Lamentations on Chemistry

I have recently posted on a local play I am involved with. It is a community theater production of Proof, by David Auburn.  As the lighting guy, I have to watch the production carefully so I can pick up the lighting cues. It isn’t heavy brain work, but it does require accuracy and an ever-so-slight amount of flair. In the course of this I have the chance to watch the actors closely and note the subtilties of their performance.

Act 1 Scene 1 opens with Catherine having a discussion with her father- recently deceased- out on the back porch. Here the actor playing Catherine sets the tone for the play. She transitions from a normal tone with her mathmatician father to the glum realization that he is dead.

After intermission, Act 2 Scene 5 reverts to 5 or so years in the past. In this scene Catherine is a younger woman anxious to leave home to begin school. What is so absolutely scintillating is the manner in which this actor did so. In contrast to the morose, sarcastic, and angry young woman trying to deal with her father’s death, she now plays the character as optimistic, charming ,and enthusiastic.  Done properly, this scene lurches the audience down a completely different emotional cascade and further invests them in the outcome.

This is a sign of a good writer at work. Hook the viewers with intriguing circumstances and lurch them from one emotional track to another in unexpected ways. This promotes emotional connection with the story and the suspension of disbelief. When performed by good players, the show comes alive.

This week a local community theater group is putting on a production of Proof, by David Auburn. It is a drama about an insane mathematician and his daughter.  Since casting didn’t require an oafish, middle-aged cornfed, my role is strictly behind the scenes. My job will be to supply darkness by turning down the lights on cue.

Spent the weekend putting in a new lighting system based on what is available at Home Depot. Actually, the lighting works pretty well.

If you appreciate the famous cantata Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, you’ll love this interpretation. It is not a small download, but it is worth it.

Enjoyed a decent local production of Guys and Dolls last night. The parts of Miss Adelaide and Sister Sarah Brown (soprano) were particularly well played. The soprano could really belt it out- It was spectacular.  I shared the table with a theatre director and a quantum physicist. Interesting mix.

We saw a production of the Neil Simon play “Barefoot in the Park” at the Victorian Theatre in Denver over the weekend. Somehow I had missed this particular play in the past. The venue is a house in a residential neighborhood in north Denver.  The 75 seat theatre is in the basement.  The proscenium is surprisingly generous in size. The lighting and sound effects were more than sufficient in effect and in fact were skillfully applied. 

It is easy to slip into the notion that Neil Simon plays are easy to pull off.  The dialog and plot seem as familiar and facile as slipping on an old pair of blue jeans.  Every male lead seems to be Jack Lemmon reincarnate and the irrascible neighbor is Walter Matthau. Indeed, the rythms and tenor of Neil Simon plays are remarkably similar. 

But, from the technical execution point of view, the dialog does present some challenges for the actors.  Simon’s humor seems to require a certain kind of a plain-yet-erudite elocution to bring the lines out properly.  And this is why I keep coming back to Jack Lemmon. Lemmon’s style of acting seemed made to order for Simon.  Intensity and a capacity to switch from anger to humor in an instant are necessary skills for a Simon play.

My expectations of how a Simon part should be played is really more of a limitation of my own thinking than pretentious criticism.  It is a sort of reverse type casting and it should in no way be construed as negative commentary on Simons prodigous ability to write plays.

I would give the production a B+ overall. 

When a friend said he had landed a part in a local production of the musical “Urinetown“, I did what most people do.  I shook my head slightly as if to dislodge some interfering muck from my ears and sputtered “Wha, what?”.  I could tell he was weary of this response. To his credit, he politely explained some of the highlights of the show. 

Urinetown is a musical farce about a future with a water shortage so severe that even the flow of urine has to has to be regulated.  Originally slated to open on 9/11/01, the opening was delayed for a rewrite.  In the story, bald political corruption and dastardly corporate greed work together against a Gotham City backdrop to monopolize public toilets and exploit the need of the masses to … pee.  When urinating in the bushes is outlawed, only outlaws will urinate in the bushes.  And if caught, violators are summarily arrested and taken to Urinetown by officers Lockstock and Barrel where they suffer the consequences of their misdeed. 

Officer Lockstock serves as both constable and narrator in this self-referential satire about the collusion of business and government.   UGC (Urine Good Company) has a government sanctioned lock on the “Amenities”, public pay toilets, and enforces their use through corrupt police on the take.  But when the government raises the fee for the use of an Amenity on behalf of their corporate paymasters, ostensibly to pay for continued “corporate research”, a rebellion begins and ends finally with a Malthusian note.

I will refrain from disclosing further details about the story.  I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the show and heartily recommend it to friends and colleagues.