...I'm kind of more excited to hear how the Golden's facelift went! Whoever goes, please report back! Also let us know about the show, too... because I am actually excited to hear that too!
It's great when the theater experience includes excitement about the physical beauty of the house itself. It's was what made Loews want to make movie palaces, where sometimes the theater itself is more exciting than the movie.
I doubt, in this case, though, anything could be more exciting than Patti LuPone as a prisoner. I am very excited to see this production!
Hmmm...this one was a bit of a head-scratcher. The general premise holds a lot of promise: Patti plays a prisoner up for a parole after having serviced 35 years of a sentence for some unknown crime. Winger plays her lawyer/parole officer type character who is about to retire. Patti claims to have undergone many changes. She's written a manuscript and she's found religion (Christianity) and wants to join a convent if she's released. She still won't give up her accomplice though, which would be the ultimate sign in Winger's eyes if she was truly a changed woman.
So, has Patti really changed or is it all an act? Will she get paroled/will Winger testify that she's a new woman?
The dialogue just doesn't zing enough and it really meanders around what's going on. It only ran about 75 minutes tonight, but it only felt like they repeated everything in my above two paragraphs for those 75 minutes.
Patti is good, but she's a little too committed to playing the innocent, doe-eyed convert. I know she has to either really be a changed person or at least convincingly faking it, but either way it would be good to see some fire underneath. I think she's on her way to getting there though.
Winger stumbled around on some lines here and there, but I guess the ping pong of Mamet takes some getting used to in public performance. Her role is less interesting that Patti's. She needs to play the listener and see if Patti will give up the accomplice or reveal that she's really not the new woman she claims to be. You assume she's going to have the big final monologue/moment, but it never really came.
As many of you know I love going to first previews, but this is one of the rare instances where I wish I was seeing a later performance. I think there will probably be some rewriting of lines (Mamet is writing and directing) and both performances will certainly get better as time goes on.
Compared to stuff like Dead Accounts at least The Anarchist had good intentions and tried to offer up something thought-provoking, etc. This is the type of play that you might walk out of the theater thinking, eh that wasn't really much, but then 4 days later still be discussing it with your friends.
I wish them the best in tightening and fixing things up.
Yeah, I thought it was going to be 90 minutes, but I was out of the theater by 9:15. It almost felt like the one act of two. Not that we needed to spend another act with these characters, but maybe something thematically similar.
Better yet act two could be a different case, but this time Winger is the one up for parole and Patti is the lawyer. Could be interesting, but I seriously doubt that's in the cards.
I had a fleeting thought of the two of them switching roles every performance a la True West with John C Reilly and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
But I don't think Winger is strong enough to handle the prisoner role and I wouldn't go back to hear that same dialogue again if you paid me.
Even the ending (Slight Spoiler below) ------- was very tired. It's been done before and wasn't much of a surprise. I didn't really care who was right or wrong, if she deserved to be out or not.
meyerd- I just read what you wrote. I was in the mezz and I don't think anyone left up there (not that there were that many to begin with). I didn't hear very positive comments from people while exiting though.
I feel like I've seen FAR worse plays than this, but in general I agree with what you wrote- I guess I'm just putting a nicer spin on things because I liked the premise and I truly believe changes will be made. I didn't want to critique Winger too harshly because I think her lack of character can be attributed to the fact that she was clearly very focused on remembering her lines. Patti already had the lines down and was further along on molding a character.
Many people here are going to want to see this simply because Patti is in it (and rightly so). I won't discourage anyone from going, but I would advise to wait a week or two so the actors and play can settle in.
meyerd- You hit on a problem that could be easily fixed. The crime Patti committed is never fully explained, and you don't really even care about what happened/is she innocent/should she give up the accomplice. That's why when you get to the end it's hard to care what Winger is going to decide.
I'm the worst to ask when it comes to theater restoration. I have no eye for design. I recognized it looked different than before, but didn't wow me. I was just relieved that my old "Restrooms are downstairs only" usher was back in full swing. I've passed her since Avenue Q days and she's a staple of the Golden for me.
Yes I agree. I think I had a good understanding of the crime, but not why she did it or details of her accomplice.
Also, there isn't enough story for the warden to care about her decision either. The big "gasp" moment at the end wasn't interesting to me in the slightest.
These comments sound a little bit like the reaction to Mamet's second most-current work Race. I did thoroughly enjoy it because of the excellent cast and and seeing a new Mamet piece for the first time, but most thought it was luke-warm by Mamet standards. If anyone saw both, how does this compare to Race, in terms of Mamet's writing and pacing?
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joined:4/23/08
Posted: 11/12/12 at 12:43pm