The Singing Forest: Review

Awful. That basically sums up my feelings on the show. The script, I mean.

The actual physical production is really interesting and cool. The space, first off, is beautiful. At one of the duller moments of the show (pretty much the entire first act), I was looking around the theater, and the ceiling - with the beautiful arches - is beautiful. The space is laid out weird. There is a whole part of right stage with no audience in front of it, and there is a scene played there, which I'm not sure most of anyone on house right could see. Secondly, in the empty space in front of that stage there were two tree branches just hanging out by the wall. They were never used or touched. I don't know if they were scenic elements that just didn't make the final cut or what, but it seemed untidy. Anyways, the actual set is pretty cool. At first it doesn't seem like much, but every ounce of stage is used, and the way it all works is really interesting to watch. There is even a random light hanging above the audience's head, that I think lit up at one point.

The direction was really interesting - as far as the physical production goes. The way he orchestrated the set and the movement of the actors was pretty amazing. The performances he drew from the actors were pretty flat, but that might be a fault of the script as well. They were all merely fine, and none of them great. Groff played Groff. Nothing to talk about there. And Olympia D. was pretty good in the lead role. She was pretty much on the same level the whole time, but she didn't make me feel anything for her character. But again, I think that's the script.

The script sucks. I hated "Prayer for My Enemy," so maybe I'm just not a Craig Lucas fan (as I don't care for Greenberg or Mamet I'm discovering). But the whole played semeed to be ramblings and pointless stabs at being "profound." But in the end it seemed kind of stupid. The whole play centers around therapists, Nazis, and homosexuals. It's all very confusing in the first act and nothing makes sense. The second act helps to explain how everyone is connected. The third act explains some more about their past. At the end I just thought "Say what Craig Lucas?" The play goes from farce to high drama to farce to high drama to realism. Maybe it's not brand of humor, but the whole show just didn't sit well. I honestly didn't care about any of the characters and I'm still confused as to the whole thing. There are so many names and relationships it just gets confusing. They need a diagram in the program a la Rent. I'm so surprised this play won an award of some kind. It amazes me, honestly.

I'd love to know what other people thought. I just didn't care for it. It's not that I didn't "get it" (well, maybe I didn't get his whole point), but it just sucked. Flat-out sucked. It was 3 hrs of nonsense. I'm not even sure what the title means. I think Olympia D's character tired to explain it in the first act, but she had some stupid voice modulator on that the whole monologue was lost to me. Also, there is male nudity for no apparent reason. It's just sort of there, and then it's not. I'm not sure why they needed to be naked? Maybe another one of Lucas' obvious stabs at being poetic? There's also a little female nudity, which seems less pointless, but still could have been avoided. And yes, there are gunshots for those concerned.

"The Light in the Piazza" I liked but I chock that up to the great score, and the already well written story. All he had to do was adapt it. And I've tried countless times to read "Reckless" but I haven't made it through it yet. His style of humor is just not funny to me. I don't think he's that talented of a writer.

True. It may be better to see it performed. I mean, playwrights intend their works to be performed, not read.

And I think Randy Harrison was excellent. He really was great in the role. The role is probably the most minor of them all, and yeah, he doubles as a Nazi.

What did you like about the play when you read it? I'm open to new opinions on the piece, but I just honestly didn't get it. Like, I didn't understand the parallels between the two stories or what Lucas was trying to say about them?

And, I don't think he's a talented writer in the sense that I don't think his stories are all that compelling. "Prayer for My Enemy" had a horrible story to it, and this play does too. And yes, that's my opinion.

But I'm just not so sure what makes him good? It's the same when I saw "The American Plan." I'm still confused as to what makes Greenberg "good." I mean, obviously they have some sort of talent because they can get any of their works produced.

They are challenging, write great dialogue, and take on big ideas with eloquance.

If it ain't your cup of tea it ain't your cup of tea. Personally I prefer flawed plays with ambition than the simple, clean, unambitious plays that always win the Pulitzer.

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I honestly don't know what I prefer. I love Ionesco (he's my favorite) and Albee. But I also like other pieces of theater, which is why I keep giving Lucas a try. Maybe something of his will stick. I just find his brand of humor kind of obvious? Like, I felt like I knew where I was suppose to laugh at "The Singing Forest." Like, Groff's character's awkwardness seemed so staged. That could have been a fault of the actor, but the dialogue felt so stilted and unnatural. And then when Lucas makes his characters say things like "you're never naked when you're naked!" I mean, who speaks like that? It's such a heightened way of speaking. Which is fine, but when it's juxtaposed next to Groff's awkward language, the two just didn't work for me.

Which bothers me because he came off as the most central of characters - other than the Mother. I just think the play is far too confusing. While it does take a stab at its own confusion, I think about 95% of the audience was confused. When are you going to see it? I'd really like to know what you think? The physical production is really great, though.

