Pittsburgh Current: You don’t really run across French playwright Jean Giraudoux anymore. He was less prolific and his output less glamorous than his sorta/kinda contemporary Jean Anouilh. But in the early part of the 20th century, especially the period between World Wars I & II, Giraudoux was the name of the playwriting game in France.
7 comments:
I think that reviewing the school’s show is a good thing, and that it can be constructive for sure. However, in this case, I feel as though this review of Tiger at the Gates is rather lackluster and overall not helpful to anyone performing or working on the show (including myself - representing Video/Media for the show). During the article, the author seems to just write about the play’s script itself rather than the students’ performance of it. At the very end, the author slips in a compliment to the cast and crews, explaining that it’s a beautiful collaboration, but it simply doesn’t help anyone performing to hear said review. During a review, the author should write about things they like, things they disliked, recommendations, etc., but in the case of a simple script review, the actors and crew can do nothing to improve based on the feedback. If everyone only reviewed the scripts of shows, the business of theatrical critique and overall critique would just become a glorified book club. Ultimately, I appreciate the positive review, but at the same time I feel like it was all summary, minimal praise, and little constructive criticism, which, if performers are trying to get better, just proves minimally useful.
This review was so great to read! I saw the show on Saturday, and a lot of my thoughts about the show are mirrored by the author of this article's! I personally wish that the reviewer mentioned some improvements that could be made to the show, or at least something constructive (not that there's many negative things to say), but I do think that so much positivity can feel less genuine when there's nothing negative mentioned. For example, the script was dense. Like, really dense. And though that's through no fault of CMU's production (and if anything, I think the director, actors, and designers did a great job making such a boring script more engaging), I feel like the reviewer could've at least acknowledged that or something else.
Another thing to note is that it feels more like a summary of the show with some review sprinkled in when it should be the other way around. I appreciate the summary (and frankly, I kind of needed it despite already having seen the show), but perhaps he could've gone into more specifics regarding his review of CMU's production to balance it out. It just feels a little rushed, and having reviewed many shows back in my high school newspaper days, I know that my editors would have sent this straight back to me and told me to add more.
It is a really strange experience to read about a production that you have worked on in crew for weeks, especially when (as usual) the different technical and design elements of the show get approximately one sentence each. Something that surprised me with this "review" was that it was more focused on the play as a written work than the production being reflected on. The fact that the only times that the author comments on the CMU production are in the last 2 paragraphs of a 9 paragraph review makes it extremely ineffective in performing what it feels the article should be doing. Reading it over again, I notice that this article seems more like a love letter to Jean Giraudoux than a commentary on Carnegie Mellon's performance, which is fine but makes me a little confused as to why the article's title focuses on CMU. Honestly, it feels like this author wanted to write an article for the sake of writing an article and didn't have anything interesting to say about the show. Even the descriptions of performers and design elements are so general it makes me wonder if he even watched it?
As someone who has sat backstage during every tech rehearsal and performance of CMU’s “Tiger at the Gates” to date, I must ask if the author actually watched the show or just read through the programme. As per usual, tech is relegated to a choppy sentence or two at the end of the article and not really reviewed. (Dear Ted Hoover, spewing abstract superlatives about the design of a show is not commentary, it is a glorified lorem ipsum.) Eighty per cent (I did the math) of the article is merely plot summary of “Tiger at the Gates” and background information on the playwright, Jean Giradoux. While this article would surely suffice as a Wiki summary article (if you took out the measly 200 words pertaining to our production - most of which were just credits), I honestly do not think that it should even be considered a theatrical review for its lack of effectiveness.
I read Emily's comment above and could not agree with everything she said more wholeheartedly. I saw Tiger last night when I was documenting it for media crew, and I enjoyed it a lot, although I'm kinda dumb and the plot was really hard for me to follow. After reading what was essentially a summary with a "witty title", and not a review, I understand the plot of Tiger at the Gates a lot better! That's about all that this author accomplished, other than giving a list of names and meaningless adjectives in the last 1/4 of the article. It's disappointing to me that tech always gets a tiny tiny call out at the end, but particularly in this article it doesn't bother me as much because the actors and actresses were also only given 1/8 of a sentence. I will say that I think Ben Cherington and Patrick Davis were absolutely captivating in their roles, and I wish the author of this review spoke more about their incredibly dynamic performances.
It was really interesting to read this review. I just saw Tiger at the Gates last night, so all of it is still very fresh in my mind. Similarly to what Emily commented above, I wonder if the author of this review really paid attention to what was happening on the stage. The bulk of the article was essentially a plot summary of the play that anyone could have found with a simple google search. In fact, a lot of it sounded almost too similar to what was already written in the program. Yes, this article would be useful if someone were looking for a broad overview of what this play was about, but in relation to the actual performance on stage, Ted Hoover, barely mentions it. Readers only get a glimpse of what Hoover really thought about the performance. At the very end f the article he writes about how well the actors portray their characters and about how the technical designers portrayed the atmosphere of the play. An article summarizing a play with two short paragraphs about the actual performance is not a review that would be useful to anyone.
Basically, Hoover, the author, reposted the program as an article. Tiger has very little room for improvement, according to Hoover, which is rarely ever the case for live theatre. I appreciated Tiger at the Gates for its script and story, the tech elements individually, and surely the vigor of the actors, but not so emptily as this. I would have liked more constructive criticism or mention of what stood out to the author. The tech was not perfect, with this most can agree, and if Hoover thinks it is, I must question his taste. The script was distinctly sexist, despite CMU's "attempt" at making it empowering, but Hoover made no mention of it whatsoever. This wasn't so much of a review, as the title may suggest, as a brief history of Giradoux, a summary of Tiger at the Gates with a few three- or four-syllable descriptors thrown in, and hollow praise (credits) of the cast and crew at the end.
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