People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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People are Talking: UMS Presents Gil Shaham Bach Six Solos with original films by David Michalek:
The technicity of the playing was breathtaking. But I found the interpretation quite cold and lacking in emotion. The video detracted rather than enhanced. An interesting evening, but not a transporting one.
People Are Talking: UMS presents Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company: Straight White Men:
Disappointing. A bit hard to tell whether the problem resided in the script or the acting, or an unfortunate combination of both. The ideas were clear enough: What does straight white male privilege mean in the day of identity politics? What are the different ways of enacting or resisting that privilege? The rough housing and the mock interview did a reasonable job of exploring such questions. As did the set itself, including the costumes and the people who cleaned the set between acts — showing this was excellent, as it made clear the work that SWM generate for invisible helpers (wives, sisters, servants).
But the whole thing felt extremely wooden. The characters were caricatures – little more than the ideas or pathways they were meant to embody. Straight white men are people too (and no, I’m not any of those categories), and the play would have done better to portray them as living breathing individuals. On this front, it was especially difficult to tell whether the problem was the script or the actors – one could imagine strong actors doing a better, deeper job with an otherwise fairly wooden script. I actually dozed off toward the end (and no, that’s not typical for me — the acting was just incredibly uncompelling.)
Huge disappointment after the exuberance and originality of Untitled Feminist Show.
People Are Talking: UMS presents Antigone by Sophokles:
The updated script was lively. I disagree that Creon’s character was trivialized — on the contrary, he was made fully human in his complexity. This was NOT a simple good vs bad rendition,not the least because Creon was brilliantly played… and, unfortunately, because Antigone was not. Binoche does not have the powers required of a stage actress. She played Antigone in an old, melodramatic style that did not match the other performances or the script.
On the up side, the updated script offered up humor, wonderfully delivered via The Guard. On the down side, Binoche clearly couldn’t project (it was downright painful when she tried), leading the whole performance to be miked. This seriously detracted from the strength of the production itself, which overall was visually stunning but sonically stilted.
People Are Talking: UMS presents Bullet Catch at Arthur Miller Theatre:
Those who were disappointed because they’d expected a mere magic show missed the point. This was a play about magic… and about how magic illuminates human connections, and how those personal connections frame and shape the meaning of “free will.” It was brilliant.