OHIO STATE MURDERS Previews — Page 4

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

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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

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

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.

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.

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

She has her Carnegie Hall show, I think

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 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