Benc7
Active Member
Lypsynch
Forgive me if I differ with you, Urban Shocker; I thought Lypsynch was, if not the biggest mess I've seen on stage, certainly the longest. If there was a star that stood out it was the set: complex, slick, sophisticated, and far too good for the play that it accommodated. I was expecting something different, something new, something challenging and what I got was a narrative worthy of a movie-of-the-week, housed in some very slick stage gimmickry with some really bad acting to go with it. There were moments that resonated: that first scene on the plane that you mention, set me up with the false hope of great things to come. The "rape" scene near the end and the very good scene with Michelle in the book store, shown from the outside in and then repeated again from the inside out, was clever. Henryk Górecki's 3rd is one of my favourite pieces of music; Rebecca Blankenship (no Dawn Upshaw) should have just sung and not bothered trying to act; I saw no evidence that she can. But a few moments, scenes, and musical interludes over so many hours do not a good play make.
Time is one way to enforce discipline in an artist, funding another and the actual stage itself, a third. Robert Lepage did respect the stage, but with all the money he was given and all the time (nine freakin hours!) he took, he also got enough rope to hang himself. My friend and I tossed a coin at the dinner break to see who would get to go home and who would have to stay until the bitter end to report back. I lost.
Forgive me if I differ with you, Urban Shocker; I thought Lypsynch was, if not the biggest mess I've seen on stage, certainly the longest. If there was a star that stood out it was the set: complex, slick, sophisticated, and far too good for the play that it accommodated. I was expecting something different, something new, something challenging and what I got was a narrative worthy of a movie-of-the-week, housed in some very slick stage gimmickry with some really bad acting to go with it. There were moments that resonated: that first scene on the plane that you mention, set me up with the false hope of great things to come. The "rape" scene near the end and the very good scene with Michelle in the book store, shown from the outside in and then repeated again from the inside out, was clever. Henryk Górecki's 3rd is one of my favourite pieces of music; Rebecca Blankenship (no Dawn Upshaw) should have just sung and not bothered trying to act; I saw no evidence that she can. But a few moments, scenes, and musical interludes over so many hours do not a good play make.
Time is one way to enforce discipline in an artist, funding another and the actual stage itself, a third. Robert Lepage did respect the stage, but with all the money he was given and all the time (nine freakin hours!) he took, he also got enough rope to hang himself. My friend and I tossed a coin at the dinner break to see who would get to go home and who would have to stay until the bitter end to report back. I lost.
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