Hey Marquise...
Before I let you get too far along and you end up with your foot in your mouth or my foot in your ass, let's clear up some things.
I'm not sure what it is you're insinuating, but let's nip it in the bud and get you on the same page.
Yes, I'm all the things I said I am. A performer who also writes and who wants desperately to believe the theatre isn't the dying dinosaur that nearly every financial type who looks at its numbers would have me believe it is.
Secondly, I DID read a draft of the play made available to me BEFORE the play was published and available here in the States, hell before the NYC transfer was even a sure bet. I called in a favor when I heard it might be making its way here, thinking I could get the jump on the competition. The copy I received, what I believe was a working draft from the London production, was a swift read that I found quite enjoyable. It was witty, zingy and seemed relevant and interesting and I eagerly awaited its arrival, despite the fact that I knew right away it wasn't a project for me to be part of.
It was my initial read, and the fact that I have a good handful of friends in the damn thing, that propelled me go see it. And I went into the show, all $250.00 of it, knowing the end and the gimmicks that were written in, EXPECTING to be blown away.... and that didn't happen. No big deal. You win some, you lose some. But I can tell you, for whatever reason... (Like, I dunno, the fact that the play's transferred to a city/country with a very different sensibility than its debut) the script HAS and will likely continue to undergo MASSIVE changes.
As I think about it now, the fact that it seemed uneven and wonky at times actually makes sense to me . The scenes that I liked when I read it, probably the strongest ones in the darn thing, have remained untouched and the "connective tissue" of the other scenes, the exposition, random new monologues or other bits have been trimmed, tweaked, rearranged and/or added to fill the voids...
Add to it the fact that there's a lot of stage business that either was not in the original script or simply plays WAY differently than it read and GUESS WHAT? You've a recipe for a very different experience in the theatre than you have in the comfort of your living room, imagining the darn thing in your head.
The more thought I give to this thing, the more I'm convinced that at its heart, ENRON is a language play. A narrative that manages to take years of complicated smoke and mirrors and boil it down to a palatable 2.5 hour meal. Unfortunately, when combined with all the outlandish staging shenanigans, it's my belief that the play gets lost and the point of the thing gets very muddy. We're forced to either connect to the philosophical "debate" of the piece or the clever Boom-Pow-Tee-Hee-Hee-they've-got-freakin-lightsabers-cool aspect of it. But they never synch!
All the comments about this thing has really made me wonder.... Is it the play or the staging that makes this an unsuccessful outing on the great white way?
I dunno. Everyone from this board who has loved it so far, has pointed to the "fresh" and "innovative" storytelling aspects of the piece and that this should make it recipient of the Tony Award, but I actually think it is those aspects of this production that prevent the play from being able to make any real emotional impact. It relies so heavily on the visual that, just like all the over conceptualized productions of Shakespearean plays, the argument never gets "heard" because the extraneous movement or NOISE, for lack of a better word, drowns it out.
I actually wonder if the play could work in a pared down incarnation. Anyhoo, as I said early on, I have no axe to grind with this show and fully expect that it has probably improved since I saw it but for my money this was not it! I hope it will may inspire other theatre artists to think bigger, bolder and try again. That's all any of us can do at the end of the day. Sweat, bleed and cry into some work, put it out there and it flies or it crashes and burns. When it soars, we learn and when it burns we learn too. Hopefully.
Updated On: 4/15/10 at 05:09 PM
