false advertising

I talked CB into seeing Looking for the Pony at the Vital Theatre Company with me.

I wanted to see it because a brilliant actress named J. Smith-Cameron was in it and the reviewer from The New York Times said:

When you’re in the audience at a play about breast cancer, you don’t expect to laugh a lot. Or to enjoy the sweet taste of victory. But…spontaneous applause tends to break out.

Do you know what was funny about this play? There was NOTHING funny about this play! Lord, it was heavy, heavy drama. A woman slowly dies of breast cancer. It was mawkish and overwrought, but I’ll tell you what was good; the two lead actresses were committed to their roles.

During the Hallmark Hall of Fame death scene, the two leads were in tears and that’s a very hard thing to do. In movies, you can always use drops or multiple takes but there’s no hiding the truth in the theater. I've seen a ton of plays whereby a character is supposedly so overcome with emotion that they break down and cry. It rarely works. You can tell fake sobbing from the balcony. These two, however, were deep into the moment and it was admirable.

I got a text from CB later that night:

That play was really just the staged version of Beaches. I knew I recognized it!

You got that right.