I seem to be all around the city these days. Tonight I went to see The Country Girl. It got a great review in the New Yorker, but a bad one in the Times, so we weren't completely sure what we were in for. I got my best white shirt, fairly ordinary black pants, snazzy brown shoes, and my finest top hat. I put on "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top while dressing. I felt ready for anything.
We got to the theater and settled into our seats. The lights dimmed and the curtains raised. There were three people smoking on stage and you could smell the smoke. I loved it. When Morgan Freeman (playing the alcoholic but one-of-a-kind actor) got on stage, everyone could sense he was going to do something great. He started off slow, reading lines, then saying that he has trouble with sight reading. When he got into the improv, he just became the greatest actor in the world. And I believed him too. Francis McDormand (playing the wife who pushes Morgan Freeman to be great) was at first about to leave Morgan Freeman, but her role slowly grew bigger and bigger as Morgan Freeman became more and more unstable. By the second act, she WAS the play. She both loved and hated Morgan Freeman, but the one thing that was for certain was that she was intent on getting him to pull through. The whole play felt so intensely real, that I nearly forgot after the play was over that these were actors playing as fictional characters.
We waited after it was over to see Francis McDormand because my parents know her (I have connections!). I expected to be star struck when I met her, but she was actually extremely easy to talk to. I asked her how she can cry on stage, and she said that you have to really get into the character. If you become the person, the tears will come naturally. I'll try to keep that in mind for any theater I do in the future, whether I have to cry or not, because I think that applies to all aspects of acting.
If you're in New York right now and can get your hands on some tickets, I suggest seeing this play right away. This and "Noises Off" are my favorite non-musical plays, and that says a lot.
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Jews and Power
Tonight I went to what I would have liked to be a fun comedy night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. I was unpleasantly surprised.
As I was puzzling over The Onion's weekly Sudoku, pressing it up against a brick wall, I was discreetly eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Every single conversation was unmistakably Jewish. I could hear it in the tone of voice, the subject matter, and most importantly, I was standing in a line for a comedy show called "Jews and Power". Soon after I was finished with the Sudoku, we were let inside the tiny theater. And I don't mean Schubert theater small. I mean fifty person max small. At this point I noticed that I was the youngest one there by at least thirty years. I hoped that the acts were tailored to this audience. After we got settled down, the show started with a man taking off his jumpsuit to reveal a Wonder Woman leotard as he performed an eccentric dance. An amusing scene to begin with, and he told great stand up comedy jokes after the dance. After this, there was a group called Good Jewish Girls Gone Bad, which was completely about sex jokes and unfunny songs. If they were anywhere near the right target audience, they still wouldn't have gotten any laughs. There was a Curb Your Enthusiasm spoof about Purim, and there were absolutely no good jokes. Purim was a common theme in this show. There were also two animated shorts about Isaac and Egyptian slavery. It reminded me of Home Movies from Adult Swim. It wasn't very funny. Around this time, a reporter who was writing about the show left the premises. It was a pretty good idea to leave. There was another Purim act that slightly dealt with politics, but not enough to really laugh at. After a few more "Eh" acts, the last stand up routine was pretty good. He had a bit of a prologue about Passover and it went pretty well. He then sang a song that somehow jumbled all of Judaism and Jesus into one holiday. It got great laughs and was a true success compared to everything else. We left this show and hoped to never go to such awkwardly bad theater again. At least we can tell the story.
As I was puzzling over The Onion's weekly Sudoku, pressing it up against a brick wall, I was discreetly eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Every single conversation was unmistakably Jewish. I could hear it in the tone of voice, the subject matter, and most importantly, I was standing in a line for a comedy show called "Jews and Power". Soon after I was finished with the Sudoku, we were let inside the tiny theater. And I don't mean Schubert theater small. I mean fifty person max small. At this point I noticed that I was the youngest one there by at least thirty years. I hoped that the acts were tailored to this audience. After we got settled down, the show started with a man taking off his jumpsuit to reveal a Wonder Woman leotard as he performed an eccentric dance. An amusing scene to begin with, and he told great stand up comedy jokes after the dance. After this, there was a group called Good Jewish Girls Gone Bad, which was completely about sex jokes and unfunny songs. If they were anywhere near the right target audience, they still wouldn't have gotten any laughs. There was a Curb Your Enthusiasm spoof about Purim, and there were absolutely no good jokes. Purim was a common theme in this show. There were also two animated shorts about Isaac and Egyptian slavery. It reminded me of Home Movies from Adult Swim. It wasn't very funny. Around this time, a reporter who was writing about the show left the premises. It was a pretty good idea to leave. There was another Purim act that slightly dealt with politics, but not enough to really laugh at. After a few more "Eh" acts, the last stand up routine was pretty good. He had a bit of a prologue about Passover and it went pretty well. He then sang a song that somehow jumbled all of Judaism and Jesus into one holiday. It got great laughs and was a true success compared to everything else. We left this show and hoped to never go to such awkwardly bad theater again. At least we can tell the story.
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