I saw perhaps the worst first act of a play last night. It probably would have been the worst play but I left at interval. An almost decent night’s sleep was too much of a call from the wild to switch off my brain and make it through the whole things. I have ceased wondering why there were so many free tickets on offer for opening night.
And bad theatre is bad theatre. This I understand. Bad theatre is part of the package deal when you sign up as a theatre goer. But this is a whole different kettle of fish. This is firmly planted on a different planet in a different galaxy that not even NASA has any interest in.
This was a play by the most successful playwright in the country and this was a no expense spared production from the state’s flagship theatre company. You put these things together and I want more magic than even a fairy knows what to do with. I don’t want what I saw last night. Froth and bubble and jokes about gang rape. Plays about women who are lonely and in love with people they shouldn’t be. Clumsy women. What is it with men and clumsy women? Cute, clumsy women who are unlucky in love. And who have overbearing mothers. I swear to god, I almost choked on the bucketfuls of clichés we were forced to swallow in this ridiculous and pointless exercise. Because what happens to the clumsy woman? Oh she falls in love. Oh, the guy is married. But wait! Another guy appears on the scene that is just as clumsy as she is. But wait! Married guy’s wife has miraculously packed up shop and fled the scene. OH NO! What will clumsy girl do?
I am so angry at this play that I could choke it. I could seriously choke the life out of it. It would take all of two seconds. This play made my skin crawl with its lack. I laughed at one line, one line! and this thing was supposed to be a romantic comedy. Oh, the line was about tapas but it was more that my companion and I had started to angrily whisper at each other about how wrong this was, and then this line came out and we both laughed. But that was it. That was seriously it. We however were alone. People were not just laughing, they were guffawing. Seriously guffawing. Old ladies done up to the nines practically wetting themselves at the hilarity of it all. For a while I thought perhaps it was an old lady thing because who else can afford $75 bucks a ticket for this kind of stuff. But there were two lesbians next to me and lesbian in front of me and her father – ALL GUFFAWING! They laugh, I seethe.
Where is our David Hare? Where is our Caryl Churchill? Our Tony Kushner? Our David Mamet? Our Suzan Lori-Parks? This moronic exercise I had to sit through last night is apparently the work of our best. Our best? If that’s our best, then we need to pick up our ball and end the game right now. But of course it’s not. This is the best that we can feed to old ladies with too much disposable income. Mash it up so it has no texture or taste anymore and just shovel it in.
I’m sick to death of being disappointed by this theatre. I’m sick of all this money being thrown at it and the result only amuses the old and rich. This is not a sustainable mission. This will not do what theatre is supposed to do … how was I supposed to be enlightened by what I saw last night? How was that a mirror up to the society that I live in? What was it supposed to make me think? I have no answers to these question and no idea how to get them which makes me stop being angry and just makes me feel sad.
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