April 15, 2023

To the theater last night. Blocked from Depot Street by the longest train in the world, which cleared in time for me to make it to the show. Had to change seats (easy to do in the sparse house) because the two tall lesbians in front of me could not stop kissing each other, thus blocking the space between heads that would normally be there. It was the Hyena Preview, where a few people who worked on the play and one notorious Board member let out piercing cackles every few lines to demonstrate how funny the play was (it wasn’t). “Oh, I’ll have a tonic with lemon” SHRIEK! “That must be Child Protective Services; answer the door” SHRIEK! To be fair, it would likely have been a dead house without the hysterical shrieking of the shills. I did laugh honestly once. My history as a teacher, and a teacher of playwriting, prompts me to look at a night like that other than others do. K said as I left “I want to talk to you some time about this play–” If I hadn’t felt the necessity of having an informed opinion, I would have driven home in the fitful rain and never thought of the dreary piece again. Magnetic has been able to count on pretty solid acting lately, so little of the fault lies there. Directing, however, was catastrophic. I left my program downstairs so I wouldn’t be tempted to record the director’s name, but she managed to magnify the script’s flaws, and to add ineptitudes of her own likely not inspired by the playwright. The male lead was grossly miscast. In this age of gender-blind and color-blind casting, perhaps we’re not meant to notice when the actor clashes with the character, but casting a beared, obese middle aged man as what was clearly intended to be a seductive, sexually and morally ambiguous juvenile went too far. Focus was often impossible, as two or more things happened on the stage at the same time. The play? As a playwright that’s what I mostly notice, while others have their eyes on the actors. The play can be dark without being dreary: this was dreary, slow, the bad directing letting it be unintelligible almost to the end. It probably cannot entertain. But can it be respected? In a way, yes. A woman has killed a young girl in a traffic accident, and tortures herself with things both real and phantasmagorical in penance. A good premise, but one which, here, never quite emerges from the therapist’s office onto the stage. At the end the woman and the dead girl’s ghost are doing yoga together on the woman’s deck. Don’t mind that: have no idea how it happened. One way of killing your play is to develop and develop and take everyone’s word for what you should do and end up with a product so bland it can neither offend nor excite. The other way is to ignore the audience altogether, and parade your inmost psyche on the stage as though it were a dream. The second of those is more interesting, but still a failure. The second of those was last night.

Trusting Bobby the check-out guy that it wouldn’t frost again, I put in zinnia seeds.

Rabbits fed in my garden as I turned to mount the stairs.