GHOST STORIES at Atlantic Stage 2

[ClydeBarrow]

Posted: 6/8/15 at 10:31am

I'm hoping that the reason no one on the boards has yet to discuss this show is because they were fortunate enough not to have suffered through it. This was a deathly boring evening of theatre. 

It starts off with Prairie du Chien which is basically one boring, meandering monologue with some extraneous crap going on. There is some nonsense about a woman who was murdered and her ghost and blah blah fvcking blah. It's so long and involves so many unseen characters that you lose focus of what's even being said. That's one side of the stage. On the other two guys are playing cards and there is question of cheating. You also have a porter walking back and forth across the stage for some unknown reason. There is a gunshot at the end but I think that's more to wake the audience than any sort of story purpose.

After an intermission and set refresh we are made to sit through The Shawl which I guess is the more successful of the two. This is probably only because it wasn't devoid of humor like the previous play. Not that I think plays must be funny but it gets pretty monotonous just hearing a man drone on and on. This one is about a psychic who is a con man but maybe also really a psychic. He's also kinda gay maybe?

An older woman in the audience was taking a "generational poll" to ask people's thoughts at intermission. She went on to say that younger people don't get the first play which I found to be rather insulting. Just because something is terrible and poorly written doesn't mean that I'm too stupid to get it. It just means that I thought it was bad.

The acting here didn't help much. Aside from Arliss Howard everyone was uniformly awful. Jason Ritter is the only actor who shows up in both and I have no idea why because his acting might have been the worst. During Prairie he is just forced to sit there listening to this story and say the occasional "yeah." During Shawl he keeps tucking his hair behind his ear and waiting to react to the other actors.

Run away from this like a real ghost is chasing you.

[ClydeBarrow]

Posted: 6/11/15 at 3:24pm

Bumping to see if anyone else has an opinion.

[wolfwriter2]

Posted: 6/12/15 at 12:07pm

I agree with you. I saw it last night. My partner left at intermission. I stayed, hoping the second play might make the first play, make sense. It didn't. I liked Arliss Howard in the second play, but I haven't made sense of the ending. Jason Ritter? The less said, the better.

I know it's Mamet and he always makes the audience do some of the work and I love that, but this seemed like a monologue writing exercise, that someone decided to put on stage. I briefly looked online for some explanation or clarity, but, I gave up quickly, when I realized that I just didn't care, very much.

I much preferred Guards At The Taj, also at the Atlantic.

[ggersten]

Posted: 6/12/15 at 2:13pm

This is Mamet?  I thought it was the UK show.  Which looked intriguing, but we never did go see it.

UK Ghost Stories