Plays

Maybe this is not so capricious because I'm interested in your response as a fan/critic; presumably this is aligned in some mystical way to your "worldview" or "ruling idea" that binds everything in a huge game of "Only Connect".

Best play I've ever seen: "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett performed in the West End, summer of 1994. I had a student ID and got in for $5 (Broadway take note!!) Afterwards I felt thoroughly energized yet exhausted, in that good way you feel after, say, rolling down hills in the park. The actors were able to draw out Beckett's brutal dialogue with excruciating pauses and my attention never wavered because the pauses seemed absolutely neccessary. I like plays where the actors have got space to react, form judgements, reverse course, plan their strategies. In poor hands space for deliberation is a yawning poisonous void that kills momentum, or the illusion of emotional realities-in-progress. Which is why so many plays are sped up to silent-movie speed gesticulation and rapid-fire cadences ("they'll never notice if we just keep going faster") - great plays demand reflection, and great actors can use the space to actually arrive at the decisions their characters do.

Worst play that was supposed to be Grate: same summer, "The Cryptogram" by David Mamet, starring Eddie Izzard. The perfs were very good, but the play was so confused and structurally out of whack that there was nowhere for the characters to go with their thrulines; each action seemed achieved from the start, except for the kid's, and frankly I think all actors under the age of 16 shd be banned from stage and screen, because they cannot act.

Ok, my answer is "Teaneck Tanzi the Venus Flytrap" cuz it starred Deborah Harry and Andy Kaufman, and never made it out of previews.

Best play would have to be Angels in America worst--possible an adaptation of Kafke's Penal Colony, but that may have just been the circumstances--or maybe Virgil Thomson/Getrude Stein's Three Saints in Four Acts... yeeesh

shopping & fucking so scuked - i wanted blood to come out of the guys butt when he was stabbed, but do you think they'd do that? nooooo

Mickey - why was Angels in America good? (I have not seen it)

Salt: Anything with Amy Sedaris in it because she is a riot (search 'Little Frieda Mysteries'). Sucked: 'Penal Colony' - Kafka's text lost under mediocre score and staging.

Last gasp at thread revival:

Why do plays suck? Because, obviously, they do. Even good ones. Has the photorealism and detail of movies forever banished plays to some embarrassing past-world of opera and Commedia? Why do you hate plays? Don't all answer at once, now.

Uhh - just saw this... and uhhh what? Oh Tracer, don't open that 'is theater dead' can of worms - ooops, too late - you did, so i am compelled to answer (sorry, this is going to be long w/no intermission): Theatre is not dead, but it is highly fragmented into varying and different high/low/bigbudget/fringe type strains, that it is probably percieved as dying, or at least comotase. Can the whole be revived? Who knows, probably not - but I think it does have an after life in these various strains. Also - soapbox, please: theatre doesn't suck anymore than an awkward, poorly practiced band that cannot deliver to the audience will suck. There's still audience enjoyment when seeing Shakespeare, surely as there's enjoyment when seeing Karen Finley... Yet, people are reluctant about the theatre. Possibly because they hate the idea of getting too close to the 4th wall (and especially 60's 'living theatre' kinda stuff where they want to break it down and mess with your presuppositions - damn hippies) - it makes us wary that this is a very mortal medium, it's going to end, the actors might be terrible, and your emotions are more subconsciously invested in this than you think (essentially finding yourself blushing through the entire production). Meaning is more flesh than you would expect when it's someone on stage... ...and yet the photorealism of the movies lulls us into a false gratification that these screen puppets (actors) can fail, but we need not feel too badly (ie, we're not blushing), this is Speilberg after all, and that's Tom Cruise (who will be in next weeks' blockbuster), and the editing is infinite (Side note: Dogme films are much more like plays than we give them credit for. This genre has more in common with Isben than we think!)... I think also the 'Theatre is Dead' argument is largely due to economics = Andrew Loydd Webber and related ilk have lifted the production values to such an insane, unneccessary level that it also set budgets, ticket prices in an effort to draw the 'burbs into seats. Fringe and the Rep's close on a weekly basis - trying to keep up with them... So more and more, companies are playing it safer and safer with standards and classics, at the risk of boring the audience. Truly challenging theatre is relegated to fringe or cabaret, relying on a degree of word of mouth, cult success. Rant over...Climbs off soapbox. Sorry, Tracer - hope this revives some of your thread...

Best play I ever saw: Hamlet! A few productions. Maybe the outstanding one was Daniel Day-Lewis at the National Theatre, London, c. August 1989. Shortly after that he collapsed (?) during a performance cos playing the part was making him think too much about his dead father. Drama!!

What if rock bands were actors? And the songs were their scenes?

From a blocking point of view they'd be scared sissies; their tech gear protectively between their bodies and everything else - microphone stand, guitar, big load of drums. A director would tell you to "step out" a little.

Jason, I think your "too much flesh" comment is right on the money. It's embarrassing, seeing real people behaving vulnerably. Rock stars get around this by overwhelming the audience w/their attitude and volume. More intimate acts at least are amplified, and still are surrounded by their quasi- mystical tech gear. Actors tho - all they've got is themselves and whatever technique they've picked up. When that's lacking, as it SO often is, it is the most flesh-crawling kind of bad art.

I wd have loved to see DDL's Hamlet, pf. I recently got a chance to see two Famous Screen Stars do Sam Shepard's True West on Broadway and it was Grate. Horrible play. Fantastic acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly switched parts every other show - the night I went PSH was the "bad" brother and his take on the typewriter scene was priceless. John Malkovich made the scene famous 30 years ago, destroying a typewriter each night with vicious whacks of his golf club - PSH poked at it suspiciously with the end of a 3-wood, as if the typewriter were an animal he wanted to make sure was dead. But: great perf, bad play: not the best play I've seen.

What if rock bands were actors? And the songs were their scenes? Good point! Those sissies would indeed be having to work much harder on execution (no more inanimate shoegazing) - although David Bowie sure gave this idea a good workout (among his other glam contemporaries). I've been in cabaret's before with rock bands, tho' - and you would be suprised, musicians are actually the more receptive to criticism and easier to work with (actors being the neurotic lot they are).

Speaking of which, while musicals completely fall into the 'flesh crawling' category, I did catch one of the many productions of 'Cabaret' (that they popularized in 94) - and was blown away by the fact that the actors also doubled in the band (they would often play numbers then run onto the stage for the dance numbers) - incredible!!

Also, Tracer - PSH in 'True West'!?! WOW! He is amazing in just about everything...

he was almost unrecognizable. he had grown a ginger beard and spoke like a drunk Chris Farley. Brilliant imagining the beard transmogrified from threatening thug hair to intellectual chin- stroking material when PSH and JCR switched parts.