The Reviews and Other Randomness

The reviews of Friday's show are in.

InsideOnline thought the show was great:

In Ragnarok, the gods do play games with the universe. Up to and including charades. The interactive theater piece, based on Norse mythology, is beautifully staged in Holy Covenant United Methodist church, a chapel with a vaulted wood ceiling and striking shadows. There are no pews. Instead, you sit, like a toddler, at a massive table, and the action takes place around, in front of, and including you. If you want to be absolutely certain that you aren't just sitting at home watching television, it's perfect. The play takes the form of an unusually demanding party. Odin, the big white beard of the Norse pantheon, is your aloof host, directing a group of loyal and full-throated players in musical versions of the myths. Loki, the desperate and maniacal Norse trickster god, is a gate crasher, trying to disrupt the performances, win over the audience, and bring about the end of the world. Both the players and the trickster play literal games with their guests, giving audience members a chance to change the course of the show. Unfortunately, the same lively church acoustics that give the cast's folk-rock harmonies their splendor make the dialogue muddy, and hard to understand. Combine this with in-the-round seating, Loki's interruptions, and the general party atmosphere, and you get a play that teeters on the edge of sheer chaos. But who wouldn't endure a little chaos for the sake of an experience this sensually lush, this genuinely strange?

The Reader's reviewer, on the other hand, had this to say about it:
Tantalus Theatre Group aims to bring the competitive, vain, lusty, conniving gods and goddesses of Norse mythology to life in this ensemble-written show. But despite 100 minutes of storytelling, song, dance, and improvised games, the effort fails. Directors Glen Cullen and Devin Brain and their cast are occasionally inventive at telling tales most American audiences won't know well, but the narratives are often so unfocused we can't follow them. The trickster Loki (annoyingly played by crude class clown Kevin Antonio Viol) vies with a dull Odin (Cory Conrad) for support in a series of interactive scenes with the audience that might be better suited to children's theater; we never really care who wins. Ragnarok roughly translates as "twilight of the gods," but this play's world ends with a fizzle and we're left wondering, is that it?

Never mind the fact that it's a bad review or that the reviewer seemingly didn't get the play (which admittedly, it was our job to make her get); what's that bit about unfocused narratives and games in which we never care who wins being better suited to children's theatre? What? In children's theatre the stakes must be absolutely as high as in adult theatre--even higher--and narrative must be clear.

I'm probably just nitpicking to make myself feel better about the bad review. Which I really needn't do. Because I just got this review from an audience member who saw the show last night:

as for last night, i'm gradually getting away from my "wow" phase so i can actually analyze it now. if you don't mind, i would like to take one of your words....brilliant. the play was actually brilliant. i had my doubts, and lord knows i could have used more preparation to know it was THAT interactive, but it was brilliant. i'm definitely going to try to coax some of my friends into going now.

So there you go. Without agenda. Still, with reviews this polarized, can you really afford to rest on your laurels and miss this show? No, I didn't think so.

Last weekend I caught a creeping awful disease from someone at a party (I even know who it is...she apologized for it last night), so I'm off today, recuperating my voice and resting my body. Only I can't do that at home, because my landlords have decided today was the day to fix up the apartments next to, above, and below mine. And my power decided to go out. So recuperating and resting at the Grind is what I'm doing. Some hot tea and honey and yeah.

a few links...
I found SerializerDotNet indirectly through a link on Neil Gaiman's site that further linked to The Salon. Not only is The Salon very cool (if for nothing else than for a plotline involving Gertrude Stein as a super sleuth), but a few of the other comics on it have caught my eye, too. Achewood Sunday Edition is very funny in a dry, crass sort of way. There are others, too. It's a great deal to explore, and at $2.95 a month, is well worth it.

Query Letters I Love is a blog from a Hollywood reader that is exactly what the title promises: a series of astonishingly bad query letters for scripts.

And that's about it for today. A cup of lemon tea with honey beckons me closer.