John @ Signature Theatre Co. — Page 4

"That assumes that what you're watching, listening to, and seeing is actually worth watching, listening to, and seeing, and not just a lot of hooey."

One person's intriguing piece of fascinating theater is another person's load of hooey. Difference of opinion -- it happens round here.

"there's plenty of other fare out there only too happy to oblige with easy epiphanies and carefully articulated Big Points for you to go and be un-challenged by."

Snotty condescension --- it happens round here.

Snotty condescension --- it happens round here.

You would know, as you're one of the most frequent practitioners.

"It's either the year the house was built or it was the address."

I didn't spot the number on the transom. I remember the detail about the arms and legs piling up outside the hospital appearing in Ken Burns' CIVIL WAR TV series. Maybe Kitty's exagerrating...

I did spot Eli mouthing the words "She's creepy" to Jenny when they first meet Kitty.

While I didn't find the play entirely satisfying, I did find myself smiling every time Georgia Engel spoke. She's like a walking endorphin. POSSIBLE SPOILER: Speaking of her movement, does anyone know whether her limp was totally restricted to her character, or does she have some mobility issues? Even if so, she negotiates those long stairs well.

mamaleh said: "While I didn't find the play entirely satisfying, I did find myself smiling every time Georgia Engel spoke. She's like a walking endorphin. POSSIBLE SPOILER: Speaking of her movement, does anyone know whether her limp was totally restricted to her character, or does she have some mobility issues? Even if so, she negotiates those long stairs well. "

Ms. Engel's performance is a marvel, a fascinating undermining of her whole persona. Hard to tell about the movement issues -- I was wondering whether she'd had a stroke or something, which might explain the unusual words it turns out she's writing down in her journal, as we find out when Eli reads them aloud. She rather aggressively grabs it back from him, remember.

"Oh thanks Roscoe. I thought you were saying that she was reciting something to Jenny about the sunset since she obviously wasn't reading what she wrote down. I'm not familiar with The Call of Cthulhu, but just googled and it sounds fascinating. Is it worth tracking down and reading?"

Kitty might have been reciting something to Jenny about the sunset, it might be a quote or something. Hard to say. The extreme vocabulary she uses was surprising, but it later turns out she makes a practice of memorizing words, as in that memorable list of birds she recites.

The Lovecraft bit was another little surprise -- what's dear little Kitty doing reading an excerpt from the work of one of America's major writers of horror? Lovecraft is an interesting writer on his own, well worth seeking out, but he's not exactly a household name, is he. The cosmic elements of the quote were interesting, too, and seemed to resonate with Jenny's description of her own mystical experience, I thought.

Different plays for different folks, it seems.

CurtainsUpat8 said: "All of these insights are very interesting. But NONE of them make the play any better because they don't add up to anything. She wants the audience to do too much work. She's being a lazy playwright. None of these things mentioned, although interesting individually, add up to a hill of beans. They don't make the plot move forward. They don't answer questions about the character. Did she have a husband that was alive in those rooms? Was she making it up? And again... the BIG payoff... which isn't so big, is that we find out who John is.... and it's a big...WHO CARES? And that is really the fatal flaw of this play. Picture this play in a Community theatre with lesser actors and a lesser set and production values.... is there really a story to tell her that is worth three and a half hours? My answer is NO. It's a lot of presumption."

I actually prefer art that's a bit challenging. It's such a relief compared to much of what's being shoved down our throats these days. Conventional narratives can be fine but I'm interested in seeing what else can be accomplished and explored through the form. I was much more engaged throughout this play than I was at other shows where I'm simply being entertained.

You keep mentioning the need for a big payoff. I was never expecting one. Why were you? Are you also expecting a big payoff in life? Do you need a big payoff to enjoy theater? I mean, a big payoff is great in many things - sex, etc. - but what are you trying to find? Are you missing a big payoff in your personal life?

Why do you need the meaning explained to you? Are you afraid of being judged for your own interpretation?

Someone give CurtainsUpat8 a big payoff.

By naming the play JOHN the playwright is establishing the question of Who is John? What does he have to do with the action on stage? How does he affect the action? The playwright is setting up the "Pay off". Titles are important. And she wrote it, so that the climax of the play is the last line, where we find out who JOHN is. The problem is, we don't care. Or should I say, I didn't care. That may have been intriguing to you but it was not to me. It wasn't even interesting. Especially after three and a half hours of characters staring at each other waiting quite unnaturally for the next person to say something.

She is also throwing a lot of other useless information at us in hopes that something with stick. We are supposed to ponder what the supernatural elements are in the play, but she doesn't help us understand them. Like I said above, she's a lazy playwright. She wants us to do too much of the work, because the truth is, the supernatural elements don't add up to anything. She herself sets up expectations and then she never meets them.

The "John" at the end of the play was not the only John introduced to us. Genevieve's husband was also named John. Jenny mentioned she had a friend named John and Genevieve barked back, "Everyone knows somebody named John." If the John that Jenny was referring to then is the same John at the end of the play it's interesting how she so blithely denotes him as "friend" to Genevieve.

To make a cinematic comparison, Baker's two most recent efforts remind me of some of Ozu's best films. The are long and deceptively meandering, although everything shown has purpose, even if the purpose is obscured. Nothing much happens by conventional standards, but at the end of his movies I'm often overwhelmed with emotion and have a deep appreciation for the care and craft he put into his tales. Sometimes the creation of beauty is enough to satisfy me, and that is the case here with John. Engel reciting her list of groups of birds with growing enthusiasm and joy is a prime example of that.

CurtainsUpat8 said: "She is also throwing a lot of other useless information at us in hopes that something with stick. We are supposed to ponder what the supernatural elements are in the play, but she doesn't help us understand them. Like I said above, she's a lazy playwright. She wants us to do too much of the work, because the truth is, the supernatural elements don't add up to anything. She herself sets up expectations and then she never meets them."

If her goal was a very clear narrative and profound conclusion with no extraneous elements, I think she is perfectly capable of delivering that. She seems aware of what she is doing... whether you like it, well, that's a separate issue.

^^

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-way-station

Updated On: 8/25/15 at 09:41 AM