I'm a dude, My Oh My. One of the 36,000 gays who married in California before Prop 8 passed. To date, Mr. G. and I are still married, though the matter is making its way through various courts.
There's a difference between busy-ness and action. LES MIZ had plenty of the former. It also had plenty of the latter; I just found it cold and mechanical, as performed at the Schubert. (Good memory, BTW.)
As I'm sure you know, Action, per Aristotle, is the process by which change is effected in the world of a play. Any attempt to make a change will inevitably encounter resistance and therefore, Conflict. (Aristotle didn't mention Conflict, but it is implied.)
Action and conflict are what I miss in SUNDAY. All the talk about "design", "composition", "balance", and "harmony" misses the point that theater, unlike painting, takes place in time. Balance and harmony may be the end result, but they are not the starting places for a play. (On reflection, I suppose Lapine was trying to substitute the process of creating the painting for a play's traditional action/conflict/plot. That may explain Act I, but hardly accounts for Act II. And if I am right about Lapine's strategy, then watching his first act is quite literally the dramaturgical equivalent of "watching paint dry". No, I don't think it's THAT dull, but if that was the plan, it was flawed, IMO.)
And in case I wasn't clear, I don't mean there is a lack of interesting motion in the direction; I'm talking about the libretto. Action in the Aristotelian sense is conveyed by the plot.
BTW, I am posting about SUNDAY again not to be obstinate, but to fulfill my promise to Pal Joey and others to take another, open-minded look at the piece via DVD. I will say that unlike 30 years ago, I now find Act II more interesting than Act I; but that, I fear, is damning with faint praise.
Updated On: 9/23/12 at 08:31 PM
