The inevitable ‘balancing out’ of theatrical experience OR If you can’t stand the heat, why are you wearing that chef’s hat?
photo credit: Marjorie Phillips Elliott
Louis Catliff, a superb videographer/director/writer filmed our May 15th performance of Retrospective. Take a few secs to watch this clip of something else Louis did for us — the solicitation and recording of comments about the performance from audience members, which everybody now calls Vox Pop, which we then use in promotional materials, etc. Because don’t forget, self promotion is not a bad thing.
It’s pretty good, isn’t it? Very satisfying. And the kind reactions continued through the first night of our second week. Around the same time that vox pop was being filmed, however, our excellent press representative Matthew Parker sent us the link to the first of our reviews; he’s snagged us five already, which is stupendous for a little USA transplant like RETROSPECTIVE. That review was also filled with some positive things, such as calling us “thoroughly lovable” and praising our very deserving wonderful actors, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner and Benjamin Parsons. But in the subtitle of the review itself our script caught an adjective that you can’t spin: clunky. (OED says the word is often associated with ungainly shoes; footwear plays no prominent part in RETROSPECTIVE.)
Why am I bothering to tell you about this undesired adjective? Because the purpose of this series, and indeed of the entire enterprise of TESTING A PERSONAL HISTORY, is not just to celebrate triumphs or offer interesting memories. The purpose is to continue a conversation that might lead to continuing education for all of us via reading about these experiences. The review provided an apt moment for such learning.
How do we survive the downsides of our imposed trials or, in the case of writing and co-producing a play like RETROSPECTIVE, self-initiated trials, weather the “testing or putting to the proof the fitness, truth, strength, or other quality of anything” when the results is not what was planned? Some other (and, I hope, much younger) enterprising Playwright/Producer might comfort and counsel themselves with the realization that things balance out with the right attitude, with realizing that mostly stuff balances out.
Our balancing has on one side the wonderful reaction of audiences throughout the first 4 performances along with the thrill of watching our actors and team dazzle. And the other side holds this review, which as I noted has some nice things to say, such as calling our production “thoroughly lovable.” I don’t think I’ve been called thoroughly lovable since my mother’s been gone. In fact, now that I think of it, did my mother or anyone else ever call me thoroughly lovable?
I’m using that phrase ‘balances out’ because as a devoted fan of Martin Short. I listened to his recent interview in which he addressed the aftermath of the tragedy of his daughter’s recent suicide. That event is the worst that can happen to a parent. It puts everything that’s happening to me in perspective. Martin said that he can go back to 2010 when he lost his wife to cancer. Devastating again. And yet he had to go on. So, to do that he began think of life as a sort of balancing out; there are good things and very bad things. The ledger might not always come even, but we need to remember our blessings instead of just our woes, terrible in Martin’s case as they are.
The harsh circumstances of Martin Short’s calamity remind us of what real setbacks are in life. But even on our diminished scale, we need to keep in mind how unlikely we are to have all of the good things in any venture. So, a review suggesting that the script for RETROSPECTIVE (tix available at this link) is overstuffed in perspective is not that big a deal. And since we invited (begged for) critics to attend a performance, then we needed to be prepared that some of what emerges might not be desired. That’s show business.
Monday night, with our play dark, we went to see the play Grace Pervades by David Hare and its powerful performances by Ralph Fiennes & Miranda Raison. Fiennes is playing the famous 19th century actor manager Sir Henry Irving who is credited with turning theater into a very potent force in both the UK and America. In one scene, Irving is reading a less than positive review and bemoans the fact that such publicity could interfere with his attempt to keep his theatre, The Lyceum alive. But he does not let the criticism stop or even daunt him; he keeps on keeping on. Irving pretty much died on stage doing what he loved, what be believed was critical for the world: creating art from the tragedies. Fiennes as Irving embodies that indomitable will to create what he believes needs to exist. One line in the play serves to defend his partiality to doing tragedy over and over: “Irving: Did you know that in Shakespeare there are seventeen ‘no’s to every one ‘yes’?… All his power is in the negative.“
We are not in Irving’s position; we don’t presume to put ourselves in parallel to such a genius and pioneer. We’re not even going to compare ourselves to Gary Oldman who is in a sold out production of Krapp’s Last Tape., but had to deal one morning with these reviews as selected by Fergus Morgan in his blog The Crush Bar:
“Others, though, are left underwhelmed, with WhatsOnStage’s Sarah Crompton finding him neither “as moving or as desperate” as previous Krapps and The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish also opining that he fails to “match the elegiac greatness” of Harold Pinter’s performance in 2006.”
Are they kidding? This is GARY OLDMAN. And why is someone comparing him to Harold Pinter’s performance? This isn’t Mixed Martial Arts for Actors. Given Gary’s career, I’m betting that he is able to see how things balance out: sold-out houses applauding versus someone flushing out ‘previous Krapps’? (Yes, I did do that there.)
This part of our London Test requires that balancing. There’s no time to curl up in a fetal position because someone called writing that matters a great deal to you clunky. I stick to what I have learned so far in theatre. And one of the most important lessons was the advice of David Mamet that the audience teaches the playwright. Note what stirs or stymies them. Could there be changes to the script going forward? The answer to that is always. But it would be foolish to rob myself, (And potentially through dark moods and looks, the rest of the team,) of the joy and satisfaction that we have felt because of the enthusiastic genuine reactions from the audience. Stick with what you know, but be open to new ideas. Paul Saffo’s timeless advice to “have strong opinions, weakly held.” Turn to advice for friends for how to go forward. Focus on what’s next. That’s how you pass this test.
