#1
Posted: 12/22/14 at 9:36pm
Do you know whether you can lick your own elbow? Did you ever care to know?
If your answer to these questions is "no," then you're out of luck--- that is, if you have the misfortune to see the play, Constellations, now appearing on Broadway. Because you're going be apprised of such vital information, and more of the same, whether you like it or not.
Why, you wonder?
Why, because it's a blather play.
"A what???"
A blather play.
You mean, you don't know what a blather play is? I guess you didn't get to see such gems as The River, The Flick, Clybourne Park, Circle, Mirror, Transformation, The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence, The Realistic Joneses, Detroit, and heaven knows how many others. Not to mention the heaping mound of them penned by one Tom Stoppard, uncontested master of the genre.
These are plays in which the authors, unwilling or unable to provide anything in the way of interesting drama, pummel you instead with characters who play puerile, self-indulgent games, or who yammer on endlessly about matters no one gives a hoot in hell about. Did you know the specifics of the mating rites of bees? If not, Constellations will tell you all you all about them --- repeatedly! You see, this play does its counterparts one better by regurgitating the same uninteresting prattle three or four times over.
Oh, but you say you did see them? And they left you so bored, enervated, and aggravated you wanted to scream? Well, there's the proof: you were at a blather play. Of course, your suffering matters not a whit, not when the critics are falling all over themselves bestowing rapturous praise on these wonders: "masterful," "searing," "brilliant," "illuminating," "stimulating," and, the inevitable "heart-wrenchingly beautiful." Why, it was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful, they had all dissolved into tears by the final curtain.
They were sobbing; your head was throbbing.
A blather play.
If your answer to these questions is "no," then you're out of luck--- that is, if you have the misfortune to see the play, Constellations, now appearing on Broadway. Because you're going be apprised of such vital information, and more of the same, whether you like it or not.
Why, you wonder?
Why, because it's a blather play.
"A what???"
A blather play.
You mean, you don't know what a blather play is? I guess you didn't get to see such gems as The River, The Flick, Clybourne Park, Circle, Mirror, Transformation, The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence, The Realistic Joneses, Detroit, and heaven knows how many others. Not to mention the heaping mound of them penned by one Tom Stoppard, uncontested master of the genre.
These are plays in which the authors, unwilling or unable to provide anything in the way of interesting drama, pummel you instead with characters who play puerile, self-indulgent games, or who yammer on endlessly about matters no one gives a hoot in hell about. Did you know the specifics of the mating rites of bees? If not, Constellations will tell you all you all about them --- repeatedly! You see, this play does its counterparts one better by regurgitating the same uninteresting prattle three or four times over.
Oh, but you say you did see them? And they left you so bored, enervated, and aggravated you wanted to scream? Well, there's the proof: you were at a blather play. Of course, your suffering matters not a whit, not when the critics are falling all over themselves bestowing rapturous praise on these wonders: "masterful," "searing," "brilliant," "illuminating," "stimulating," and, the inevitable "heart-wrenchingly beautiful." Why, it was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful, they had all dissolved into tears by the final curtain.
They were sobbing; your head was throbbing.
A blather play.
