John @ Signature Theatre Co. - Page 4

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 9:38am

"That assumes that what you're watching, listening to, and seeing is actually worth watching, listening to, and seeing, and not just a lot of hooey."

One person's intriguing piece of fascinating theater is another person's load of hooey.  Difference of opinion -- it happens round here.

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 9:48am

Did anyone else notice the number on the transom over the door, in the stained glass is the year 1875. It's backwards, because it is facing out, but you can still read it. That would mean it was built ten years  AFTER The Civil War.... which would have made some of Georgia Engels' stories fabrications. Like.... the B and B was used as a hospital during the War.

It's either the year the house was built or it was the address.

[After Eight]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 9:51am

"there's plenty of other fare out there only too happy to oblige with easy epiphanies and carefully articulated Big Points for you to go and be un-challenged by."

 

Snotty condescension --- it happens round here.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 9:55am

"That assumes that what you're watching, listening to, and seeing is actually worth watching, listening to, and seeing, and not just a lot of hooey"

Completely missing the point of a fascinating and complex piece of theater and dismissing it as "hooey" -- it happens round here, too.

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 9:55am

Snotty condescension --- it happens round here.

You would know, as you're one of the most frequent practitioners.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:02am

I saw John a few weeks ago and while I found it enchanting at the time, it's been the two weeks after, marinating in my brain, that the piece has most come alive. 

 

Georgia Engel's speech about meeting the brusque doctor later in life and telling him that she had a B&B with her husband ("That was a very nice moment in my life" was one of the nicest moments I've had in some time. 

 

Roscoe, what was Engel reciting when she "read" from her book about the sunset. I'm not aware of the reference. 

 

Curtains, I didn't have a clear view of the door from my seat far house right, but that's a fascinating observation. I wonder if that detail was in Baker's script or was just another masterstroke by Gold. 

 

I agree that one viewing is not enough and I hope to catch this again in the extension if there are still tickets available. 

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:08am

"It's either the year the house was built or it was the address."

I didn't spot the number on the transom.  I remember the detail about the arms and legs piling up outside the hospital appearing in Ken Burns' CIVIL WAR TV series.  Maybe Kitty's exagerrating...

I did spot Eli mouthing the words "She's creepy" to Jenny when they first meet Kitty.  

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:10am

Whizzer -- I meant the scene where Kitty is reading to Genevieve.  She's reading a passage from "The Call Of C'thulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft of all things.

[mamaleh]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:10am

While I didn't find the play entirely satisfying, I did find myself smiling every time Georgia Engel spoke. She's like a walking endorphin.  POSSIBLE SPOILER:  Speaking of  her movement, does anyone know whether her limp was totally restricted to her character, or does she have some mobility issues?  Even if so, she negotiates those long stairs well.  

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:16am

Oh thanks Roscoe. I thought you were saying that she was reciting something to Jenny about the sunset since she obviously wasn't reading what she wrote down. 

I'm not familiar with The Call of Cthulhu, but just googled and it sounds fascinating. Is it worth tracking down and reading? 

 

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:24am

mamaleh said: "While I didn't find the play entirely satisfying, I did find myself smiling every time Georgia Engel spoke. She's like a walking endorphin.  POSSIBLE SPOILER:  Speaking of  her movement, does anyone know whether her limp was totally restricted to her character, or does she have some mobility issues?  Even if so, she negotiates those long stairs well.  "

Ms. Engel's performance is a marvel, a fascinating undermining of her whole persona.  Hard to tell about the movement issues -- I was wondering whether she'd had a stroke or something, which might explain the unusual words it turns out she's writing down in her journal, as we find out when Eli reads them aloud.  She rather aggressively grabs it back from him, remember.

[bandit964]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:29am

"Georgia Engel's speech about meeting the brusque doctor later in life and telling him that she had a B&B with her husband ("That was a very nice moment in my life" was one of the nicest moments I've had in some time." <----this almost brought me to tears.

