Day twenty-five: Potted Potter

All seven books in seventy minutes! Okay, I can't really review this, it was a show for kids. I wouldn't see it again; a lot of it is annoying, but only because they drag out the bad humor for the kids' sake. But we just went for laughs, and got them, so I'm satisfied. I'd LOVE to see this show if it was done for adults, though.

I had another show to go to last night, but I heard only bad reviews about it. The most descriptive one being that it was a bunch of kids who got their hands on too much technology, so it wasn't about the story, but more what they could do with six or eight big TV screens. I wasn't up for spending an hour and a half watching it, so Potted Potter was officially my last show of the festival. Classy way to end it, I think.

Now, it's off to London, New York, then home to Seattle. Thanks for reading!

Day twenty-four: If That's All There Is / Zeitgeist

I bought a ticket to If That's All There Is on recommendation from people in my class seeing it, and coming home to say it was one of the best things to happen at the Fringe this year. Sadly, it ended up one of those circumstances where the hype overpowered the novelty of the show by the time I got around to seeing it. I am able to appreciate what it might have been like to see it for the first time without hearing anything about it, but that is not the same as experiencing it first-hand. Plus, I think if a show is really solid, you can hear everything about it before you go and still be quite moved by the performance. For me, this wasn't the case, so I'm not quite on board that it is legitimately as incredible as people discussed. That said, it was still a cute show with some great humor, and it was usually pretty enjoyable.

The play follows a man and a woman in the weeks before their wedding day. The woman struggles the whole time to have any sort of feelings about it (she shoves her face into a pile of chopped onions to try to cry, imagines her husband getting shot at the wedding, etc.) and the man is completely neurotic about it all, allowing no room to relax (he makes elaborate charts and graphs about the plan for the wedding day, and ends up bursting into song during a business meeting out of stress). There is a woman who plays both the man's psychiatrist and the woman's office assistant. Ultimately, she helps each of them find solace.

It was an interesting commentary on wedding stress, but I honestly didn't connect with it well. Maybe because I haven't experienced the anticipation of an approaching marriage, but I think also because I can't imagine myself in their position. It's the type of situation where the two don't seem to know each other or communicate very well in the first place, and that's the only cause of their weird emotional issues. So...just talk to each other! But then, I guess there would be no play if they did that.

Also, when my other classmates saw it, they said it went very smoothly, and the pacing was seamless and effective. Unfortunately, the day I saw it was clearly an off day for them. I think being overly comfortable with prep at this point in the festival, and having an earlier than normal show (they usually performed in the afternoon, but I saw it in the morning) was the cause of a few mishaps. Small things, but they affected larger parts of the show: a wheel on the woman's chair was missing, and there are a few choreographed parts with it that she struggled with, since it wouldn't roll properly. Also, there's a part where the psychiatrist gets the man to completely let go; he wears a long wig, and she brings out a big fan so he can stand in the wind and scream. It had so much potential to be completely hilarious, but the fan wasn't plugged in, so she had to say "pretend you can feel the wind!" Everyone has a day or two like that in a run of a show, and they went with it the best they could. It's just too bad I saw it on an off day.

The second show I saw, Zeitgeist, was just completely incredible and awesome (in the original sense of the word). Performed by a company based in Brisbane, Australia, it was modern dance, but a million times more enjoyable and intriguing than Inventing the Sky. So, maybe I don't have a bias against modern dance. I don't know much about dance terminology or theory, but my take on modern dance is that the point is to stray from mindless repetition, and draw more from raw emotion and impulse. With Inventing the Sky, the dancers just had me watch what they were going through. In Zeitgeist, however, they pulled me in so I, too, could experience what they were feeling. I'm not entirely sure how they did it so successfully; maybe it was more controlled modern, and not just weird twitching and showing off their bodies.

There was this one crazy part where a woman walked across the stage, dragging a small wagon full of eggs. One dancer took an egg and smashed it on his head. Then, each person took one, cracked it open, and poured it into his/her mouth. They held the yolks out on their tongues, then spit them out all over the place. Then slowly, they looked up deviously at the audience, picked up eggs, and the lights blacked out right as they threw them at us. ...Those ones were fake. It was terrifying, then hilarious.

Also, during one of the songs, I was so drawn in, I barely remember what happened. It was just beautiful, emotional music, with beautiful, emotional movement. I'm really glad, too, because in the program, they gave us the list of songs they used. Another sign that it was great, was all I wanted to do after was dance. Any dance performance that makes you want to move is doing something right.

