Theater review: "A Perfect Wedding," at Brown University's Leeds Theater

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Partner and I saw the latest Brown theatrical production, “A Perfect Wedding,” on Saturday night.

 

 

These college kids are talented!  They can act, they’re funny, they can sing and dance and play instruments.  Most of them (by the laws of averages) will almost certainly not be going into entertainment-related careers. (This is sort of a shame, in a way, because most of them are just as talented (if not more so) than most of the people in movies and TV.)

 

 

Then there’s the youth effect.  Partner put it best: “I like going to these shows,” he said, “because they’re all so energetic, and it makes me feel young too.”  Ditto for me. 

 

 

So: this show.  Some negatives first (which feels harsh, like bopping a puppy on the nose for making a mess on the carpet): the play was far too wordy.  Too many endless repetitive speeches.  A little too much overacting here and there.  Lots of peculiar stage accents, which did not make for a terribly comprehensible evening. 

 

 

And long, dear Jesus, the show was long.  The first act was ninety minutes, with only a few good laughs in the whole thing.  Partner and I commiserated with one another during intermission; we were trying to make the best of it, but we were both moodily considering how long the second act was going to be, and whether we’d be home by midnight.

 

 

But the second act was the payoff.  It began with some terribly long/wordy scenes too, but the atmosphere quickly changed: there was a bizarrely concocted funeral scene, with cymbals and bagpipes and conch shell, and a procession with a coffin. 

 

 

And, finally, the play took flight. 

 

 

The whole thing ends with three dynamite musical numbers, each as different from one another as night from day, and all of them done with that raw college-student energy and talent that makes the whole enterprise worthwhile.  (I won’t tell you what the musical numbers are. If you see it – and I hope you do – it would spoil it for you, I think.)  All I will say is that everyone is romping around, dancing, leaping, playing instruments and singing.  The choreography is good, and the staging works beautifully.  

 

 

We were promised audience participation, and we got it.  We even got something to eat and drink (which was perfect for me, as I was starving).  During the wedding preparations in Act Two, one of the characters came over and politely asked Partner to help him change clothes, and they worked together like professionals, and carried on light conversation the whole time.  (And a cute little bugger the actor was too.)  Whenever I hear “audience participation,” I think of getting drenched with seltzer water, or dragged on stage to be part of a Theater of Cruelty bondage/torture session.  In this production, the “audience participation” was light and funny and harmless.  “What side of the family are you on?” the character asked Partner.  “Groom’s side,” Partner said smoothly, without missing a beat.

 

 

We got home at eleven p.m., giggling, having had a wonderful evening at the theater.

 

 

I need not tell you that the play is partly about sexual politics, and gay marriage, and straight marriage, and the meaning of marriage in the first place.  These issues are beside the point.  It’s about love, and commitment, and the rituals we use to commemorate both of those things. 

 

 

The play could easily be thirty minutes shorter. And maybe less screaming.

 

 

But please keep the musical numbers just as they are.

 

 

It’s running through next weekend: the last performance is Sunday April 22.

 

 

Those of you in southeastern New England should come see it.

 

 

It will bore you a bit at first, but it will leave you laughing and singing.

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Twenty-four years at the same job!

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I began working at Brown University in August of 1987, a little more than twenty-four years ago.

 

 

If I make to my twenty-fifth anniversary next year – and then to January first of 2013! - I will receive a gift from the University: a chair, or a mirror, or a gift certificate. My choice! Also some extra vacation time, so that I can go shopping for a coffin.

 

 

Some years ago I hired an office assistant who was (at the time) just shy of her twentieth birthday. She was born in 1989, two years after I started at Brown.

 

 

And of course it continues. One of my recent student assistants, Noah, was born in 1991, only a little more than twenty years ago. (I think of this as the “Goodbye, Mister Chips” paradox: those of us who work in education keep getting older and older, whereas the students never age at all. The seniors graduate, and are replaced by freshmen, and so on, and so on. You keep hoping for the students to grow up and mature – and they never quite do, because as soon as they mature a little bit, they're gone, and they're replaced by new – and younger – and less mature – students.)

 

 

Ay caramba!