True. Which is maybe what I should have done. It might have tightened up a little. Or things might have been cut. Although if the play is already in print, I would imagine nothing much will be changed text-wise.

Singing Forest is just problematic to me. The style of the set was very Brechtian, which went with the German period in the play. Very distanciating; "verfremdung" lives. Where Brecht would have had half-open curtains not as high as the wall behind them, some solid moving partial height walls substituted here. First problem was you didn't care about anybody,except maybe Groff's character a little.

It was like Lucas did not want you to get involved with this play. Once it hit farce midway with the opening and shutting doors like "Noises Off" there was no way you were going to be pulled in to believing anything. So this was a very odd way to treat a holocaust play which had Nazi assassination particularly regarding homosexuals and Jews in the backdrop.

The psychobabble coming from various different characters (almost everybody at different points in the play) and the interjection of Freud--even his person!--into the piece was just all a bit much. Whenever psychobabble poured forth, often at such a fast pace you could hardly grasp the content of the line, the wouldbe character of the player trounced off the stage and you felt like you were being hit over the head with a book. Again, distanciating, though I felt Lucas was genuinely trying to have an intellectual dialogue of ideas with the audience. Which is more a lecture format than play format, whereas in a play I at least "expect" the communication to come from the organic behavior of the characters in the play.

The best "therapy" play I ever saw, which also happens to raise homosexual therapy issues is Durang's Beyond Therapy. Nothing I've ever seen has come close to the absolute delicious riot he raised in that. And Durang's "Torture" show just downstairs at the Public is also a fun romp.

So what is Lucas saying in this play? Given the serious subject matter you know elements are based on historical truth. And after just seeing Irena's Vow, the traditional heartbreaker holocaust story with a tale of fine deeds amidst the horror, Singing Forest is declaring itself in a way an antithesis to that. Are any of these people real, besides Freud and his daughter? If so, why are they being treated as farce? My mind wanders and I wonder if Lucas is saying he's tired of holocaust stories and psychobabble and life is just a farce but then I have to reject that as his ambition. If he's aiming at satire, which he accomplished brilliantly in parts of The Light in the Piazza, he hasn't got one in Singing Forest, which seems a mishmash of styles tossed into a soup that does not "marry" successfully.

There's something intellectual at work and very smart in intellect in the play but without the joie de vivre (or even joie de mourir) to carry it off. Somehow with a Durang, he can take the heaviest of subjects even torture, toss them up with aplomb, skewer them with a little hors d'oevres sword, flambe it all and have you rolling in lighthearted laughter.

Well, sometime you hit it and sometime you don't but I'm glad the Public Theater is giving the opportunity to try. I didn't care for his The Dying Gaul at the Vineyard much but some people loved it. I thought Piazza deserved the Pulitzer and was an evolution of form for musical theatre and was surprised how much some people disliked it.

So what was Singing Forest about? Ah dunno. I saw it, but ah dunno.

(Just an aside, the styles of Lucas, Greenberg and/or Mamet don't seem similar to me.)

I thought the "Singing Forest" name came from the reference in the play to a bunch of people having been taken out to the forest by the Nazis and killed, hung from trees. It was sort of a Nazi ritual to take people out to the woods to slaughter them en masse.

The people in the play all seemed like dead people singing about how awful their lives were so the allusion I got was that they were giving voices to those people hanging in the trees.

Updated On: 4/13/09 at 02:46 AM

Yes, and you can't avoid the traditional literary and spiritual allusion that there is no silencing of those who are murdered.

Which of course then leads me to--what does that have to do with farce? The farce seems to belittle the actions of the Nazis because as an audience you can't jump from farce to serious drama in the same piece.

If the message is that the pain and horror of WWII is still reverberating in the Jews through survivors and subsequent generations and manifesting in mental and physical ailments as neuroses and psychoses and cancer, well that doesn't jibe with farce either.

And BroadwayGuy12 - I meant that Groff is just playing the same character I've seen him play before - in Hair and in Prayer for My Enemy. He's just doing the same style of acting that he's use to. He doesn't attempt to go beyond his comfort zone.

Fair enough. I actually thought he gave a pretty strong, fleshed-out performance in Prayer for My Enemy, which was refreshing after seeing him as Melchior several times. But I respect your opinion, and I appreciate that you gave this play a chance despite the fact that you disliked some other plays by Lucas.

rent boy, your feelings on this are dead on. I saw the show tonight 4/19 and thought it technically was a very interesting show, but an awful play.

The production felt like there were alot of "important" things going on around the stage, but I cared about none of them.

People were walking out during both the first and second intermissions.

The acting is generally strong, but the problem again lies with the source material, and coupled with some of the most uncomfortable seats in any theater and you have yourself a very LONG three hours.