Sometimes, in the morning, I get up when real people get up (not 10.30), and go out, and do things that real people do, like walk around or drink coffee in a cafe. And it is lovely. Today, the nip in the air is nice, the sun is nice, the flowering trees are beyond nice, the dogs, the people, the company, the everything.
Last night I went to BAM to see Endgame by Samuel Beckett. So I've decided that I'm really, really not very into Beckett, at all at all at all. At least not right now. Honestly, I don't know what the play was "about," what I was theoretically supposed to be getting out of it, and I'm not that interested in trying to figure it out or dedicate much thought to it. I was mostly there to see the four actors (Elaine Stritch, Alvin Epstein, John Turturro, Max Casella) because I like each of them individually (ok, except maybe A.E.) and wanted to see them together. Weirdest cast ever.
ANYWAY, my point is that the evening would have been sort of unremarkable (or perhaps even remembered negativgely, since the fucking guy next to me couldn't stop sniffling (aka ruining my life) AND the bar of the balcony was running right through my field of vision) EXCEPT for the fact that something terrible and terrific happened. John Turturro, Hamm, spends the whole play in this big heavy wood chair that has wheels on the legs, and early-ish in the play he asks Clov, Max Casella, to wheel him around the room so he can feel the walls. Clov doesn't bring him close enough, so Hamm yells at him and Clov almost rams the chair into the wall, to get back at him. when this happened, the bag leg's wheel fell off. M.C. picked it up really calmly, and eventually tried to fix it while still delivering his lines. He seemed nervous and they adapted some business involving moving the chair, and I thought the result was actualy hilarious and probably better than what it was supposed to be. But what do I know. Anyway, this goes on for some time, MC fiddles with the wheel again, and it seems like everything is copacetic.
20 minutes later, Hamm has this massive speech where he's telling his dad an installment of this crazy story he's making up. His dad is in a garbage can, further downstage. J.T. flings his arms open and the chair, as if in slow motion, hurtles backward. The audience gasped louder than I've ever heard any gasp, JT smacked his head on the stage, and MC came running on. Staying mostly in the moment and in character, he assessed the situation and JT starts yelling "I don't need my chair to finish my story! I need to finish my story!" and starts wriggling out of the chair and crawling over to the garbage can. MC starts trying to get the chair righted and then this stagehand runs on and wheels the chair off. For the rest of the story, JT sat next to the can, and from the back of the stage, you could hear hammering and drilling and stuff. Which is hilarious, because Endgame is sort of supposed to exist in a VACUUM. Or something.
The conclusion of this hilarity was at the end of the story, someone coming over the God mic, saying "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll hold to bring the chair back on, it is fixed" and a stagehand whisking it on. They could have not said anything, and I wish they hadn't. I am also fully confident that they would have figured something out if they HADN'T taken the chair away and I kind of wish thay they hadn't.
It was wonderful. Later lines in the play had new, funny significance all of a sudden, and I don't even (or only) mean cheaply funny. It was wonderful to watch them adapt and scramble and compensate for the accident. And it made me think about all the stupid things that have gone wrong in shows I've been in.
Work has been silly lately-- two nights of drinking on the job raised morale a little bit. Had to watch one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life...but it was a fundraiser to, you know, stop GENOCIDE, so I look like a bastard if I complain about the shittiness of the thing. I don't care. It was super shitty. My friend Matt at work texted me from the sound board "I'm glad you're here to see this-- it's the real cultural atrocity."
Today, I will hopefully coerce Nitz to see the cherry blossoms with me, then we will hopefully go see Jhumpa Lahiri read at the Strand, then I will come home and hopefully binge to excess on Twin Peaks. These are my hopes.
Showing posts with label bad theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad theatre. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Saturday, December 8, 2007
A healthy eight hours!
From 5:00 am to 1:00 pm!
It's been a while since I've done that. Ah, youth! Too bad tomorrow it'll all be gone, gone, gone!
Work was very silly yesterday. I met up with Craig at around 8:30 in Times Square, which was a terrible idea but also a good idea, and we just wandered around and chatted. I was so happy to see him. He walked me over to the theatre where I saw....
'Things We Want.' It wasn't great by a long shot but it was good enough that I enjoyed myself and didn't fall asleep...which felt like a very real possibility as soon as I sat down. Paul Dano was really pretty good- he had the most to do, sort of. I don't know-- the play itself wasn't good. Josh Hamilton had to play two diamaetrically opposing parts of the same annoying, completely unbelievable character, and he did so in a way that, uh....made my flesh crawl? I couldn't stand him. I guess it served him as the play wore on, but at that point I was so done watching him that I didn't really care. Peter Dinklage had a fun part and got to do a lot of stumbling around and running into things, which people in the audience kept responding to with "Awwwww!," in a "How CUTE!" way. Iiiiiiiiiiiii don't know about that. And Zoe Kazan....her part sucked so much. It had so much promise in the first act and then all of a sudden fifteen minutes later she's walking around with no pants on and pretending to give Josh Hamilton a blowjob. Whatever.
