Tuesday, November 29, 2016
The Rover at CMU Drama
Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: Oh, how Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama loves to tease, showing us an austere wooden set — that Samuel Beckett would appreciate — at the opening of its production of The Rover. (If this company ever put on Waiting for Godot, you know the bare tree would blossom neon leaves, and the two vagabonds would be dressed in florescent sharkskin suits). Alas, the naked stage didn’t last long, as we were soon engulfed in CMU’s de rigueur phantasmagoria of sets, costumes and lights.
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5 comments:
Shout out to this review for giving the dramaturg of this production of The Rover a shoutout. Reading the many great reviews of the show is really exciting. I'm glad we are receiving so much great press, and am excited to see the show tomorrow!
Working on the production from a crew perspective, I was really confused. I understood that they were taking an exaggerated approach to their respective designs but I couldn't seem to put all of the ideas together. But the photos look great so I'm looking forward to seeing it live. I have also heard great things about the voice work in the piece and am eager to see the actors work with a heightened text that isn't Shakespeare. It should present a nice change from the usual. I wish I had had the opportunity to sit in on the production and concept meetings with this group of designers whom I highly look up to.
I just want to say that the opening line of this review is simultaneously savage and something that I would love to see. The two men in waiting for Godot in sharkskin suits? I'll declare costumes if it means getting to participate in that nonsense. The review only barely touches on each aspect of the sweeping, 3-hour production, for reasons I don't understand, as the play has a lot to unpack, but I'm glad it seems like the reviewer enjoyed the show and the way we adapted Behn's work hundreds of years down the line. In the same fashion Jake did, I worked a lot on the technical aspects of the show, and it took me a while for the elements to congeal into a whole in a satisfying fashion, but sitting in tech and watching the director explain some of the more nuanced moments and the reasoning behind the choices gave me some good perspective on where the creative team approached the text from and why they made the decisions they made. As such, I believe it was a successful production that will certainly polarize audiences. If they make it through all 3 hours, that is.
I wish that the reviews of the School of Drama mainstage shows were more specific in their praises and criticisms. Whenever I read them they always seem to be full of sweeping statements and only touch on each department for about one sentence. It's hard to really know how people responded to your work when all you get is one adjective. This is also the second mainstage review in a row that has mentioned every design department except for sound, which is something that I think should be brought to the attention of this newspaper. All of that aside, I thought that the Rover came together to make a very interesting and cohesive statement. Although it is a very long play the cast did a great job at keeping the action dynamic and the story moving. One of my favorite moments was the very end of the show when all of the female characters faced the audience while the men looked upstage. The production was able to flip the typical power dynamic between genders on it's head, and that's sometimes hard to do in such classical work.
I honestly could not tell whether or not the critic reviewing the Rover enjoyed the show or not. To be fair - I'm not particularly sure whether or not I enjoyed the show. I did not personally gleen the "interesting and cohesive statement" that Megan discusses in her comment above. I recognized that the play portrayed a different side of womanhood than what is typically portrayed in plays of this time. I appreciated that the women were well-written with full and unique personalities (or as full and unique as they could get on stage in the 17th century) and openly had a sexuality. However, I do not believe that this "message" is the doing of Carnegie Mellon. These characters and power dynamic is written into the play. Delivering the "message" comes with performing this piece. Other than my appreciation for the playwright, I found the play mildly entertaining. The barrage of sex jokes was, unfortunately, relentless and despite the actors' best attempts to maintain an enthusiastic delivery, it became old. After intermission I found myself uncomfortable with the play's inability to confront or condemn the sexual assault portrayed on stage and it grew into a deep hatred of "The rover", for his actions, and Helena, for ignoring his "play-boyish (predatory) nature" and wanting him anyway. The set, costumes, lights, and sound all had the ability to portray the wrongness of his actions and the twisted reality of the end of the first act and the second. Instead, they creates a beautiful neon world which allowed this behavior to occur.
This is a short review trying to cover every aspect of the show from the cast to the design team. It is a real delight to see that the reviewer gives credit to the dramaturg who did deep research to support the show. A little bit disappointment that sound was not given a shout-out here because this is one of the few shows where I enjoyed the sound so much.
As the APM, having witness (and taken notes of and written reports on) all the struggles and hardship the design and production team had gone through, I’m really glad to have seen this come together as a cohesive and unconventional piece that is definitely a feast to the eyes and ears.
I have to admit that this is a weird show to work on, which is a shared feeling among quite a few people on the production. The play’s success in the 17th century was ground-breaking and the playwright is regarded as one of the proto-feminist that exert great impact on the society. However, the glaring sexist content is not comfortable at all to anyone, and the director and the whole team had been trying to make it as much women-centered as possible.
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