 

 

Noah finished his stint in the office in mid-August. He enjoyed his time with us, I think; it was his first summer job away from home, and he spent most of his weekends with his friends doing all kinds of young athletic acrobatic things. We all enjoyed him too, because he was young, and we liked listening to his stories: it was a chance for all of us to relive what it felt like to be young, and have the entire future be open before you.

 

 

“This isn't bad,” Noah said one day. “Working, I mean.”

 

 

“Ah,” I said. “Because, for you, it has an end date. For me, not so much. The end date is probably when I die in my office chair.”

 

 

Noah laughed, but a little uneasily. He could hear the slight bitterness in my voice.

 

 

But what am I complaining about? I'm happy. I have a good job, in which I feel productive. I'm advancing the interests of a prominent university. I make enough money to get by.

 

 

But Noah is looking out into a future of infinite possibility.

 

 

And I am looking out into a future of – what? More of the same. Until I die of a stroke in my chair. Until -

 

 

Oh, let's stifle that.

 

 

Here's to another twenty-five years of the same!

 

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The Brown / Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theater, 2011

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Last weekend Partner and I attended the third and final production of this year's Brown / Trinity Playwrights' Rep. Every summer for the past six years, this mini-festival has produced three brand new plays and presented them serially and – as a grand finale on the last day – as a three-play marathon. (And God bless Lowry Marshall for bringing this to fruition.)

 

 

We have seen some real winners. We were in one of the first audiences to see “Boom,” which was last year the most-produced play in America. Some years ago we saw a screamingly funny play called “Chicken Grease Is Nasty Business!,” about love and marriage and friends and a Southern chicken restaurant, and I laughed harder than at pretty much anything else I've ever seen in the theater. We have seen plays about police dogs, and video games, and a musical based on Turgenev's “Fathers and Sons.” Another favorite was a musical called “Torah! Torah! Torah!,” about a bar mitzvah gone wrong, with some really good songs, and featuring Mr. Peanut.

 

 

A few duds, too. One of the worst was last year: I won't name it, it should rest in peace. I will only say that, unless you're Chazz Palmintieri or Patrick Stewart or Hal Holbrook or Lily Tomlin, you shouldn't attempt a one-person show. Enough said.

 

 

This year:

 

 

“She's Not There.” The description was unpromising: a couple whose lives are “upended by a new person in their lives.” Sound like a lot of movies you've seen? It started out in familiar territory: a couple in their 30s, comfortable but not ecstatically happy; the man meets a younger woman who lives in their apartment building, and -

 

 

But it built from there. The dialogue was fresh and witty. The three characters try making friends, ignoring one another, eviscerating one another. At the end of the day, things aren't quite the way you thought they would be.

 

 

But it was too long. Also, there was a gimmick (whether specified by the playwright I don't know), in which the scene-changes were done by “hipster movers,” who made minimal changes to the set and did little hipster dance moves. Funny the first couple of times; tedious for the rest of the evening.

 

 

 

“The Killing of Michael X: A New Film By Celia Weston.” This was loads of fun: it integrated a lot of film into the stage action. It was dreamlike and surreal at times, and almost everyone played at least two parts, but (and this is always a good sign) we never felt lost. We kept learning more and more about the characters, and it got funner and funner as we got higher and higher in the stratosphere. I have never laughed so hard while watching someone about to have her leg amputated with a buzzsaw.

 

 

On the downside: it was too hip. Too much in-joke chatter about movies, especially Godard's “Breathless” - and if you haven't seen “Breathless,” you really have no idea what they're talking about. But this is a minor cavil. The play was generally excellent.

 

 

Finally: “My New Best Friend.” Technically, it was the best play of the three. Absolutely brilliant staging: when characters are talking on the phone to one another, they stand, they face one another across the stage, they pace and circle one another. The minimal set décor is torn apart and assembled several times. The dialogue is very witty and sharp.

 

 

But – and here's the thing – the play is, among other things, about the dichotomy between New York and California. The New York-based characters are all smart and practical and a little rueful; the California-based characters are self-absorbed, silly, vain. “It reminded me of Woody Allen,” Partner said later, and he was absolutely right.

 

 

But you know what? We saw it first.

 

 

You might see it in local theater, or on Broadway, or maybe as a movie.

 

 

But we saw it first!

 

 

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