Post by pledge on Dec 22, 2023 10:53:34 GMT
Quite liked "Eureka Day" at the O Vic a while ago, so I thought I'd try this by the same author...
As he says himself, it is a very different type of play - but to my mind far less satisfactory. He also says he's been rewriting it for years, and indeed it feels like a play that has had the life workshopped out of it. It begins as a faux College lecture, and frankly retains the air of a (barely) dramatized thesis throughout. 3 actors play numerous characters, but so briefly and fleetingly that none ever really has the chance to establish themselves as three dimensional, including the nominal lead: while the way fragmented scene-lets jump about make it really hard to get involved; it reminded me of Howard Brenton's discovery that those scenes - short and sharp - that he most enjoyed writing were precisely those that the audience least enjoyed watching. It's fascinating that in "Infinite Life" Annie Baker manages to hook you in straight away with a couple of lines of laconic, almost bland, dialogue: here, after an hour of hyper-articulate characters all yakking away interminably I still didn't care about any of them: when my interest was briefly piqued we were immediately whisked away onto another character/theme. Perhaps if the author had settled on just one or two stories rather than about fifteen it would have become more involving but as it was after an hour I'd had enough and sloped away into the night...if it all pulled together and came good in Pt 2 I guess that was my loss, but honestly if you don't care after an hour the chance is gone...
As he says himself, it is a very different type of play - but to my mind far less satisfactory. He also says he's been rewriting it for years, and indeed it feels like a play that has had the life workshopped out of it. It begins as a faux College lecture, and frankly retains the air of a (barely) dramatized thesis throughout. 3 actors play numerous characters, but so briefly and fleetingly that none ever really has the chance to establish themselves as three dimensional, including the nominal lead: while the way fragmented scene-lets jump about make it really hard to get involved; it reminded me of Howard Brenton's discovery that those scenes - short and sharp - that he most enjoyed writing were precisely those that the audience least enjoyed watching. It's fascinating that in "Infinite Life" Annie Baker manages to hook you in straight away with a couple of lines of laconic, almost bland, dialogue: here, after an hour of hyper-articulate characters all yakking away interminably I still didn't care about any of them: when my interest was briefly piqued we were immediately whisked away onto another character/theme. Perhaps if the author had settled on just one or two stories rather than about fifteen it would have become more involving but as it was after an hour I'd had enough and sloped away into the night...if it all pulled together and came good in Pt 2 I guess that was my loss, but honestly if you don't care after an hour the chance is gone...
