trying to hide it, but brazen with it, it is much different Journey and Letts is no O'Neill. Journey was infused with love as well as various failings and vices in the family members. That love carried O'Neill forward to write, for it is obvious he loved his mother and she him. (His mother went on to conquer her addiction later in real life, by the way, drying out at a convent with the help of nuns.)
Love does not underlie Osage County, and I can't feel a unity about the play. Hence it hits me as soap opera.
This general subject matter handled in satire as by Durang in Betty's Summer Vacation or Busch in Die, Mommie, Die (a fine play, go see it) gives the whole mise en scene an aplomb that elevates the art out of soap opera and also the humor becomes delightful. And both Vacation and Die are infused with the love of absurdity in life and the creation of absurdity in the play.
Do you find Osage County similar to a soap opera (with more jokes) or how would you differentiate it?
© 2007 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved
Updated On: 12/6/07 at 12:34 AM
