Gone a million (take two)
Fri, 6 Mar 2009, 08:22 amGordon the Optom1 post in thread
Gone a million (take two)
Fri, 6 Mar 2009, 08:22 am When I first saw this show, I thought that it had some of the worst acting that I had seen for years. However, faced with a barrage of replies to this site, personal emails and face-to-face talks with people saying how much they enjoyed the show, I started to wonder if I had been too hard on the play. So last night I ventured back and paid my money again.
My biggest concern was that I might have demoralised the cast. So although I still have not changed my mind about the performance that I saw originally, last night, very much to their credit, the cast had obviously put in a huge amount of work and effort, to conquer many of the faults.
The amazingly long gaps between actors’ dialogue had gone, the excessive body movement had been toned down, and there was a real teamwork and communication. The audience certainly had more laughs.
Unfortunately I am still not happy about the script. Much of it was written for the page, and not the spoken word. It was verbose, possibly 20% of each sentence could be trimmed out. The mother’s drunken scene was much more successful, but playing a drunk is extremely difficult. A convincing drunken-comedy performance for several minutes is almost impossible, unless one is a specialist like the oldies Freddie Frinton (‘Dinner for One’) and Jimmy James.
Still not a great show, but congratulations to the cast for turning the comedy around.
My biggest concern was that I might have demoralised the cast. So although I still have not changed my mind about the performance that I saw originally, last night, very much to their credit, the cast had obviously put in a huge amount of work and effort, to conquer many of the faults.
The amazingly long gaps between actors’ dialogue had gone, the excessive body movement had been toned down, and there was a real teamwork and communication. The audience certainly had more laughs.
Unfortunately I am still not happy about the script. Much of it was written for the page, and not the spoken word. It was verbose, possibly 20% of each sentence could be trimmed out. The mother’s drunken scene was much more successful, but playing a drunk is extremely difficult. A convincing drunken-comedy performance for several minutes is almost impossible, unless one is a specialist like the oldies Freddie Frinton (‘Dinner for One’) and Jimmy James.
Still not a great show, but congratulations to the cast for turning the comedy around.