OHIO STATE MURDERS Previews- Page 4

[buffalospeedway]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:24pm

jlindsey865 said: "Saw this Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Love Audra. Love true crime (I know this play is technically not true crime. Didn’t love the play.


I actually found several of Audra’s acting choices very odd. The other actors didn’t really serve a purpose. Would not see this again."

Just saw this tonight. The play is semi-autobiographical and inspired by Kennedy's horrible experiences at Ohio State. A lot of Audra's acting choices come from her trying to emulate Kennedy's voice and physicality. Kennedy is an avant-garde playwright who emerged out of the Black Arts Movement in the 60s. Her plays are very short (she is an innovator in the one-act form), surrealistic, and symbolic. You are not going to get a two-act play about a family arguing at the kitchen table with her, which is why I love her work so much!

And for folks asking about the voiceover: it is from an interview that Kennedy's grandson did with her that is on YouTube. Link here: https://youtu.be/y3aWvyWWPIw. I immediately recognized it, but I'm also a Kennedy scholar. I loved that we heard her voice instead of the standard pre-show music, and it did not add bloat to the play, which moved at a brisk pace. She offered us an arc of her life from childhood, her college years, her relationships with other famous artists (in her papers at UT Austin, there is correspondence with James Earl Jones, which is why it's cool that the show is in his theater!), and finally her life as an educator. This nicely paralleled the arc that we would see Suzanne Alexander travel. And the big emotional moment, obviously, was the

***SPOILER ALERT***

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

murder-suicide

****END SPOILER ALERT!****

I think this production could have used a dramaturg to orient people who were there primarily for Audra or were general theatergoers who were unfamiliar with Kennedy, but I loved it. The set design (the crooked bookcases!), the sound design (the maniacal, mocking laughter of the white girls in the dorm!), and Audra (of course) were all wonderful. I marveled at the theatricality of the pink scarves! An excellent production and a long-overdue Broadway debut from the greatest living playwright.

(Also Sheryl Lee Ralph is one of the producers, which I thought was really cool!)

Updated On: 11/29/22 at 10:24 PM

[BoringBoredBoard40]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:26pm

This was terrible and the biggest sin of all, boring

Audra has her moments but it is surrounded by a bizarre production of a pretty thin play. The other performers are like drones, none of their characters have any personality to them, also the set was bewilderingly odd. Additionally the scarf/blanket as the babies thing was laughably bad. 

unless you can get a comp or absolutely have to see Audra in everything, skip this. 

[TaffyDavenport]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:32pm

Updated On: 11/29/22 at 10:32 PM

[buffalospeedway]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:39pm

BoringBoredBoard40 said: "This was terrible and the biggest sin of all, boring

Audra has her moments but it is surrounded by a bizarre production of a pretty thin play. The other performers are like drones, none of their characters have any personality to them, also the set was bewilderingly odd. Additionally the scarf/blanket as the babies thing was laughably bad.

unless you can get a comp or absolutely have to see Audra in everything, skip this."

I found it incredibly suspenseful, wonderful, and rich. 

Kennedy's plays are fundamentally surrealistic - the scarves make much more sense in the context of her work than a plastic baby doll. And the other characters are more like ghosts haunting Suzanne's memories, but Hampshire's unraveling is still palpable, and I felt Iris Ann's disappointment at the way that antiblackness blocked her musical aspirations.

If anyone is reading this and on the fence, I would encourage you to run and see it! Kennedy is a central figure in African American theater history. I got a rush ticket for $39 a few minutes before the show.

[BoringBoredBoard40]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:45pm

What suspense? You find out the killer within the first 15 minutes....

Also pleanty of plays with characters who are ghosts that actually have some depth to them and not robotic stiff acting. 

[buffalospeedway]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:50pm

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Updated On: 11/29/22 at 10:50 PM

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 10:57pm

Hey buffalospeedway, great user name by the way. You joined today (welcome!) and admittedly it took me a bit to learn all the buttons above this space. One is specially for spoilers so people can chose to see it or not. You kind of spoiled it for everyone when you didn't do that :)

I'm sure it was an honest mistake, but just for next time? Happy Holidays. 

[buffalospeedway]

Posted: 11/29/22 at 11:17pm

Thank you for the welcome and compliment, Sutton! I am a brand new user and am still learning about the culture of this forum. I was delighted to talk Kennedy and offer some broad dramaturgical insights about the play and was surprised when the initial responses focused on that one piece of information. Because I have read this play dozens of times and written about it as well, it is basically spoiler-proof to me and I didn't see my remark as a mistake lol. Also, there are folks in this thread who have posted other spoilers without getting chastised, so I didn't think I necessarily had to use the spoiler tool. However, out of an abundance of caution, I have edited my post to use the tool. I knew that information going in and it did not diminish my enjoyment of the play, but I totally get that other folks want to watch the show with fresh eyes. (And just be direct with new folks - no need for snark or condescension!)

And as for Boring's comment: the play is more of a whydunit than a whodunit - the suspense comes from seeing how Suzanne became the writer we see at the top of the show. And the supporting characters color her world. If you don't feel pain for Iris Ann, I don't know what to say to you.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Updated On: 11/30/22 at 11:17 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/30/22 at 10:22am

I had no problem with the play being a why-done-it instead honoring the tropes of a traditional mystery (or even a Law and Order episode). Our access to the narrative is our emotional -- and now historical -- investment in the protagonist's prism on her nearly destroyed life, personal and professional. We are curious to hear how she survived the unspeakable, and what her heroic survival says about overcoming the oppressive world built by the play -- 1949 academia, in the Midwest in particular -- and America in any era. I was hanging on the character's perceptions, her "experience of her experience," not plot revelations. As the author intended. I think it works quite effectively.

I had a strong negative response to the set, a kind of whimsical use of floating, off-center bookcases that felt more suitable to a semi-comical surreal style. The play has little humor, certainly nothing that occurs can be easily distanced with wry commentary. So the multiple flying bookcases, rather than enhance the verisimilitude or the thematic content, distracted in the worse sense. We are trained on the woman telling this harrowing story, yet our eyes unavoidably work hard to tune out a twee dreamscape of library imagery that makes our full immersion more difficult. It's a major misfire, the wrong elements stylized. .  

[ACL2006]

Posted: 12/1/22 at 7:24pm

I guess Audra has something else this weekend as the show is dark tomorrow & Saturday.

[quizking101]

Posted: 12/1/22 at 8:17pm

ACL2006 said: "I guess Audra has something else this weekend as the show is dark tomorrow & Saturday."

She has her Carnegie Hall show, I think

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 12/1/22 at 11:48pm

I have to say: I think this play is very much worth seeing. It’s deeply harrowing and heartbreaking. Audra is fantastic, as usual. The story drew me in and shattered my heart. It plays with your head a little as well. There were some dodgy lighting moments and I thought maybe an actor even missed a cue but for the most part it was quite a nice night at the theatre. I was worried after reading the comments here. The set feels pretty misguided but there’s a snow effect that is beautiful and hypnotizing and I can honestly say I can’t actually tell it was real or some kind of digital screen at times. It seemed to move in slow motion at moments? It was beautiful.

 

There’s a poster outside that says “WHO DID IT?” In giant letters and I found it really distasteful. This is a play about bigotry, tremendous shame, and deep heartache. It’s not a murder mystery.

Updated On: 12/2/22 at 11:48 PM

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 12/2/22 at 12:13am

Jonathan Cohen said: "Wallman2 said: "My only concern was the interview we heard at the beginning of the show...it must be the playwright but it was a little confusing. And not sure it was necessary. But I am recommending this one highly."

I was super thrown off by that interview audio before the show, because it felt like bonus material for a true crime podcast. Not having a lot of context for the play before seeing it, that led me to believe the play's protagonist was a real person, and the play was going to be a memory play about actual events.

I actually found the play's ending to play oddly upbeat because it took me that long to fully piece together, that the pre-show audio was an interview withAdrienne Kennedy not Suzanne Alexander. I was just happy to find out no one really got murdered.

What interviewingAdrienne Kennedy beforehand about The Beatles added to the actual play, I'm not really sure. For me it was just confusing."

 

I had the exact same experience and I am very, very glad this is not a true story.

[Markie27]

Posted: 12/4/22 at 2:40am

Sorry I just want to ask if there are any merchandise for this show? Do they sell at least magnets at the Jones?  Thank you!

[quizking101]

Posted: 12/4/22 at 9:19am

Markie27 said: "Sorry I just want to ask if there are any merchandise for this show? Do they sell at least magnets at the Jones? Thank you!"

They only had the windowcard and the script two weeks ago but they were supposed to get more 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 12/13/22 at 9:41pm

Oh, how I loved this show tonight. I went with a friend who had been excited for this one for months and walked out very "meh" about it, whereas I, who really had no knowledge about what it was going to be about, was stunned by how much it moved me. I sat there for the 75 minutes completely enthralled with the story and Audra's gorgeous performance. Getting to watch her up close in a piece like this is simply thrilling.