Posted: 9/28/17 at 2:15pm
Jarethan said: "I think the show would only work in reverse. Were it played in chronological order, with the same script, art would be just another trivial Hollywood story, not very well fleshed out. By telling it backwards, you are more of a detective discovering pieces and putting them together. I missed a couple of things that were discussed here...I don't even think they would matter if it were told chronologically.
I also think we would be back to the 'what age should the actors be? debate. By viewing it in reverse, I at least was fine with the 35 - 40 year old actors playing 20 year olds, because I knew so much about them by that time. If I knew nothing at a cold opening, I would probably think the casting decisionwas just as stupidas I did when I originally sawthe show and thought that having 20 year-olds play 40 year-olds in crisis was just dumb and distracting to such an extent that I had pretty much written the show off after 15 - 20 minutes."
Oh, I agree, I wouldn't want to see it in reverse I was just wondering if directors, as an exercise for the actors, run it in reverse so they can make new discoveries. Unfortunately a first time viewer doesn't get a lot of the references during one viewing. For example they talk about the "Downtown club" that they're going to go to when Frank gets back from the cruise but you don't really see/hear about the club until Act 2 when they're doing their review in the club.