Day twenty-three: FLOW (Fabulous, Lucky, Outrageous World) / Inventing the Sky

My word of choice for the two shows I saw today is: masturbatory.

FLOW wasn't necessarily unenjoyable because of it, but it depends on what perspective you take. Apparently the show changes every night. It's this older woman named Neel de Jong, and she kind of sticks with a theme, I think, but does whatever she feels like every night. Tonight, it was half an hour that began with her in the middle of the stage in a giant white parka, white tights, big sunglasses, and patent leather heels. She stood center stage, tangled up in about 30 large tree branches. For the first ten minutes, she untangled herself from the tree branches, and then took a box of strawberries and threw them on the branches. Next, she spoke to us about metaphors, and the revelation that she has a black hole inside of her. Finally, she read us a poem, then sang it to us as a song, with piano accompaniment.

Remember when a play reminded me of movies Ariel and I used to make? That's why I laughed almost the whole time. It reminded me of parts in our movies where we'd just drag things on that weren't even that funny, but they were so ridiculous we'd laugh ourselves to tears. Also, the woman looked somewhat like my grandmother Ro-Ro, which made it even more totally absurd and hilarious to watch.

The other perspective that I saw it from half the time was that of "this is completely for yourself, so why should I sit through it?" I guess it wasn't completely for herself, because she interacted with us, and genuinely seemed to want us to understand the thoughts (and occasionally relatable insanity) going through her head. But I have to say I'm pretty glad I didn't directly pay the 6 pounds for a ticket, as it was one of the shows bought for us in advance. (Even though I technically did pay for it in the program fee...)

I don't know. I'm undecided about the show. When I relaxed and went with it, I enjoyed it. But when I thought about self-expression vs. theater, I got annoyed.

The other show I saw tonight I fell into going to, because someone here had a ticket and couldn't go. This one, I'm very glad I didn't pay for (in any way). Inventing the Sky was a bunch of young dancers trying to act. Ugh, modern dance. To be fair, I haven't seen much modern dance, but I did go with someone who dances, and she agrees with me. So if anything, I'm probably not crazy. It was an hour and a half, and there was barely a minute when I was content to be there. The most painful thing about it for me was that these four young people clearly have incredible potential to move and dance like not many people can, but they filled the show with uncomfortable, jerky movements and awkwardly over-the-top facial expressions and miming.

One thing I love about this festival is that it helps me further understand my theatrical palette. And something I realized I cannot stand is the kind of miming where the people mouth words or use intricate facial expressions; then it just seems obvious that they're doing everything but speak. If they use movement and committed gestures instead, it seems like the alternative to speaking, not just the absence of it.

I realized about halfway through that if these people were older (they're probably about my age), I might like it more. But at the age they are, this kind of modern dance just makes them look like they wanted to be up on stage, so they are, and they're young, so it should be weird.

To generalize quite a bit, I feel like there are two reasons people end up doing theater. 1) They want to be onstage because they express emotions externally, and/or 2) they want to explore and help others figure out relationships and human nature. Each is a legitimate reason, and I know many people who simultaneously fit into both categories. However, I tend to think that some of the people who fit only into the 1st category are not self-aware enough to make theater effective for the audience. At least two of the four actors tonight seemed like those types, and it really grated on me. Almost the whole time they were up there, I read "hey, look at me" on their faces, along with whatever else they were trying to express.

But hey, if nothing else, I had a ton of realizations about theater while watching it.

Day twenty-two: The Rebel Cell

Not the best, but it was entertaining. Its self-description was "8 Mile meets 1984." Pretty appropriate, actually. It takes place in 2013, and is about a British guy who calls himself Dizraeli, who's in prison for starting riots in England and is suspected of bombing the 2012 London Olympics. He's interviewed by a journalist from Vancouver, B.C., who we later find out used to be his friend that he rapped with about problems with the world. A lot of the show is flashbacks (that take place in 2009...hey, clever) to when they did shows together. They had a lot of audience participation; it was kind of funny and pretty fun to watch. Unfortunately, the guy who plays the friend from Vancouver is tragically bad at rapping, and not much better at acting. I'm not really sure why he was cast in that role. Actually, he was supposed to be a pretty bad rapper in the show, but since he lacked much presence onstage in general, it didn't seem funny, just...bad. The other guy was pretty good, though. Not something I'd see again, but I did laugh a fair amount, so not a wasted ticket.

