Saturday, 31 March 2007 10:31 pm
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deckardcanineLast night was a mixed bag for ushering. The slots on the sign-in sheet filled up quickly, so my dad and I became direction givers and my mom collected parking fees. Ironically, as our friend found out, we could've gotten aisle duties by not signing in. But I thought it was good for us to have a change of pace for duties anyway. Other bad news: a fairly low turnout meant relatively little to occupy us before the show. On the other hand, it meant that finding good seats wasn't hard.
The play was Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Not having seen the movie Frankie and Johnny, all parallels were lost on me. But unlike with Anna in the Tropics, which alluded often to Anna Karenina, I didn't feel like I was missing much.
Before the show started, I noted the counterintuitive stage: there was an apartment hallway with a door, a perpendicular brick wall with a window, and no space to walk around either. Naturally, the entire thing rotated at the start of the act. I figured out pretty soon why they bothered.
The stage manager had warned the ushers, in a somewhat uneasy voice, "You know how most plays have the climax at the end? Well, this one starts off with a bang." He also said that those involved could tell from the first minute that it could hardly be further from Arena's last production, Gem of the Ocean. Add in the fact that children under five were forbidden and parents of teenagers would be warned, and perhaps you can guess what the characters were in the middle of doing when the set rotated to reveal the moonlit apartment.
So yeah, the bulk of the play is about how a middle-aged waitress and a middle-aged chef on their first date behave once they've stopped getting it on, and they happen to be named Frankie and Johnny respectively. Lotsa conversation, lotsa finding out more about each other, lotsa conflict with frequently funny results. The only other actor is not on stage: he provides the voice of a classical station DJ who puts on a pretty song that the two recognize and enjoy without identifying by name. Surely you can guess it. (The unlikely timing of them turning on or up the radio just as the DJ introduces it is IMO the only weakness in the whole script.)
At first I thought that the intense, aggressively needy, blabbering-more-than-listening Johnny had all the faults. But Frankie dwells on the negative and seems afraid of commitment or even exploration. Really, tho, both have their endearing qualities that come out however gradually, and it is those qualities that create a lull in their conflict.
My description does not do them justice. Maybe it's to be expected of two people talking alone for about 2 hours and 15 minutes, but they are probably the most developed play characters I've ever seen.
When Johnny actually puts his chef skills to work at the apartment stove, we see that the actor must have trained. Truly, he and the actress (they met in college, it turns out) must have found the whole thing very taxing. Hopefully, they thought it as worthwhile as I did.
The play was Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Not having seen the movie Frankie and Johnny, all parallels were lost on me. But unlike with Anna in the Tropics, which alluded often to Anna Karenina, I didn't feel like I was missing much.
Before the show started, I noted the counterintuitive stage: there was an apartment hallway with a door, a perpendicular brick wall with a window, and no space to walk around either. Naturally, the entire thing rotated at the start of the act. I figured out pretty soon why they bothered.
The stage manager had warned the ushers, in a somewhat uneasy voice, "You know how most plays have the climax at the end? Well, this one starts off with a bang." He also said that those involved could tell from the first minute that it could hardly be further from Arena's last production, Gem of the Ocean. Add in the fact that children under five were forbidden and parents of teenagers would be warned, and perhaps you can guess what the characters were in the middle of doing when the set rotated to reveal the moonlit apartment.
So yeah, the bulk of the play is about how a middle-aged waitress and a middle-aged chef on their first date behave once they've stopped getting it on, and they happen to be named Frankie and Johnny respectively. Lotsa conversation, lotsa finding out more about each other, lotsa conflict with frequently funny results. The only other actor is not on stage: he provides the voice of a classical station DJ who puts on a pretty song that the two recognize and enjoy without identifying by name. Surely you can guess it. (The unlikely timing of them turning on or up the radio just as the DJ introduces it is IMO the only weakness in the whole script.)
At first I thought that the intense, aggressively needy, blabbering-more-than-listening Johnny had all the faults. But Frankie dwells on the negative and seems afraid of commitment or even exploration. Really, tho, both have their endearing qualities that come out however gradually, and it is those qualities that create a lull in their conflict.
My description does not do them justice. Maybe it's to be expected of two people talking alone for about 2 hours and 15 minutes, but they are probably the most developed play characters I've ever seen.
When Johnny actually puts his chef skills to work at the apartment stove, we see that the actor must have trained. Truly, he and the actress (they met in college, it turns out) must have found the whole thing very taxing. Hopefully, they thought it as worthwhile as I did.