So What IS The Most Boring Play?- Page 3

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 6/16/12 at 10:01pm

-3 days of rain

-take me out

-shining city

-rabbit hole

-history boys

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/16/12 at 10:03pm

Oh I forgot about SHINING CITY. From that list of great plays you listed, that one really bored the crap out of me. Good thing for the scare at the end that woke me up.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/16/12 at 11:10pm

TEETH N SMILES, PLENTY, and STUFF HAPPENS excepted, David Hare is was and always will be the King of the Bores.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 6/16/12 at 11:24pm

The most bored I've ever been at the theatre :

Long Day's Journey Into Night - It went on forever, and even now I just have to picture James Cromwell's face when I can't sleep at night. I've subsequently grown to appreciate the actual play, however.

The Farnsworth Invention - I'm sorry, Aaron Sorkin, maybe it was me, but this is a lowlight of your career.

Betrayal, by Harold Pinter - awful.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 6/17/12 at 4:09pm

One more. Conor McPherson wrote and directed a sleep-inducing stage adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's The Birds in 2009, which so tedious an actual bird attack would be preferable.

[NotAnotherSN]

Posted: 6/17/12 at 4:46pm

I love Arthur Miller, but when his plays are done poorly (which seems to be more often than not), they are just long and boring.

I also saw this play at the McCarter last season that was directed by Emily Mann (of current Streetcar fame) that was a snore and a half called Phaedra Backwards. I almost fell asleep and one of my friends who I went with DID fall asleep. The only thing keeping me up was the loud booming sound effects.

[Playbilly]

Posted: 6/17/12 at 5:50pm

Almost forgot about Dancing at Snooze-nasa. All the interesting action is described happening offstage.

[hpeabody930]

Posted: 6/17/12 at 6:04pm

I didn't think it was the most boring play I've ever seen, but when I saw Jerusalem I went to the bathroom at the first intermission and someone in one of the stalls let out a huge fart and then said, "Yeah. That's about what I think of this play."

I thought that was hilarious.

Paradise Lost at ART a few seasons ago was one of the most painful things I've ever done to myself.
I'll also jump on the Rock n Roll train. Gooooooodnight.

[theaterkid1015]

Posted: 6/17/12 at 11:02pm

I saw a regional production of Rock n Roll (for free) and was totally prepared to hate it and take a nap based on the the reviews from here. It was so damn good. Maybe they cut a lot (I haven't read the script) but I just remember being swept up in it and never confused (rare for a Stoppard play). So, just putting my vote against it.

And, Eugene O'Neill done poorly can actually make you scream. When sitting through an AWFUL Moon for the Misbegotten, people behind me actually had to turn around and grimace because of the noises I was making.

[kevin5]

Posted: 6/18/12 at 5:42am

I have to agree that stoppard is awful, I have never seen a play of his I liked. Actually after last years awful Arcadia I swore never to see another Stoppard play.

[little_sally]

Posted: 6/18/12 at 10:17am

The Kevin Spacey A Moon for the Misbegotten was by far the worst thing I have ever seen. Miserable.

Accent on Youth and the Roundabout revival of Les Liasions Dangereuses were also a chore to sit through.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 1:22am

Okay... this year I was bored by

Venus In Fur
Peter and the Starcatcher
Magic Byrd

I was fairly annoyed by
One Man Two Governors... I am the guy who didn't laugh at anything except the older man falling down the stairs.


I know I know some of you love those plays. I didn't get them

I loved (with some reservation for each)
Clybourne Park
Other Desert Cities
The Columnist
The Lyons
Chinglish

[goldenboy]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 1:22am

Okay... this year I was bored by

Venus In Fur
Peter and the Starcatcher
Magic Byrd

I was fairly annoyed by
One Man Two Governors... I am the guy who didn't laugh at anything except the older man falling down the stairs.


I know I know some of you love those plays. I didn't get them

I loved (with some reservation for each)
Clybourne Park
Other Desert Cities
The Columnist
The Lyons
Chinglish

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 11:06am

The interminable Coast of Utopia, the god-awful Copenhagen and the incomprehensible Jumpers come to mind.

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 11:17am

"I have to agree that stoppard is awful, I have never seen a play of his I liked. Actually after last years awful Arcadia I swore never to see another Stoppard play."

I can understand not liking Stoppard. I can understand finding him boring. I canNOT understanding thinking he's "awful".

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 12:34pm

He is boring. BOOOOOOOOOORING. And someone is so bored with him that they can barely get through it, they have every right to think he's "awful". As I said before, I find his plays to be nothing but literary masturbation. Maybe he does have something important to say but, for me, I stopped listening a long time ago.

[wonkit]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 7:20am

Seminar, definitely. Even Alan Rickman couldn't keep me interested in what was happening.

I love Stoppard's work, but Rock 'n Roll seemed interminable and I didn't care about anyone, even with the fine actors in the NY production.

All My Sons.

[After Eight]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 7:58am

"He is boring. BOOOOOOOOOORING. And someone is so bored with him that they can barely get through it, they have every right to think he's "awful"."

Very, very true.

He's one of those critics' darlings, perhaps their most cherished darling, who has been foisted on a luckless public, much to their everlasting regret.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 8:04am

Why exactly would one write a play that is meant to be "read or studied"? Plays are meant to be performed. On a stage. In front of people.

If a playwrite can't write a play that works in that context, then he or she is not a very good playwrite.