Stephen Payne had some trouble with his lines when I saw the show last Sunday night. And Austin Pendleton was in the audience -- I wonder if they might put him in there before the show opens.
Other than that, his reporting seems like what I would have expected from this situation. Skerritt is hardly the first older actor who's gone into rehearsals and realized they're not up for an 8-show-a-week commitment (remember Diahann Carroll in A RAISIN IN THE SUN a few years ago?). It sounds like they just wanted Arndt to come in and do as he was told and he wasn't having that.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
My interpretation of the rules may not be the best (probably isn't), but I'm going to wager that it was considered a personal insult. Am I right, nameless moderator?
This was really a non-story but I’m glad the situation was clarified as people were making all sorts of assumptions. The truth is a lot more logical and boring than what people were guessing. The most salacious thing in the story wa Riedel outing his sexual orientation and saying “don’t laugh”.
I say unless people here know Riedel personally, don't judge a book by its cover. I know a lot of men who are happily married, very straight and people just "swear" they are "really gay".
And since he addressed it in the article he must be aware that people think this of him. JMO
To get back to the topic: The understudy was not very good last week. Still having a little trouble with lines. The play is preposterous and hits a person over the head with a sledgehammer with its "relevant" message about straight white men. Yet, it is not boring and the actors playing the three sons (although dealing with roles that are so removed from reality) are quite good. Hard to recommend but if you find yourself in the theater, it's only 90 minutes, but get there late if ear piercing pre-show music gets to you.
In general, questioning someone's sexuality is not something that is appropriate for the boards. However, the moderator who deleted the post in question had not read Riedel's story, so didn't realize that he had first made a joke about his sexuality, somewhat opening the door for the discussion. The moderator simply saw the post in a vacuum of our review system and deleted it.
We then discussed internally and decided that since Riedel had opened the conversation, in general, the discussion is allowed to continue; however, the deleted comment by AdamGreer likely straddled the line of being an attack anyway.
JayG 2 said: "To get back to the topic: The understudy was not very good last week. Still having a little trouble with lines. The play is preposterous and hits a person over the head with a sledgehammer with its "relevant" message aboutstraight white men. Yet, it is not boring and the actors playing the three sons (although dealing with roles that are so removed from reality) are quite good. Hard to recommend but if you find yourself in the theater, it's only 90 minutes, but get there late ifear piercing pre-show music gets to you."
My thoughts exactly. I cringed several times when the "understudy" obviously forgot his lines. Even Armie Hammer looked scared. And the play is truly awful and pretentious.
Lot666 said: "Kad said: "It's only defamatory if you think being called homosexual is defamation."
^ This."
Except the post didn’t say he was gay. It said he’s “a closet case” implying that he is a gay man who is either so ashamed of his sexuality or so afraid of people’s responses that he is too scared to come out of the closet. THAT is defamatory. THAT is rude and inappropriate. Riedel himself implies that he knows people assume he’s gay and that in his jokey wording, he doesn’t particularly care. To turn that into the implication that he is someone ashamed or frightened by his sexuality is where the problem lies for me, another gay man.