Day twelve: The Fall of Man

By Jonathan Holloway and John Milton (in the sense that they used lines from Paradise Lost). This story was about cheating. I hate stories about cheating, because they're relentlessly painful to watch. This one was no exception. To make it worse, hardly any of it was legitimately captivating. Just gross or depressing. The story follows an older man who cheats on his wife to have a lusty affair with his younger housekeeper. You've probably seen this play. Or movie. Or read this book.

Naturally, we're against the characters at the outset, because, well, they're actively and consciously betraying someone who we assume to be innocent. With that in mind, the two biggest flaws of the story are: 1) we never meet or hear much about the wife, so we can neither completely sympathize with her, nor develop resentment for her, if there is reason to. And 2) because we don't meet the wife and because of a lack of character development, we are given no reason to emotionally support the two characters. As a result, it's nearly impossible to maintain interest in what happens to them.

Since it's lacking in those two aspects, they decided to throw in a bunch of nudity and sex to shamelessly grab our attention.

The director is one of the two writers of the script, which can sometimes contribute to a jumbled or dissatisfying production, since he may confuse his vision as the playwright with his vision as the director. ALSO — I thought this was gross — the actor who plays the husband was the co-director. In a way, it makes it a little more interesting, because of all the things his character makes the girl do and go through, both sexually and emotionally. Since he was one of the directors, then...he was telling her to do those things outside of his character, as well. An interesting twist on the whole thing, but more than anything it just creeped me out.

One thing the show had going for it: it was only 35 minutes.