For me, the frustrating thing is....of course I love to go to the theatre, even if it's bad, usually even if I KNOW it's going to bad. I'd usually rather see even bad theatre than do a lot of other things. And I really believe that and feel that, because I think everything has merit, even if it's just to show me what I have to spend the rest of my days combatting. To be dramatic about it. So I see things like this play-- certainly I'd rather watch that than Cats or those readings I saw the other night-- and I dont' expect everything, or really anything, to be perfect, but-- this play had what I thought were some serious, serious issues. Did everyone responsible for getting this production disagree with me? Because the thought that goes through my mind is-- Well, if they liked this piece of crap, then they'll fucking LOVE *my* play!
Which of course has absolutely no basis in logical fact. But you know? I know in my brain that it's all based on a myruiad of factors which have absolutely no part in my life. But in my not-brain, in my...heart? (what?), I don't know, I just think "What I have to say is so much BETTER than this!"
And maybe that's at the core of everyone who is stupid/ballsy/cocky/generous enough to enter into any sort of artistic pursuit. Who the hell knows. It's 2:00 and I just woke up.
After the show, I made the epic trek to Katy's house in Queens. I don't even know where in Queens I was. All I know was that the directions involved things like 'Okay, now you see those train tracks? Walk over them.' I wrote her address down incorrectly and wound up a few blocks from her house, amidst these dark, creepy, overgrown houses with freaky statuary and/or junk in the yard. I forced myself to have a second wind, and the night wound up being very nice-- the Boston caravan arrived around 2, and Pat and Ollie were there when Craig and Nitz arrived. We did Hannukah, and Pat and I each got a birthday cupcake. Everyone was so beyond exhausted that the punchiness level was sky-high, and almost everything made me laugh literally until I was crying. (THAT's what's on the other side of tiredness, Elaine!) Billy drove us home pretty smoothly. I went to bed at 5!
Today, I'm dedicating most of my day to watching Arrested Development with Meg. Because I can-can-can.
It's been a while since I've done that. Ah, youth! Too bad tomorrow it'll all be gone, gone, gone!
Work was very silly yesterday. I met up with Craig at around 8:30 in Times Square, which was a terrible idea but also a good idea, and we just wandered around and chatted. I was so happy to see him. He walked me over to the theatre where I saw....
'Things We Want.' It wasn't great by a long shot but it was good enough that I enjoyed myself and didn't fall asleep...which felt like a very real possibility as soon as I sat down. Paul Dano was really pretty good- he had the most to do, sort of. I don't know-- the play itself wasn't good. Josh Hamilton had to play two diamaetrically opposing parts of the same annoying, completely unbelievable character, and he did so in a way that, uh....made my flesh crawl? I couldn't stand him. I guess it served him as the play wore on, but at that point I was so done watching him that I didn't really care. Peter Dinklage had a fun part and got to do a lot of stumbling around and running into things, which people in the audience kept responding to with "Awwwww!," in a "How CUTE!" way. Iiiiiiiiiiiii don't know about that. And Zoe Kazan....her part sucked so much. It had so much promise in the first act and then all of a sudden fifteen minutes later she's walking around with no pants on and pretending to give Josh Hamilton a blowjob. Whatever.
For me, the frustrating thing is....of course I love to go to the theatre, even if it's bad, usually even if I KNOW it's going to bad. I'd usually rather see even bad theatre than do a lot of other things. And I really believe that and feel that, because I think everything has merit, even if it's just to show me what I have to spend the rest of my days combatting. To be dramatic about it. So I see things like this play-- certainly I'd rather watch that than Cats or those readings I saw the other night-- and I dont' expect everything, or really anything, to be perfect, but-- this play had what I thought were some serious, serious issues. Did everyone responsible for getting this production disagree with me? Because the thought that goes through my mind is-- Well, if they liked this piece of crap, then they'll fucking LOVE *my* play!
Which of course has absolutely no basis in logical fact. But you know? I know in my brain that it's all based on a myruiad of factors which have absolutely no part in my life. But in my not-brain, in my...heart? (what?), I don't know, I just think "What I have to say is so much BETTER than this!"
And maybe that's at the core of everyone who is stupid/ballsy/cocky/generous enough to enter into any sort of artistic pursuit. Who the hell knows. It's 2:00 and I just woke up.
After the show, I made the epic trek to Katy's house in Queens. I don't even know where in Queens I was. All I know was that the directions involved things like 'Okay, now you see those train tracks? Walk over them.' I wrote her address down incorrectly and wound up a few blocks from her house, amidst these dark, creepy, overgrown houses with freaky statuary and/or junk in the yard. I forced myself to have a second wind, and the night wound up being very nice-- the Boston caravan arrived around 2, and Pat and Ollie were there when Craig and Nitz arrived. We did Hannukah, and Pat and I each got a birthday cupcake. Everyone was so beyond exhausted that the punchiness level was sky-high, and almost everything made me laugh literally until I was crying. (THAT's what's on the other side of tiredness, Elaine!) Billy drove us home pretty smoothly. I went to bed at 5!
Today, I'm dedicating most of my day to watching Arrested Development with Meg. Because I can-can-can.
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