"Dame" Laurie Metcalf — Page 3

Why would a shrub be offensive?

lovebwy said: "Scotty, yes. Different wavelengths is exactly how it was put. And Chris Cooper felt the same.

I've not had the pleasure of seeing Metcalf on stage. However, I thought she was pretty bad on this new season of Roseanne. That said, she was wonderful in Ladybird.

Question: If you're in a play, and on closing night, one of your cast mates gives you a shrub as a closing night gift, would you take offense? Like- a shrub. A young bush.

"

Chris Cooper could have used a bit more playing to the audience actually. The people who saw it with me felt he left little-to-no-impression and that's after they were used to seeing some awesome Torvalds in productions of A Doll House (I prefer calling it A Doll House as some translations do because I don't believe Nora possesses the house to make it "Doll's" and instead it's just a doll house...artificial and full of toys to project your imagination to). Of course, the Torvald in Part 2 is not really Isben's Torvald from 15 years before the events of Part 2.

It's funny that Condola felt that way because I seriously thought her and Metcalf were dynamite together and Condola stole some scenes from Metcalf with her way of playing to the audience. Condola definite was given some young people language that helped the audience get her "Emmy".

You bring up Roseanne and I do agree that Metcalf was really awful there, but her performances Jackie were really excellent when the character was much more grounded in the early seasons and during the show's peak in the middle seasons. One could tell she and Goodman were the premiere actors of that show and Roseanne really needed them.

As for the shrub question...that's a really odd question to ask.

If Rashad was indeed the one who said they didn't enjoy acting with Metcalf because she was playing it "real" and Laurie wasn't, I find that to be quite funny. To me, what was so brilliant about Rashad's performance was how "non-real" seeming it is. It definitely didn't seem to be naturalistic or anything like that to me. It was so affected which is what made it hysterical but also bruising. She was playing at stereotypes of modern women and teenagers, and of a child of divorce (I'll never get how perfectly she delivered the line "I feel special." So when she did drop that act, and went for a real, naturalistic line reading, it really stuck out. Laurie had a very similar quality in her performance.

Ah well, if that is the case, sorry to hear she didn't enjoy that experience. It was great watching them together on stage. On a related note, I can't think of many actors who come across as "real" as Laurie does, even when she's playing slapstick comedy.