Score One for Ennui
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has had some success as a playwright with four or five of his plays being commissioned and produced by some prestigious regional theaters and he has been courted by several NYC based off-Broadway not-for-profits, including the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Second Stage Theatre. I think this clout has permitted the mounting of Good Boys and True at Second Stage. I can think of no other reason to put it on the boards. This sucker is one long 85 minutes of no-touch talk; without much believability to back it up. To me it looks more like a revenge play than anything else.Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa must have had a horrible time in high school; no doubt akin to the one portrayed in this play. St. Joseph’s is a sports-driven Catholic school for boys and woe to the non-jock and, heaven forbid, the nascent homosexuals in the student body. The playwright’s character-surrogate is obviously the role of Justin who is the most articulate and together homosexual high school senior ever born.
The impact of the scenery is significant in that it almost totally exists of a hundred or more immoveable and intractable sports trophies in well-lighted niches; even the ceiling drips with them. This, of course, symbolizes the school and its shiny implacability crushes anything that goes on below, thus proving that nothing that anybody says or does is going to change one whit the policies and self-serving politics of the church’s saintly dogma.
A star student/athlete is accused of a fairly rotten heterosexual crime and the effect of this event reverberates throughout the pre-ivy high school, and the lives of the families on both sides are ruined (maybe). No one is totally innocent, including the school itself. Oh, yeah, although not alluded to in the play; placing this scandal in 1988 precludes the truly horrendous crimes subsequently perpetrated (and covered up) by the Catholic church.
Scott Ellis directs with zero nuance. The actors seem to be forever putting on and taking off their coats and our poor fallen hero seems to not understand in the least what he’s done wrong. The poor actor stuck in this role even has to say “Oh, Mom” in a variety of Beaver Cleaver ways. Oh, Mawummmmmm, like she was chastising him that he forgot to eat his Cheerios.
If Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa thinks he’s exacted revenge on his old school, he’s mistaken. St. Joseph’s 10; playwright 3.
posted by peebstuff | Tuesday, April 29, 2008
4 Comments:
I'm assuming you saw this play in PREVIEWS?
I've gotta go on a little rant here - I find it incredibly distasteful to post comments like this before a play has opened. Of course you have every right to your opinion and also have every right to voice them, but 'common - you are obviously a lover of theatre, and have probably been involved in a few theatrical ventures yourself. You're obviously an intelligent person. So I ask you: Do you know what a preview is? Do you know what a preview entails? What you might not know (or might not have even stopped to consider) is that the actors, designers, director, and playwright are still working on the production - are carefully watching the preview audiences' responses each night. They assemble the next day, rehearse, make changes in the script, staging and acting choices, and the show is usually noticably different that evening. You are essentially watching a rehearsal - true, you are paying for it, but you DO have every right to wait until the show has gone through its three weeks of rehearsals/previews and watch the play after it has officially opened - after which might be an appropriate moment to share your thoughts. Posting opinions like yours at such an early stage is essentially like watching someone give birth then blurting out, "God, what an ugly baby this is gonna be!" You have every right to do so, but (please pardon me) that doesn't keep it from being irresponsible or just plain mean.
You'll think what you want and say what you want whenever you want to say it, of course, and you should be able to do so - God bless America! - but I challenge you to ask yourself, as a theatre-goer and a blogger, before you sit down to publish your thoughts in cyber-space, whether your preemptive critique is responsible or fair.
I'm only saying this because I find reviewing plays in previews to be quite a popular and (sorry) deplorable trend in chat-rooms and message boards all over the internet. Again, there's nothing I can or would do to stop it. But I'm just amazed that most people don't stop and ask themselves these things. You got to watch something IN PROCESS. You watched a PRE-VIEW. In that light, your review is really just nasty, irresponsbile play-ground gossip.
Yes, I saw a Second Stage "preview" in New York City although one might suspect that the “premiere” of this play at the prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in December might mean there were quite a lot of rehearsals, previews and even an opening night. Oh, yes, I see as much theater as I can afford. Yes, some in preview; some not. And, yes, I have a right to be mean and nasty if I feel like it, and I don’t feel in the least irresponsible…it’s all opinion, anyway, and has nothing to do with the timeframe in which a production is seen. I also wonder what connection you might have with this play, this theater or this cast that got you into such a snit. It's fairly egotistical, Mr. Anonymous, that you would like to make the rules...fortunately you are not in charge. Thanks for the rant, though, it’s instructive on several levels.
...you answered well, I would've probably just replied "at least I have the balls to sign my reviews."
...I pretty much had a nyah nyah nyah moment when this show opened to reviews pretty much on a par with my own. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
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