#1
Posted: 10/7/04 at 3:13pm
After some good word of mouth both here and on other boards, I went last night expecting to see a great play with some great performances -- well at least I got one out of two, sorta. "Last Easter," the latest play from Byrony Lavery of "Frozen" fame, is a bland, underwritten, unimaginative, utterly predictable evening of theatre. Part road movie, part disease-of-the-week weepy, it's plays like a mediocre Lifetime movie (look for Judith Light and Jim J Bullock to head the cast if this is ever adapted for television). It was so devoid of any depth or substance or surprise, I kept wishing I had a remote control to fast forward through large portions of it -- with no plot twists (very little plot actually) of any kind, one could have left the theatre midway through act one, come back midway through act two and not missed a single thing (except a dozen of the most painfully unfunny jokes I've heard since third grade ..... actually I think I heard most of them in third grade and didn't find them funny then).
Actors are wonderful creatures, oftentimes capable of spinning straw into gold and making something out of nothing. Here, this gifted ensemble almost manages to spin the straw into something close to tin foil, but little more. It's not their fault -- they haven't been given characters to play; just stock "types" -- one dimensional sketches that even talented players cannot flesh out. Jeffrey Carlson plays the stereotypical gay stock character -- a swishy, flamboyant, promiscuous sometime drag queen who goes about tossing off quips and singing Judy Garland tunes. Clea Lewis played her patented ditz character. Florencia Lozano is the blousy drunk drama queen straight out of AbFab.
Veanne Cox, one of our most gifted stage actors, doesn't even get a stock character to play -- she plays a disease. Lavery's technique for constructing characters (perhaps she read this in a book somewhere -- she should burn it) seems to involve reading lots of books on arcane subject matter -- I won't comment here on her plagiarism case -- and then using the info to write lots of "did you know?" mini-monologues crammed with details from the books, thus giving characters the illusion of (superficial) depth and something to yammer on about until the next lame quip comes along (in this case Cox's character carries on about Caravaggio and tulips). The problem is that there's no real character development. Cox plays some sick British lady sitting in a chair -- that's who she is, what defines her and nothing else, so that's all Cox has to play.
After seeing the play, I still have no idea who Cox's character is, except for the most basic of details -- she's a lighting designer; she's British; she's dying of cancer. I found that out in the first five minutes and after watching her for two hours sit in a chair and be sick, that's still all I know about her. She has this collection of types, er, friends, that hang around her. I know nothing about them (other than they all seem to be "artistic"), why they're all friends, what draws them to one another, their backgrounds, etc... Nothing.
Halfway through the play I realized I really didn't care about any of the people on the stage, because the playwright hadn't given me a reason to care. I had no emotional investment whatsoever because I still didn't know anything about them other than their ability to deliver a one-liner (the whole thing plays like a bad, unfunny sitcom).
Where was the conflict? The plot twists? The quirks and contradictions that make characters interesting? Where's the substance? Why are talented actors wasting their energies on such a lousy, pedestrian play? Coming after Wit and Lisa Kron's Well and The Shadow Box and Baltimore Waltz and As Is and Marvin's Room and The Waverly Gallery and so many other plays dealing with terminal illness, Last Easter is a flat-footed, unambitious, plodding, predictable work that wastes the talents of those involved in this production. Save your money and watch Lifetime.
Actors are wonderful creatures, oftentimes capable of spinning straw into gold and making something out of nothing. Here, this gifted ensemble almost manages to spin the straw into something close to tin foil, but little more. It's not their fault -- they haven't been given characters to play; just stock "types" -- one dimensional sketches that even talented players cannot flesh out. Jeffrey Carlson plays the stereotypical gay stock character -- a swishy, flamboyant, promiscuous sometime drag queen who goes about tossing off quips and singing Judy Garland tunes. Clea Lewis played her patented ditz character. Florencia Lozano is the blousy drunk drama queen straight out of AbFab.
Veanne Cox, one of our most gifted stage actors, doesn't even get a stock character to play -- she plays a disease. Lavery's technique for constructing characters (perhaps she read this in a book somewhere -- she should burn it) seems to involve reading lots of books on arcane subject matter -- I won't comment here on her plagiarism case -- and then using the info to write lots of "did you know?" mini-monologues crammed with details from the books, thus giving characters the illusion of (superficial) depth and something to yammer on about until the next lame quip comes along (in this case Cox's character carries on about Caravaggio and tulips). The problem is that there's no real character development. Cox plays some sick British lady sitting in a chair -- that's who she is, what defines her and nothing else, so that's all Cox has to play.
After seeing the play, I still have no idea who Cox's character is, except for the most basic of details -- she's a lighting designer; she's British; she's dying of cancer. I found that out in the first five minutes and after watching her for two hours sit in a chair and be sick, that's still all I know about her. She has this collection of types, er, friends, that hang around her. I know nothing about them (other than they all seem to be "artistic"), why they're all friends, what draws them to one another, their backgrounds, etc... Nothing.
Halfway through the play I realized I really didn't care about any of the people on the stage, because the playwright hadn't given me a reason to care. I had no emotional investment whatsoever because I still didn't know anything about them other than their ability to deliver a one-liner (the whole thing plays like a bad, unfunny sitcom).
Where was the conflict? The plot twists? The quirks and contradictions that make characters interesting? Where's the substance? Why are talented actors wasting their energies on such a lousy, pedestrian play? Coming after Wit and Lisa Kron's Well and The Shadow Box and Baltimore Waltz and As Is and Marvin's Room and The Waverly Gallery and so many other plays dealing with terminal illness, Last Easter is a flat-footed, unambitious, plodding, predictable work that wastes the talents of those involved in this production. Save your money and watch Lifetime.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
