The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2008-08-04 08:30 am
thewhitelily) wrote2008-08-04 08:30 am
Review: The August Moon
This year, my mum gave me a season pass to the Queensland Theatre Company's productions for Christmas, which I have been enjoying immensely. The Female of the Species was hysterically funny, I Am My Own Wife transfixingly intriguing, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue a darn good time. Friday's offering, however, The August Moon, has at last inspired me to actually write a review.
First of all, I have to admit that I went to this prepared to, if not enjoy myself, then to at least be touched. The story of the only fatality in the category five cyclone that hit the town where my sister, brother-in-law and their four children were and are still living, two and a half years after losing their home, had a personal connection that I thought would make even a mediocre play intriguing.
Seventy-five minutes later, I walked out completely unmoved.
That personal connection and the identifiably North-Queensland cadence of speech in the play were two redeeming features. The playwrights don't really deserve credit for either of these, though, because the former they had nothing to do with and the latter they had nothing to do with. It was a verbatim play. They had recorded and transcribed interviews with the survivors and cut them down into six parts, including two of themselves.
The format - which at first appeared to be theatre in the round on a revolving stage, not bad - turned out to be mostly six people sitting in chairs reading off scripts sitting on music stands. Occasionally someone stood up, moved about, and struck a noir sort of pose as the reading continued. The surround screens around the outside of the theatre, I had assumed meant to provoke a sense of immersion in the devasatation around, showed only the occasional image clear enough to make out without extensive and distracting brow-furrowing.
The story itself...
Well, perhaps it's too harsh to say what story, because... well, the people involved were real people who'd just lost everything they had, found a longterm acquaintance dead, and had a slanderous article printed about them in the newspaper to top it all off. But there was no story arc, because nothing happened during the course of the play. There was no unexpected revelation or build and release of emotional tension, there was no resolution or new understanding reached by any of the characters. I've never seen anything that suffered quite so much from lack of structure.
I think the climax was meant to be the point where the man who'd spent most of the play ranting about the the ungrateful occupants of a destroyed caravan and the effing newspaper article their quotes created had finished speaking, and one of the two playwrights thanked him and handed him a fifty to buy himself a beer. I'm sure the moment was touching at the time, but... well, to be honest, I wasn't sure even five minutes later whether the recipient had just plain been offended at the condescension or not. I know I was offended at the playwrights suggestion that the whole situation had the silver lining that the man's clearly inadequate insurance would allow him to rebuild his caravan park better than before.
All in all... perhaps not bad if I hadn't been looking forward to it all that much, but definitely eminently missable.
Much more enjoyable was the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra (in which my mother-in-law plays cello) concert on Sunday afternoon, at which they played the Grieg Piano Concerto and the 1812 overture, complete with canons. Fantastic fun - if you ever have the opportunity to see 1812 live, do take it - there's something awesome about percussion that actually rattles your insides.
And on the note of more enjoyable, if anyone missed out on the first run-through - Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog has returned to the Internets! Hurrah, yay!
First of all, I have to admit that I went to this prepared to, if not enjoy myself, then to at least be touched. The story of the only fatality in the category five cyclone that hit the town where my sister, brother-in-law and their four children were and are still living, two and a half years after losing their home, had a personal connection that I thought would make even a mediocre play intriguing.
Seventy-five minutes later, I walked out completely unmoved.
That personal connection and the identifiably North-Queensland cadence of speech in the play were two redeeming features. The playwrights don't really deserve credit for either of these, though, because the former they had nothing to do with and the latter they had nothing to do with. It was a verbatim play. They had recorded and transcribed interviews with the survivors and cut them down into six parts, including two of themselves.
The format - which at first appeared to be theatre in the round on a revolving stage, not bad - turned out to be mostly six people sitting in chairs reading off scripts sitting on music stands. Occasionally someone stood up, moved about, and struck a noir sort of pose as the reading continued. The surround screens around the outside of the theatre, I had assumed meant to provoke a sense of immersion in the devasatation around, showed only the occasional image clear enough to make out without extensive and distracting brow-furrowing.
The story itself...
Well, perhaps it's too harsh to say what story, because... well, the people involved were real people who'd just lost everything they had, found a longterm acquaintance dead, and had a slanderous article printed about them in the newspaper to top it all off. But there was no story arc, because nothing happened during the course of the play. There was no unexpected revelation or build and release of emotional tension, there was no resolution or new understanding reached by any of the characters. I've never seen anything that suffered quite so much from lack of structure.
I think the climax was meant to be the point where the man who'd spent most of the play ranting about the the ungrateful occupants of a destroyed caravan and the effing newspaper article their quotes created had finished speaking, and one of the two playwrights thanked him and handed him a fifty to buy himself a beer. I'm sure the moment was touching at the time, but... well, to be honest, I wasn't sure even five minutes later whether the recipient had just plain been offended at the condescension or not. I know I was offended at the playwrights suggestion that the whole situation had the silver lining that the man's clearly inadequate insurance would allow him to rebuild his caravan park better than before.
All in all... perhaps not bad if I hadn't been looking forward to it all that much, but definitely eminently missable.
Much more enjoyable was the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra (in which my mother-in-law plays cello) concert on Sunday afternoon, at which they played the Grieg Piano Concerto and the 1812 overture, complete with canons. Fantastic fun - if you ever have the opportunity to see 1812 live, do take it - there's something awesome about percussion that actually rattles your insides.
And on the note of more enjoyable, if anyone missed out on the first run-through - Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog has returned to the Internets! Hurrah, yay!