| re: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike | |
| Posted by: portenopete 03:00 pm EDT 05/14/24 | |
| In reply to: re: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike - WaymanWong 02:04 pm EDT 05/14/24 | |
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| I never thought he was doing a parody. I think I'd've enjoyed it more if he was LOL. I always thought Durang adored Chekhov. Don't we all? There's a reason everybody keeps coming back to him more than 100 years after he kicked it. But I did think that he was using Chekhovian tropes and suggesting that, for no reason of their own doing, the characters had been condemned to a life of Chekhovian frustration by their pretentious unseen parents. But his writing style always seems to have existed on some kind of meta plane of extreme behaviour. In fast-paced parodic one-acts the lack of believable human behaviour never bothered me, but in a two-and-half-hour dramedy I don't know how to process the archness and self-conscious acting of his characters. I'm thinking of other glib writers and Hay Fever is coming to mind: indulgently self-absorbed theatrical types who are constantly "on". But in Coward there never seems to be anything more than a good old lark, whereas in V&S&M&S the characters' lives are so sad and depressed and/or wildly shallow. I feel like I need a bit of naturalism and conversationalism before the crazies begin to overtake the play. (oy...that housekeeper character. She got old so fast.) I'm glad you (and lots of other people) liked it. It just didn't grab me. I really wanted it to. We just didn't connect. |
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