Digital Analogue

TKS Rep term reviews

I just read the reviews of the two rep term plays in TKS, and both were panned by reviewers that missed the point and had no idea what they were talking about.

Lysistrata's reviewer complains that the play was over the top, and that the jokes were too bawdy. Um. There is actually a valid complaint there---the script itself is so over the top that the actors don't really need to be, and playing it straight will actually come off much funnier (the three actors I highlighted seem to have realised this). A few of the actors were more over-the-top than they needed to be. But the reviewer seems to take objection with the script itself, wanting the production to focus more on its anti-war message, and losing the slapstick. The message is perfectly easy to find, though, and even if she didn't understand it when she read her three different translations of the play, the play is meant to be performed as a slapstick comedy. It is not about clonking the audience over the head with its message---it's about slipping the message in there without the audience noticing. And it succeeds!

The reviewer of Trojan Women was disappointed that the play didn't have more action in it. Um. It's a lament about the war that just ended; what kind of action are you looking for, exactly? He also complains about the excessive "crying", which is odd, because there is really very little boo-hoo weeping. The characters are much too grief-stricken for that. Finally, the reviewer takes issue with the play as being "overdramatic"; he just doesn't know what he's talking about. He also manages to misspell both a character's name and an actor's name, but perhaps now I'm just being picky.

"The Supreme Court would have been irrelevant if Gore's campaign hadn't been run like an eighth grade class council effort." --Pete McFerrin