All Work, No Play

The play opens today. Yipee. Surely a sign that there is some god who wants me to do penance for my past misdeeds is manifest in the fact that I have to watch this dog of a show throughout the week.

If you haven't guessed, I don't like this play. Oh, it's cute and clever at times. There are some laughs, and I'll get by rooting for our actors; but overall it's poorly written. All the characters except for the central male character are shallow. The third scene (of three) resolves things way too quickly and clumsily. It's metatheatricality just hits me as gimmicky rather than interesting, freaky, enlightening, or profound. And my biggest gripe of all is over the fact that we're even doing a play that's about the relationship anxieties and professional frustrations of a middle aged man.

I know the playwright used to live in town (and I think my boss and the director know him), but we're a women's college. We shouldn't be doing plays where women are on the periphery. There, I've said it.

I mean, I really appreciate that my boss has selected a play that has so little production requirements so that we aren't trying to erect Everest while she is out of the country. I'm very grateful for that. And we have a good crew working on it. From a backstage/tech point of view this is a solid show. This production experience could have been a whole lot worse. Still, I wish the actual piece were more worthwhile.

I just hope people come to see it. We've done all our normal publicity for a show and more and to date we've had no reserve ticket orders, none! What's up with that? I mean, I know I don't think much of the piece, but the public shouldn't have any opinion on it. There's no way they could know about it.

Oh well, we'll see who, if anyone, shows tonight.