Today (20th January 2009) at the Wilde Theatre, I watched a performance of 'Attempts on Her Life' (and the company's name escapes me) mainly for studying purposes but also because I'm a huge fan of the play and I wanted to see another interpretation of it. I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know what style they had chosen, or what kind of set they would use, how they would handle certain scenes. As the play is very abstract, it was impossible to guess the answers to any of these questions.
If I'm honest, the first scene did fill me with hope: in a scene where it is very easy to go for the obvious, they evaded it (although only just) and I started to enjoy it, although the voice-overs were lacking in a few of them: as usual, the actresses were a little shabby, and when I say that I don't mean it in a sexist way (not that it excludes me from being sexist, but I am a girl), it's just an observation I've made over time. So I waited, intrigued, for their interpretation of scene two, one of my favourites.
They stood there. They just stood stock still and delivered their lines like machines. It was just embarrassing, especially considering that I can sum up most of the play this way. I'm not sure if it was intended for them to seem so static, but if it was some kind of hidden meaning then it was obviously too sophisticated for little me to comprehend. It was depressing to watch because of all the potential this play has. Just reading any scene makes my brain hurt with all the ideas that come to mind, and the best they could come up with was the occasional arm flail, raised voice or walking across the stage. It wasn't an appropriate interpretation: it was a book reading.
Now it's true that maybe I feel this way because I've already read the script and so I know most of the content and a few of the lines anyway, and I was expecting more of them, but I can't shake the feeling that if I didn't know the script, I would have got confused and bored and I would have switched off and fallen asleep (in fact, I thought I would at one point). Maybe I was expecting more, but is that so bad? Is it too much to ask for something more than just reading the lines? I could ask my mother to gather a group of children from the school she works at, and I would get basically the same result (not that I'm suggesting that it would be appropriate for children to perform this sort of play, but that's not my point).
Maybe just reading the lines wouldn't have been so bad if only they knew them properly. They had obviously put a lot of effort into learning their lines (and from experience, it's a tricky task; lots of long paragraphs to memorise) but maybe their nerves got the better of them, or they were just a little bit unrehearsed, but they stumbled on their lines on more than just a couple of occasions, and it was just painful. Ironically, it almost made me consider killing myself and those around me.
There was one scene that I can say wasn't all bad, involving one of the only actors that didn't make my teeth curl. As the script demanded, it involved one character translating another character's speech into English from another language, in this case German. The humour in this scene was luckily not lost, but unfortunately, they kept the same idea on for too long and it got dry rather fast. Like most scenes, in fact, it just dragged on too long, and although that could be the fault of the script, surely they could have done something more to try and keep it fresh and powerful, rather than trying to keep something on longer than it should have done. And the less said about the ending the better, but putting it shortly: it was like a small upward curve on the graph (which would normally be dismissed as an anomaly), followed by an awesome anticlimax.
What really saddens me is that I actually support unknown, unconventional, unappreciated theatre, and this sort of performance actually gives people an excuse not to like something different. I'm always trying to convince people I know that independent films, physical theatre, performance that breaks the boundaries and constraints of convention, can be brilliant, and should be shown the appreciation that they deserve. Unfortunately, this performance did not deserve appreciation, not by my standards.
STRANGELY enough, theatre really does have nothing to do with this, at least I hope not. Sorry, but I'm afraid that the camera definitely does not love you.
