There is a fine line between the offensive and the disturbing. If PRYMATE shakes up the bourgeois sensibilities of people who think that plays like TAKE ME OUT and THE GOAT (two plays I love, incidentally) are "edgy", then I'm all for it.
Mark Medoff is a fine playwright (Children of a Lesser God, his last hit) who has been, I think, written off as a has-been (perhaps with good reason). That he has a new play that is not going the regional or off-broadway route is very interesting to me because its not like he's resting on old laurels. What is it about this play that made people think that it would work on Broadway?
The only thing offensive to me in theater is how safe and predictable it has all become. Stunning lack of quality in just about everything. And how audiences have become so pansy wansy....I hate when people tell me they found a show "depressing". Awwwww...you felt something? How awful for you! Surprise is just flat-out not tolerated these days.
This SO sounds like a shill, I know. Haven't seen PRYMATE...it could be utter crap for all I know, but I have a feeling its current failure at the box office has more to do with a kind of "Ewwwww...black guy playing a gorilla? Peeing? Hand jobs? I don't wanna see that!" I'm willing to wager PRYMATE isn't any more about watersports than KING LEAR is about stomped on eyeballs.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
