Did anybody go to the first performance last night or is planning on going during the run?
Even though I trashed the show earlier, I tried reading it again and for some reason it seriously moved me the second time I read it. Sorry for bashing it before, but it just shows you that you have to actually finish a play in order to make an assessment of it.
I'm going back to New York in the fall and I'd love to see this, though I can't imagine it would have that long of a run considering the negative audience response for the show when it played at Playwrights Horizons.
I’ll be going in June. I read the play and was also extremely moved. I’m very excited to experience it and see how the silences play out onstage. Although the silences are obviously much shorter when reading the show as to watching it, I got the feeling that, even in those moments of no one talking, there was always something to ruminate on or experience. Reading it, they didn’t feel like empty spaces of time at all – excited to see if that holds up when actually experiencing it.
The problem for me when I first read it was that I was just glossing through it. Upon a second reading, I really paid attention. I don't think the silences are meant to be artsy, but rather just hyper-naturalistic. Annie Baker takes show don't tell to the extreme.
And I tend to wait to form an opinion until I've actually seen a show. The exception so far was The Flick; an opinion that changed when I reread it. But thanks.
Perhaps you recall that when this play was in previews, members of the audience were walking out angrily, and voiced their dissatisfaction in no uncertain terms.
Naturally, the creators of this opus refused to budge a millimeter. Imagine, those impossibly stupid and obtuse audiences, unable to appreciate the genius of Annie Baker! Why, the very nerve of them!
The fact that the audiences were absolutely right was entirely irrelevant.
And theatre snobs, critics, and award givers would show them all just who's boss, for that crew most definitely doesn't take kindly to those who refuse to bow and scrape cravenly before their darlings.
And so, predictably, the play received raves, and a Pulitzer Prize could be seen a mile away.
Well, that sure put the upstarts ---- the poor saps who actually pay the freight --- in their place!
All to the detriment of that other rank critics' darling, Fun Home. Poor thing. It had the great misfortune to open the same year as this stinker. If only those audiences at The Flick had acquiesced meekly to the boring tripe force-fed them for three interminable hours, and had not raised such a stink! Then Fun Home would have had a Pulitzer as well to add to its heaping stack of undeserved laurels.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES
I plan on going back to see it, but I ADORED the show at PH. It was indeed very moving.
I thought of The Flick this weekend at IFC Center. There was a technical difficulty with a remastered digital print of Young Girls of Rochefort and they had to hold the start of movie. When a worker came in to inform us of the delay an older gentleman yelled out, "this didn't happen when they used reels!" I thought- this guy could have been in The Flick!
A beautiful piece ruminating on loss and those who try to hold onto a present that has already transitioned to a "past."
Marie: Don't be in such a hurry about that pretty little chippy in Frisco.
Tony: Eh, she's a no chip!
Ha, you're a little too good at playing After Eight, Growl.
It was a magnificent production and experience. I saw the play later in the run, so perhaps I experienced something different from what early audiences saw, but the run time flew by and I was sorry to have to leave the company of these characters at the end.
Annie Baker is a gem and it's been too long since we've seen a new play from her.
Marie: Don't be in such a hurry about that pretty little chippy in Frisco.
Tony: Eh, she's a no chip!
^ Won't have to wait much longer--her next play, JOHN, opens at Signature in July.
Add me to the group who loved THE FLICK. I haven't loved everything Baker has written, but this particular play is a work of truly rare skill and depth.
I remember seeing The Aliens at the San Francisco Playhouse some years back. By the end, I was just a puddle of tears. I recently got the Vermont Plays and after reading The Aliens, I once again began to sob. I think she is the voice of young people for the modern age.
Hm. I would disagree with you in that one, Kad. I read the text last night actually, and while I found it a good play and certainly worthwhile, I wasn't moved until the last scene (10 years in the future). Next up for me is Nocturama, which is about twice as long as The Flick I believe.
I’ve read “The Flick,” “Circle Mirror Transformation,” “The Aliens,” and “Body Awareness.” I’ve been moved by all of them, but my two favorites are definitely “The Flick” and “Body Awareness.” I have yet to see a production of hers performed, so I am excited for this production.
Sad I will be missing “John” – hopefully a script will be published.
I have never been to the Barrow Street Theatre. Does anyone know what the seating is like? Is the front row ok with stage height? Is the seating stadium style or on a fairly flat plane? Thanks very much for any info.
The seating is always reconfigured around the design of the show, but I've never seen a single bad seat in that house, no matter the show, design, or configuration. You can probably bank on any seat being fine, if not exceptional.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES
I hope I get to catch this again. I saw it in previews at PH with one of my best friends (we're both big fans of Baker's work) and it stayed with both of us for months. She and I are planning on catching JOHN together this summer; we just might have to do a Baker double feature and see both in one day!
I read this play for the first time about a month ago. I wasn't moved by it, but I enjoyed it. I can't make it to NYC soon, but I think I'm going to see the production that they are going to put on here at Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA.
I saw a production of "The Aliens" in Colorado a few months back and I was extremely moved by that, so I'm excited to see her play come alive!
I saw this last night -- a fine and moving play populated with really first rate performances that is unfortunately hampered by a really indefensibly prolonged running time of three hours and twenty minutes. No, really. THREE HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES. There's clearly a decision to maintain a slow, deliberate pace, and the benefit of that is some of the best writing and acting you're going to be seeing round these parts, but damn, some of those pauses just go on and on and on and on, and it ultimately just drags the play down.
As one character in the play would describe it -- you know that scene in THE SHINING in the men's room, between Jack Nicholson and the waiter Grady, where there are these long pauses between every line of dialogue? It's exactly like that, but the pauses here are even longer, you could drive a truck between some of the lines of dialogue in this play as performed last night.
I'm fine with slow-paced plays, and there's a lot to value here, and that running time will doubtless be trimmed severely. I'd say a good 45 minutes could be trimmed, entirely by having the actors just plain pick up the pace for f*ck's sake. Wait a few weeks and go.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
I read the play and found it almost impossible to finish, as intrigued as I was, consistently, by the boldly original premise. And I've admired the rest of Baker's work. It seemed digressive and lacking high enough stakes/emotional suspense to sustain its length, which on the page seemed like a 90 minute play stretched beyond its sustainability. Obviously a minority opinion. Yet I will see it on the stage this spring, wanting to find out what I missed (not for the first time.)
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
I credit the production's commitment to those "pauses" -- even though I sort of bristle at calling them that; in the world of the characters, they're realistic silences -- because they were, for me, the aesthetic choice that gave the play its thrust, impact, and scope. It's such an intimate piece, and I think its languorousness made it feel downright epic, almost Greek tragedy-like.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES
TMG -- that's clearly what they're aiming for, and it works about 50% of the time, and it will work the rest of the time when they get their bearings, I think. But damn, it just got unbearable by the end, and what should have been one of the play's funniest moments fell incredibly flat because I just sat there thinking, "come on already, we know what's going to happen, will you just DO IT ALREADY FOR F*CK SAKE." Some serious fine-tuning is in order, and I have every confidence that they'll get it right. Eventually.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
Now I'm trying to remember the runtime at PH. I feel like it was closer to 3 hrs on the nose. So maybe they do need to tighten. It's a delicate balance. I'd imagine an extra 20 minutes would kill a lot of those moments in the way you're describing. Whatever the hell they were doing at PH felt just exactly right to me.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES