Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Fine Mismating of a Him and Her
NYTimes.com: "“A heap of ordure,” wrote one journalist in Strindberg’s native Sweden of “Miss Julie,” which was understandably slow to find theatrical producers. Another reviewer described it as “a filthy bundle of rags which one hardly wishes to touch even with tongs.” Exciting, huh? When critics spewed like that, you knew that something serious was going on."
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7 comments:
I'm excited to see so many plays being performed on Broadway in the upcoming months that have strong female characters. Hopefully these productions will explore these women in a justified light. I worry that Ophelia and Blanche may be portrayed in a weak, crazy light, rather than focusing on how these strong women fell into madness. Or that in Oleanna, the female student will be seen as a liar and overreacting rather than a confused young college student, trying to make sense of herself and how she relates to the men around her.
I am a fan of these plays. I think too often Americans get hung up thinking every story has to end in a wedding. It is unrealistic and does not reflect well on our society. Shows like this, that show the other extreme of a happy ending, help to balance out the world.
I really want to see many of the productions mentioned in this article, especially Hamlet! As I read the beginning of the article, I was reminded of a friend of mine who hates seeing any movie or play that doesn't end happily with the main characters falling in love and everything being fine at the end, whereas I'm quite the opposite. I'd rather there be conflict and unresolved problems. Happy endings are too easy and boring.
The prevalence of a darker strain of theater seems to show somewhat of a nod to the Greek approach to tragedy. As MONJARK said in their comment, the American theater often prefers to end with a wedding and ignore more bitter realities. What this trend fails to recognize is the idea of catharsis, the emotional release which an audience can find through tragedy. The playwrights who wrote tragedies such as Oedipus knew that an audience doesn't have to leave the theater on a light note to take something useful away. The theater is about more than entertainment, it's about provoking thought and emotional response as well. I'm happy to see this trend in theater because it shows an attention to this fact.
I think it would be interesting to see these hollywood actors preform live theatre. This would be to see if they could actually do more than one venue. It is hard to think of these people as the characters they are playing on stage because of the characters they played in certain movies. Although,
Cate Blanchett is amazing. Everything that I have ever seen her in has been great. I am fully confident that she can handle Blanche. I agree with Megan that characters such as Blanche and Ophelia are hard to capture and hopefully these actors will vindicate women during the time periods. On another note, I did think Bill Pullman and Julia Styles the type to be in a play or even costars in a play.
I am also looking forward to seeing an array of fine strong willed female characters on stage. I especially look forward to the fact that these stories do not need to always end in smiles and sunsets, because this way is more interesting and more real. I think that its refreshing when theater veers from always the fantastical and into reality.
As someone who is truly annoyed with plays that have fairy tale endings, even when it's a fairy tale ending that ends in the lover's death, it's kind of nice to see a play about people who are, well, dysfunctional and not quite so madly in love with each other. This is going to sound horribly morbid, but it's about time a play focused around the uglier side of love and relationships as a whole.
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