| I am also not as in love with this play as many are (spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 12:27 pm EDT 05/04/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 12:19 pm EDT 05/04/24 | |
| In reply to: Stereophonic: exquisitely executed but ultimately empty - workerbee 11:09 am EDT 05/04/24 | |
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| I think I liked the show a lot more than you did, but I am also not part of the extreme love for the show. I love the general "slice of life" style. I am a big fan of Annie Baker. And I really liked Stereophonic. But I don't think the characters are that well-delineated, and I don't think the writing is as strong as others do. (spoilers) We spend 3+ hours with these characters, so we should know them. And some of them we do, like Eli Gelb's character and Sarah Pidgeon's character. But I couldn't tell you much about Will Brill's character except he gets wasted and is British. Juliana Canfield's character is even more of a cipher IMO. The actors are fantastic, but the characters could be more sharply written. It also really bothered me how much David Adjmi copied the story of Fleetwood Mac, which I know pretty well. Why? What's the point? Why have the same people be British or American as in the real Fleetwood Mac? I thought having some of the characters be British for no play-driven purpose was a distraction. There is some vague talk about differences between Brits and Americans, but it goes nowhere. The romantic relationships also mirror those in Fleetwood Mac at the time of Rumours. Tom Pecinka's character basically has Lindsey Buckingham's personality (a musical genius who is difficult and a control freak), and his relationship to Sarah Pidgeon is just like Buckingham and Stevie Nicks's. And as soon as they started talking about Sarah Pidgeon's song, I knew exactly what was going to happen because that is what happened with Stevie Nicks's "Silver Springs," which got thrown off of Rumours at the last minute despite Nicks's fierce objections. I shouldn't be able to anticipate what's going to happen in a work of fiction because the playwright is copying something that he insists he is not copying. And for a play of this length and of this type, I guess I feel like it should be about something. There are parts that seem to be about the creative process, but to me, there aren't enough of those parts. Except for Sarah Pidgeon's character, the characters generally don't grow or change. I don't know what Adjmi is trying to say with this piece. Maybe he doesn't have to be saying anything, but I think the play would be better if he did. |
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