The Unbearable Banishment: false advertising

Sunday, February 8, 2009

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.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

crying on stage is tough. old tricks, such as pulling a nosehair, aren't always possible... kudos to both of them!

that reviewer should be beaten...

February 8, 2009 at 6:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Having been present at real death scenes - of loved ones - I find that I don't much care to view acted ones.

February 9, 2009 at 10:11 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did they find the pony?

February 9, 2009 at 1:00 PM  
Blogger The Unbearable Banishment said...

daisy: Well...I don't know about beaten. I think he may have been reviewing a different show and forwarded the wrong MS Word file to the Times.

Rob: The only people who want to see stuff like that are the ones who haven't been through it personally.

pop: No pony but lots of poop.

February 9, 2009 at 5:46 PM  

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