And I definitely thought the number over the door was the address, not the year built.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:31am

"Oh thanks Roscoe. I thought you were saying that she was reciting something to Jenny about the sunset since she obviously wasn't reading what she wrote down. I'm not familiar with The Call of Cthulhu, but just googled and it sounds fascinating. Is it worth tracking down and reading?"

Kitty might have been reciting something to Jenny about the sunset, it might be a quote or something.  Hard to say.  The extreme vocabulary she uses was surprising, but it later turns out she makes a practice of memorizing words, as in that memorable list of birds she recites.

The Lovecraft bit was another little surprise -- what's dear little Kitty doing reading an excerpt from the work of one of America's major writers of horror?  Lovecraft is an interesting writer on his own, well worth seeking out, but he's not exactly a household name, is he.  The cosmic elements of the quote were interesting, too, and seemed to resonate with Jenny's description of her own mystical experience, I thought.

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:44am

All of these insights are very interesting. But NONE of them make the play any better because they don't add up to anything.  She wants the audience to do too much work. She's being a lazy playwright. None of these things mentioned, although interesting individually, add up to a hill of beans. They don't make the plot move forward. They don't answer questions about the character. Did she have a husband that was alive in those rooms? Was she making it up? And again... the BIG payoff... which isn't so big, is that we find out who John is.... and it's a big...WHO CARES?  And that is really the fatal flaw of this play. Picture this play in a Community theatre with lesser actors and a lesser set and production values.... is there really a story to tell her that is worth three and a half hours? My answer is NO. It's a lot of presumption.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:49am

Different plays for different folks, it seems.

[EthelMae]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 10:58am

I saw yesterday's matinee and enjoyed it very much. My partner loved it. We are still discussing it today and that doesn't happen a lot. Many around us didn't like it and I can understand that.

As regards the wonderful Ms. Engel, I was in a Starbucks fairly recently and as I looked out the window, I saw her and did notice that she was limping.

[theatregoer3]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:03am

CurtainsUpat8 said: "All of these insights are very interesting. But NONE of them make the play any better because they don't add up to anything.  She wants the audience to do too much work. She's being a lazy playwright. None of these things mentioned, although interesting individually, add up to a hill of beans. They don't make the plot move forward. They don't answer questions about the character. Did she have a husband that was alive in those rooms? Was she making it up? And again... the BIG payoff... which isn't so big, is that we find out who John is.... and it's a big...WHO CARES?  And that is really the fatal flaw of this play. Picture this play in a Community theatre with lesser actors and a lesser set and production values.... is there really a story to tell her that is worth three and a half hours? My answer is NO. It's a lot of presumption."

I actually prefer art that's a bit challenging. It's such a relief compared to much of what's being shoved down our throats these days. Conventional narratives can be fine but I'm interested in seeing what else can be accomplished and explored through the form. I was much more engaged throughout this play than I was at other shows where I'm simply being entertained.

You keep mentioning the need for a big payoff. I was never expecting one. Why were you? Are you also expecting a big payoff in life? Do you need a big payoff to enjoy theater? I mean, a big payoff is great in many things - sex, etc. - but what are you trying to find? Are you missing a big payoff in your personal life?

Why do you need the meaning explained to you? Are you afraid of being judged for your own interpretation?

Someone give CurtainsUpat8 a big payoff.

[EthelMae]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:17am

Forgot to mention this. I heard a faint stead sound during Act 2 and 3 that I thought was coming from the stage. It stopped when the actors spoke but sounded again when they stopped. My partner noticed someone ahead of us with one of those hearing devices they hand out in theatres. He thinks it was that causing the sound. I found it distracting in such a quiet play. Odd that in this day and age the devices can't be compatible with the theatre's sound system.

Updated On: 8/24/15 at 11:17 AM

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:20am

By naming the play  JOHN the playwright is establishing the question of Who is John? What does he have to do with the action on stage? How does he affect the action?  The playwright is setting up the "Pay off".  Titles are important.  And she wrote it, so that the climax of the play is the last line, where we find out who JOHN is. The problem is, we don't care. Or should I say, I didn't care. That may have been intriguing to you but it was not to me. It wasn't even interesting. Especially after three and a half hours of characters staring at each other waiting quite unnaturally for the next person to say something.

