February 26, 2009

Late night. Have just returned from the theater, seeing Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at NC Stage. When I read it as an undergraduate, I thought it was the greatest play since Shakespeare. I no longer think that, but nostalgia for that time of awe enriched my reactions tonight. Willy and Hans could hardly have been better or more complementary as the leads. Michael as the seer/hack Player was in his element fully. It was a flawless production, though now I think that the script is a little too brainy to be fully engaging to the emotions. That we care at all about their fate has something to do with the innate likablity of the actors paying R and G. I saw it once (NC Shakespeare? I forget) when Rosenkrantz was not likable (and a woman), and the production was a flat failure. It seemed five hours long. Tonight flew. I sat beside Andie MacDowell, and expended some energy pretending not to recognize her and to think she was just another society matron out with her girlfriends for an evening of theater. She was excited over a new, and quite beautiful, scarf.

The pain in my toe is back. For some reason, I found myself googling “gout,” and I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I wish not EVERY article had mentioned that it is one of the most excruciating pains available to man. But I guess I already knew that.

Dress of Titus last night. . . well, I honestly don’t know. Compared to NC Stage’s R&GAD it is a kitten-tangled skein of wool, but beyond that? It was one of those times when I could not put myself in the audience’s place, could not quite imagine the experience they were getting out of it. J’s directorial ideas are good, but frustrated sometimes not only by personnel but by the severe limitations of the space, which is pretty much unusable for a play with more than two characters. Our dozen or so of widely divergent levels of ability jostle backstage and cobble and improvise, and it is not always a useful idea to do more with less. A hundred bucks might have made the difference between absurd props and, at least, unnoticeable ones. JS is most of the play, and I think he can be magnificent, but he is pretty much confined to a single pitch of clamorous lamentation. Does that lend a grand consistency, or is it tedious? Are the performances I find iffy really crowd pleasers? Is what I think of as sometimes thoughtless bombast coming across the footlights as high drama? I hope so. It is possible. I really have no idea. Stephanie’s Moor shuns all temptations to excess and stays, I think, exactly on course. But, in total, what do people think? What will they when we open for real tomorrow night? I have no idea . . . . I have enjoyed being with the people involved. I have enjoyed seeing a play I didn't know well from the inside. Putting on a full-scale play in that space may just be too hard. We did it with Crown of Shadows, but there were no precedents to honor, no expectations to better.