Plays Seen: Cinderella & Else
Apr. 20th, 2003 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aCinderella
Went up to a theatre on Point Richmond with friends last night and saw "The Cinderella Waltz". It was an amateur production, but the theatre is intimate, the actors were enthusiastic, and the settings were well done.
The play was a retelling of the Cinderella story, but approached from a "meta" point of view, with at least the protagonist acutely aware of her position within a faerie tale. She talked of the "call to adventure" and other common motifs from the hero's journey and faerie tales in general a couple of times within the play.
The play also tried to, at least as a facade, mix together many different stories to give a real sense of its story being about faerie tales in general and not just Cinderella specifically. Cinderella's name, for example, was Rosey Snow, and her step-sisters' names where from Shakespeare's King Lear.
Overall, I don't think the play entirely suceeded in its attempt to be a commentary on faerie tales in general, but it did manage to mix up the common archetypes, so, for example, in the end Cinderella choose to dance with the village fool rather than head off to marry the Prince. A touching line near the end revealed that the Prince recognized Rosey's deceit and accepted it.
Overall, it was a lot of fun, due to the company and the play alike.
Else
I've never written about Fräulein Else, the last play that I saw at the Berkeley Rep, about a month ago now. Frankly, it bored me. I neither found it interesting nor bad. (Which I suppose is a step up, as most of BRT's plays this year have been either bad or depressing.)
Else was about a young girl from a rich family who was corrupted by her rich family, her innocence lost. Blah, blah, blah. After I saw it I felt like there was no interesting subtext. Kimberly & I talked afterward, however, and I then agreed with her analysis that there was the subtext I just mentioned: corruption, innocence lost, and all that.
I just found it all bland and trite.
Perhaps I'm too cynical of the way the world works, or perhaps my experience was just the same as for the previous BRT play, Suddenly Last Summer: even if the subtext was once meaningful, it had become so old and understood through the passage of years, that there was no longer insight left within it.
BRT has greatly disappointed me this year. K. & I would have to search around to find money for season's tickets again next year, but at this point I don't think either of us is that interested.
Went up to a theatre on Point Richmond with friends last night and saw "The Cinderella Waltz". It was an amateur production, but the theatre is intimate, the actors were enthusiastic, and the settings were well done.
The play was a retelling of the Cinderella story, but approached from a "meta" point of view, with at least the protagonist acutely aware of her position within a faerie tale. She talked of the "call to adventure" and other common motifs from the hero's journey and faerie tales in general a couple of times within the play.
The play also tried to, at least as a facade, mix together many different stories to give a real sense of its story being about faerie tales in general and not just Cinderella specifically. Cinderella's name, for example, was Rosey Snow, and her step-sisters' names where from Shakespeare's King Lear.
Overall, I don't think the play entirely suceeded in its attempt to be a commentary on faerie tales in general, but it did manage to mix up the common archetypes, so, for example, in the end Cinderella choose to dance with the village fool rather than head off to marry the Prince. A touching line near the end revealed that the Prince recognized Rosey's deceit and accepted it.
Overall, it was a lot of fun, due to the company and the play alike.
Else
I've never written about Fräulein Else, the last play that I saw at the Berkeley Rep, about a month ago now. Frankly, it bored me. I neither found it interesting nor bad. (Which I suppose is a step up, as most of BRT's plays this year have been either bad or depressing.)
Else was about a young girl from a rich family who was corrupted by her rich family, her innocence lost. Blah, blah, blah. After I saw it I felt like there was no interesting subtext. Kimberly & I talked afterward, however, and I then agreed with her analysis that there was the subtext I just mentioned: corruption, innocence lost, and all that.
I just found it all bland and trite.
Perhaps I'm too cynical of the way the world works, or perhaps my experience was just the same as for the previous BRT play, Suddenly Last Summer: even if the subtext was once meaningful, it had become so old and understood through the passage of years, that there was no longer insight left within it.
BRT has greatly disappointed me this year. K. & I would have to search around to find money for season's tickets again next year, but at this point I don't think either of us is that interested.
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Date: 2003-04-20 01:24 pm (UTC)frauline else
Date: 2003-04-20 05:04 pm (UTC)Quick, somebody put on another Tom Stoppard play! STAT!