  She is also throwing a lot of other useless information at us in hopes that something with stick. We are supposed to ponder what the supernatural elements are in the play, but she doesn't help us understand them. Like I said above, she's a lazy playwright. She wants us to do too much of the work, because the truth is, the supernatural elements don't add up to anything. She herself sets up expectations and then she never meets them.

 

[Roscoe]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:33am

JOHN the play does set up some questions, and it only answers some of them.  The ambiguities strike me as being very rigorously worked out, I'm not seeing any laziness going on here.  At all. Things are said, and then contradicted.  One character says that they don't drink, and we are later led to doubt that.  And as I recall, there's more than one John.  Ms. Baker offers us what a certain character in THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY refers to as "rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty," and that final gut punch at the end struck me as being one of the funnier and darker things in recent theater -- she's basically telling us all, "Okay.  Now you know.  Happy?"  Dig upon it, or not, as you like.

Updated On: 8/24/15 at 11:33 AM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 11:58am

The "John" at the end of the play was not the only John introduced to us. Genevieve's husband was also named John. Jenny mentioned she had a friend named John and Genevieve barked back, "Everyone knows somebody named John." If the John that Jenny was referring to then is the same John at the end of the play it's interesting how she so blithely denotes him as "friend" to Genevieve. 

 

To make a cinematic comparison, Baker's two most recent efforts remind me of some of Ozu's best films. The are long and deceptively meandering, although everything shown has purpose, even if the purpose is obscured. Nothing much happens by conventional standards, but at the end of his movies I'm often overwhelmed with emotion and have a deep appreciation for the care and craft he put into his tales. Sometimes the creation of beauty is enough to satisfy me, and that is the case here with John. Engel reciting her list of groups of birds with growing enthusiasm and joy is a prime example of that. 

[haterobics]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 1:03pm

EthelMae said: "Forgot to mention this. I heard a faint stead sound during Act 2 and 3 that I thought was coming from the stage. It stopped when the actors spoke but sounded again when they stopped. My partner noticed someone ahead of us with one of those hearing devices they hand out in theatres. He thinks it was that causing the sound. I found it distracting in such a quiet play. Odd that in this day and age the devices can't be compatible with the theatre's sound system."

 

I was at the same show. And someone left their hearing aids in and then put their headphones over it which creates a feedback loop. They tell you to take them out when they give them to you, assuming the person hears that instruction.

 

I did find it funny how many people were lined up for listening devices between acts one and two, and I couldn't help but wonder if they thought everyone else could hear them arguing upstairs clearly.

[haterobics]

Posted: 8/24/15 at 1:06pm

CurtainsUpat8 said: "She is also throwing a lot of other useless information at us in hopes that something with stick. We are supposed to ponder what the supernatural elements are in the play, but she doesn't help us understand them. Like I said above, she's a lazy playwright. She wants us to do too much of the work, because the truth is, the supernatural elements don't add up to anything. She herself sets up expectations and then she never meets them."

 

If her goal was a very clear narrative and profound conclusion with no extraneous elements, I think she is perfectly capable of delivering that. She seems aware of what she is doing... whether you like it, well, that's a separate issue.

[bandit964]

Posted: 8/25/15 at 9:33am

WhizzerMarvin, here's that speech:

 

Mertis: A year or two ago I ran into one of the doctors. And he wasn’t always the nicest man when I worked there. I’m sure he was very busy and had a lot on his mind, but I think he wasn’t as kind to me as he could have been. Anyway, he recognized me and he said: “What are you up to now, Mertis?” And I said: “Well, sir, I’m running a B. and B. with my husband and I’m doing quite well.” And that was a nice little moment in my life.

 

^^ Just that line alone was so touching and heartbreaking.

Updated On: 8/25/15 at 09:33 AM

[bandit964]

Posted: 8/25/15 at 9:41am

^^

 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-way-station

Updated On: 8/25/15 at 09:41 AM