"A Play, A Play, what could be more boring than a play!" - Homer Simpson
On Saturday I went to see a play. There were tickets, gift certificates, they had to be used up. And so I found one I liked and went to exchange them, but I made a mistake, quoted the wrong play, I was confused. SO many posters on the walls. And after the tickets were printed I explained my error but the clerk, the friendly clerk, told me what a fortunate mistake I'd made, how he wanted to see the play himself for which I now had tickets, it was going to be a good one, and I thought that perhaps this was one of those happy accidents life sometimes offers and decided to take my chances.
Now there is a convention that Canadian writers don't criticize other Canadian writers. This because, in the small world of Canadian publishing and Theatre, there is the distinct possibility that the writer you slight might find him or herself in the position to review your work. And we'd like them to be kind. So the play, the first run of a new local play, and the playwright, an award winning local playwright, shall remain nameless.
So to the play.
It opens very much like a play. I'm impressed with the staging, there is a stage, there are props and set decorations, actors and actresses. It must have been very expensive.
And there is that deft and snappy dialogue, it reminds me of Mamet, or Pinter. It dovetails together, each player finishing the others sentences, long pauses where I check my watch. 90 Minutes with no intermission.
They have given us surveys to be filled out before we enter the play, I've left mine blank, time now, when the lights are up, to peruse it, perhaps I should have filled it in, there's a prize....
There is a sense of mystery in this play, it opens with it, the first scene, a man being interrogated by an unknown stranger. "Who is he?" we wonder. And there is romance, a woman torn between her true love and her abusive husband. "Who will she choose?" The suspense is unbearable. But that is not the mystery. No, the mystery is too mysterious to be summed up here, it's an existential sort of mystery, strange characters interacting with our protagonist, then disappearing from stage...."Who is this stranger?" we wonder again, but it's not revealed, not right away, that's part of the mystery. And the other part is the way the characters forget themselves, find themselves in strange, inexplicable circumstances."How strange and inexplicable" we think. That's the other part of the mystery. And there is still a third mystery generated by the play, and that is how I came to be here, in this theater, checking my watch....
The play proceeds, well, like clockwork.
There's metaphor too, but I'm not sure I understand it. The lead character in the play, he's a metaphor for something, but I can't quite place what. It's a mystery.
More mysteries. More Drama. It's very psychological, this play. The props are good, too. There's a chair that the actors use for sitting in when required to by the script. And doors that they go in and out of. Sometimes the lights dim and you can't see them appear on stage, so it's like a bit of magic when they come back on and there they are. More mysteries. More play.
Then there's the finale. This is when the mysteries are finally revealed. It wasn't about the play, after all, we find out, it was about the meaning of life. Our existence. It's very snappy the way it wraps up, all the plot ends come together, mysteries explained, our involvement with the characters, our emotional investment, is tidily brought to it's existential close. With no cheating or shortcuts, just the way you'd expect after 90 minutes.
And so that was it. 90 minutes of "The Play". All in all I would say that the writer, in this instance "The Tortured Artist", used the medium of theatre very well to communicate his views about times-a-wasting to us, the tortured audience.