Day twenty-one: Orphans

This play was so, so interesting to watch. I don't mean interesting like it was kind of okay and sometimes funny. I mean that it was nonstop intriguing, I-can't-stop-watching-the-wheels-turn-in-these-characters'-heads kind of interesting. I heard a few people comment about how the play needed to get moving, because it was slow to pick up. But to me, it was gripping the whole time. Wow, it is so well-written. Yes, the characters spend a lot of time skirting around issues and trying to get their points across, but it's because that's who they are; they're feeling each other out, and trying to communicate without digging themselves into deeper holes.

I'll back up. The play follows a couple, Helen and Danny, and Helen's brother, Liam. It opens as Liam bursts in on the couple having dinner, and he is covered in blood. The story continues from there as tensions arise from Helen's protectiveness over Liam (their parents died when they were young, so she essentially raised him), and her attempts at loyalty to Danny (she loves him dearly, but isn't satisfied with their marriage). The couple becomes inextricably involved with Liam's actions and borderline innocent mistakes, which turn out to be more and more deeply twisted as the play continues. It sounds like an intense drama, which sometimes it is, but a lot of it is actually hilarious. The humor is dark, well-placed and finely-tuned, so it is never disruptive and only adds to the experience.

The acting was solid, too. The actors were so deep into it, and more dedicated than most I've seen here so far. And to think they've been performing this for weeks.

We actually went to this panel a few weeks ago with five playwrights who have shows here at the festival, and one of them was Dennis Kelly, who wrote this play. Unfortunately, I can't remember anything specific he said about it, except that it began just from the idea of someone bursting into someone's dinner covered in blood.

They're selling the script at the theater, and I think I'm going to get it; most of all I want to see how it all translates on paper. I have a suspicion that if Americans performed it in the U.S., the humor would be lost. I think our instinct would be to read it as completely dramatic, or the audience may be afraid to laugh if we did employ the humor.

Seriously dynamic play, and incredibly written. Also, the set was mouthwatering.

Day twenty: Precious Little Talent

I originally had a ticket for Chekov's Ivanov, which was done in a pool, and was apparently horrible. I guess it was only about "hey, we're in a pool!" and they relied on that to carry them through the rest. Kind of like a Hugh Grant movie ("hey, it's Hugh Grant!"). So, I skipped that and went to Precious Little Talent, which many people recommended to me. It was a sweet play about Joey, a 23-year-old English (not British, she specifies) girl who goes to New York to stay with her father over the holidays (and potentially beyond), and meets Sam, a 19-year-old American boy, who is her father's caretaker. On the surface, it is a romantic comedy, but that title does not do it justice. There is a significant amount of depth, from the once brilliant father's waning brain functionality to Joey resisting and then embracing the American ideals of hope and change.

As an American, it was interesting to a) catch the boy's slip-ups in his accent and b) listen to the banter between the two people regarding each other's culture (or lack thereof). There was a solid theme throughout of Joey having lost her job, not having much of a path, and not wanting to be forgotten. Meanwhile, her father is in the process of forgetting her, as his brain deteriorates at a relatively young age. Sam essentially plays her hero, with an endearing innocence and persevering optimism. They compare the English ideas that things are how they are, and you deal with it and enjoy what you have, to the American idea that anything is possible if you set your mind to it. Each has its place, and the argument was not biased until the end, when Joey decides (in her words) that it takes more balls to be as idealistic as Sam than it does to simply accept what's in front of you.

It was refreshing to see the U.S. in a positive light overseas. Not because I felt proud, necessarily, but because what the play represents seems like a step toward the direction we want to be going in; people see each other as individuals seeking the same important thing, rather than as masses creating a country with one mind behind everything. Also, I don't know how many plays Obama has been mentioned in yet, but I suspect this is one of the first.

That said, it wasn't overwhelmingly political. The play maintains a balanced sprinkling of humor, and societal and personal depth throughout. The characters were all pretty convincing, aside from the boy being a little too fidgety (he was trying to play nervous). Regardless, it was definitely enjoyable until the end.

Day nineteen: Mong Yeon (A Love in Dream)

There have been about two shows that left me feeling like I was hit over the head (emotionally speaking), and this was one of them. This was a stunningly beautiful Korean story about losing love. Three women played instruments for the music far downstage, and two other women on the sides with a piano and a cello played occasionally, too. For some reason I have this thing for white sheets, and they had a huge one in the back that they sometimes dropped and pulled up to separate characters, use shadows, and play with light. Movement and dance in the piece heightened the emotions ten-fold, whether they were positive or painful. They simply did an incredible job of expressing yearning and what it can make a person do. I can't really say more about it, other than that it was totally beautiful, captivating, and emotionally enveloping.