Resolution

[firstfrost]

Next theater season, I will not go to plays that I know will:

1. make me want to shoot myself
2. make me want to shoot all the characters

(Let Me Down Easy was the first kind, though I did not know it in advance. Grey Gardens was the second kind, and I did know better (though harrock points out I should exempt Brooks).)

Comments

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I did not actually want to shoot all the characters. I just found them boring. It felt like the play was based on these Interesting Eccentrics, and I found them to be Uninteresting Eccentrics.

[mathhobbit.livejournal.com]

The musical gave me nightmares, so I had plenty of time last night to think about why I didn't like it.

It was shallow and not very funny.

They could have made one or more of the characters as amusing as Carol Burnett, but the jokes just weren't that good and the leading lady didn't seem to interpret the show as a comedy.

They could have made the story as insightful and interesting as The Bell Jar, but instead they focused on the superficial.

I think it could have been a *good* play that I still wouldn't have liked if they'd looked more deeply at the characters' motivations and personalities in a more subtle way. (We get that the girl was sleeping around, but the information is delivered in such a way that we never find out her feelings on the subject. Why did the pianist stay so long and why did he leave? Did he find himself unable to survive as a kept man, or unable to survive on his own? Etc.)

I imagine the documentary did a better job of letting viewers make guesses on these subjects for themselves. In my uneducated opinion, the Lyric did all they could with the musical, but was thwarted by the inherent lameness of the musical itself.