Mr. Burns @ Playwrights — Page 4

Thanks for the review, Whizzer!

I was really torn between this and THE OLD FRIENDS for this weekend, but your review is just the icing on a cake that’s been slowly and steadily pulling me towards this play, which I initially had no interest in.

And when a cake pulls me, I listen. (Listen?)

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Too funny! Whizzer, I almost PM'd you to tell you to go, because I had a feeling you'd really enjoy it. I didn't love it, but I did appreciate what Washburn is doing here. And by the way, after I read your take on Old Friends, I grabbed the last decent $25 seat of the run

I am also one of the people who has enjoyed some of the shows that After Eight has not...but I have to say that if he does like something, I take notice, because i can't remember a single instance that he's recommended something that I didn't like! I love hearing his voice--no matter how exasperated--amid all the others here.

I, too, sometimes find myself not posting about a theater experience because it's not being discussed here...but I'll try to do better with that. Even though there's a gazillion threads here on Broadway musicals, there's many of us for whom off-Broadway is especially fulfilling, and I'd love for more of it to be talked about on this board!

April, I'm glad you're seeing The Old Friends, and yes this was right up my alley.

After Eight doesn't strike me as a lover of pop culture so I'm not surprised that he didn't take to this. Personally I think he missed the houseboat on it, but his ability to stick to his convictions is commendable in its own way.

Kad, If you don't know The Simpsons AT ALL I think you would have trouble with the play. But how many people have absolutely zero passing knowledge of who Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa and Maggie are? These characters are so entrenched into our culture that I think you'd be hard pressed to do so.

Of course not everyone is going to know Cape Feare line for line, but if you have the chance to watch the episode beforehand I would recommend it. (It's episode 2 of season 5 btw.)

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Clyde, if you are a fan of Cape Feare, and I agree that it's one of the best episodes ever, then I think you will find much to enjoy.

Almost every scene and joke is recounted in the play, but two of my favorite lines from the episode sadly didn't make the cut:

When Grampa says that they should call Matlock to figure out who is sending Bart the letters and Bart says, "Grampa, Matlock's not real," to which he replies, "Neither are my teeth, but I can still eat corn on the cob is someone cuts it off and mushes it into a fine paste. Now that's good eatin'!"

When Selma is on the stand she claims Sideshow Bob tried to kill her. The lawyer asks the courtroom, "How many people in this court are thinking of killing her right now?" People slowly start to raise their hands. "Be honest," he encourages and all the hands go up including a priest and Patty who says, "What? She's always leaving the toilet seat up!"

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Kad, I don't think you need any more than a passing familiarity with The Simpsons. Know who the main characters are, and you're set. Even that might not be necessary since so much of the opening deals with recounting what the episode was and then you just follow from there. I think the more knowledgable about the series you are, the easier the first half hour will be, but everything after that, initial awareness is less and less important.

Playwrights just posted production photos:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151831477596206.1073741838.8788681205&type=3

I have never seen The Simpons, so I must ask: What is "Cape Feare"? Is it an episode of the Simpsons? Is it a different TV show or a different movie? The movie and TV references in the first 45 minutes completely went over my head. A synopsis of those 45 minutes for audience members unfamiliar with the Simpsons would have been very helpful. It was VERY confusing if you are unfamiliar with the Simpsons like I am.

Once the first 45 minutes were over, I started to really enjoy the play since the Simpsons talk was substantially toned down after that point, and the rest of the audience could finally begin to understand what they were talking about.

"I have never seen The Simpons"

Steve,

That makes you the prime target of this play, because you will be excluded from understanding, you will be bored, mystified, frustrated, and left out of the loop while the "in" crowd squeals with delight. And isn't that precisely what the "in" crowd aims for? Elitism by its very nature is exclusionary. And this is the most exclusionary of plays.

And therefore, Steve, both you and I are too clueless to recognize that this play is truly a masterpiece for our age. A masterpiece for all ages, actually. Better than O'Neill, Williams, Miller, and Baker combined. Well, not Baker, but certainly those other three. Imagine, showing that people over a seventy-five year period can't get the facts straight about an episode of the Simpsons! What a groundbreaking lesson on storytelling! How insightful! And deep..... Very deep..... And cool, boy..... Reallllllll coooooool. Not to mention dramatically compelling. The characters spend 2 hours and twenty minutes of the audience's time getting Simpsons facts wrong. Wow, does that ever make for gripping, galvanizing theatre! And FUN-NY! ... You saw how the guy said that Bart Simpson ran to the back of the boat, when he really ran to the front, and saw piranhas when he really saw electric eels? Isn't that hilarious? Ha ha ha! I can't-- ha ha ha -- stop laughing! ... Except, ......

The laugh's on us.

One of the (many) problems with today's "culture" (dare one use such a word?) is that it actually takes popular "culture" to be culture. Someone who doesn't know Marvell from Mallarmé but who knows every episode of The Simpsons by heart, has never read Joyce or Proust but every volume of The Vampire Diaries, and thinks Caesar is a salad, Napoleon a pastry and Homer...... a character in a cartoon, will think himself well-informed and act as the sage of all things cultural and intellectual.

Pop goes the culture.

As we all know, in the history of musical theater, no one else has written a show that relied on an understanding of pop culture to get every joke and reference. Nope. Never happened. Not once. That's why this show is just automatically terrible.

Ironically, The Simpsons have covered all of those serious references After Eight listed many times over the course of 24 seasons. It stretches further when you realize that the literary artifacts he referenced are, themselves, referential texts that relied on an understanding of contemporary and popular culture to gather the full meaning of the text.

" just so you know for future reference "Marvel" has one L, not two."

Excuse me, I wasn't referring to Marvel as in Marvel Comics, apparently the only Marvel you know.

The Marvell I was referring to, well......

Why even bother?

Well for anyone who is interested here is a cliff notes version of the episode.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9_vQ-41nqw

^LOL.

I'm fairly certain he's blocked anyone who regularly calls him out.

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