Primary Stages' INFORMED CONSENT

[ClydeBarrow]

Posted: 8/13/15 at 11:22am

This has been playing for a little over a week and there hasn't been any discussion. I wanted to start it now to warn people about this snoozefest. There is honestly nothing to recommend here.

 

The play itself is a garbled mess. It starts off as a show about a woman dealing with early onset Alzheimer's and then suddenly becomes about her studying a Native American tribe with a diabetes problem. The acting is so bad that you never care about any of the multitude of characters portrayed. The first word that came to my mind was "goofy" because everyone just walks around with these huge grins unless they're being super serious.

 

The dialogue is amateurish and two things kept occurring that annoy me to no end. The first is when a character is changing the setting by saying something like "the dean of the school was not pleased about this" and then the character is in scene and actually says "I am not pleased about this" as if we didn't get it the first time. The other is when a character will start telling a story unrelated to the show and another one will say "not relevant to the story" and then they stop telling it. If it's not important then don't even start telling the audience!

 

The set is a giant wall made up of Bankers boxes that images of DNA or the Grand Canyon. There is a short wall around the perimeter where the cast sits and it opens to hold props. It was basically as if the creative team saw CURIOUS INCIDENT and said "let's do a sh!tty version of this."

 

I recommend the show if you want to a short nap because thankfully the show was only 95 mins (even if it felt longer).

 

Updated On: 8/13/15 at 11:22 AM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 8/13/15 at 11:35am

In general, I agree although I think the acting (esp Benko and Taylor) was better and some (but not all) of your nitpicks didn't bother me. I did not snooze and actually think there is a worthwhile story there, just not well told. The comparison to Curious Incident is unavoidable.

[haterobics]

Posted: 8/13/15 at 11:41am

"It starts off as a show about a woman dealing with early onset Alzheimer's and then suddenly becomes about her studying a Native American tribe with a diabetes problem."

 

Ugh, how many versions of THAT old story do we really need on stage?

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 8/13/15 at 3:59pm

"The acting is so bad that you never care about any of the multitude of characters portrayed."

I didn't think the acting was bad, just not fantastic. That is, it didn't move me greatly but it was certainly competent. I think what you're talking about might have been due to the direction. I thought Tina Benko and Delanna Studi found some nice moments. 

"The dialogue is amateurish and two things kept occurring that annoy me to no end. The first is when a character is changing the setting by saying something like "the dean of the school was not pleased about this" and then the character is in scene and actually says "I am not pleased about this" as if we didn't get it the first time."

I did agree that the material was kind of weak though I thought some of the things that the play wanted to say were interesting. I get recycling parts but there was a lack of trust for the audience in the decision to keep saying things like "the dean of the school was not pleased about this" to get you into scenes. If that's really necessary to figure out who the characters are it's a failure of acting and writing and costuming and direction. I got something out of the play so I wouldn't dissuade people from seeing it. I still haven't seen Curious Incident but it reminded me a bit of The Language Archive. Creative people writing about non-creative academics has mixed results. 

[Pammylicious]

Posted: 8/13/15 at 4:41pm

It's horrible. 1:45 no intermission. I would have walked if there was.

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 8/16/15 at 6:55pm

I'd be interested to hear how people with and without a background in science responded to the play. I don't think there was anything there that you wouldn't learn in a college (or even high school perhaps) biology class that covered genetics. Some of the science seemed a little wonky. Jillian was definitely a character prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy. It was interesting with the dean's line about letting the English department worry about imagining the future or whatever it was. There were times when I felt like I was seeing a humanities person (the playwright) interpret scientific concepts that she had heard about. 

 

I did appreciate that Jillian wasn't the very stereotypical Temperance Brennan kind of scientist. She was blunt and honest but not unaware of social norms. She was empathetic and emotional and capable of grasping the social and cultural issues at play. She wasn't completely naive or completely callous. It was more like a willful ignorance of her privilege and the significance of racial divisions. At times, she did what scientists are not supposed to do which was use the science to back up her own beliefs instead of letting the facts guide your beliefs and understanding. 

[Theater3232]

Posted: 8/17/15 at 9:31pm

I have a math/science background and I really enjoyed Informed Consent.  It makes for an interesting science and ethical question: if people don't know what they are consenting to, does that mean they are really giving their informed consent?

I look forward to Ensemble Studio Theater's annual science-related play and have been going for years.  They even "dumb it down" so that audiences without a science background are able to follow it easily.