The Mousetrap, a reaction post of sorts.
I've just been to a local amateur production of 'The Mousetrap' and I have the following non-spoilery random-ordered things to say:
Shhhh... ;-)
-I may be earwormed by "Three Blind Mice" for the next several days.
-I suspected who the killer was very shortly after the character appeared in the first Act, and knew I was right less than ten minutes later. Ask the people who sat next to me who I swapped theories with during the intermission. There was a silently impressed 'thumbs up' to me at the reveal. I may have preened.
-I was very worried about one of the actresses being out of her depth acting-wise in the first part. She was very 'stomp, stomp, stop on mark, deliver line, make face'-style acting, although she did scream very well. The bottom half of act two though she was fantastic.
-One actress, I swear, she could play any theatre she wanted. She was fantastic and very much character acting. And she was doing double-duty as PR Manager. Gotta love local theatre. :-)
-Almost no one in the local theatre troupe (except the person above, but I think she might be British) can do a convincing British accent, despite having a dedicated accent coach. However, they tried damned hard, bless them.
-The theatre was massively renovated over a decade ago and the upstairs storage loft was changed to balcony seating and they added a drinks bar and so on. On the whole it's really good, but whoever thought it would be a fine idea to have the main theatre exit doors and the staircase down from the balcony all feed into a smallish hallway section, and then decided that was also the best possible location for the coat check stand? That person should be shot. Massive bottleneck every time. As the crowd pushed out, I stayed behind and helped the ushers clean up in the balcony. Yay for no panic attacks! \o/
-So glad I re-watched 'Unicorn and the Wasp' the night before. I love Agatha Christie. The program bio was fannishly written and there were only two or three things on the program as a whole that escaped proofreading.
-Set design seriously did a fantastic job. Beautiful, gorgeous set. I want to have that set as my living room. Lighting was also well designed and very evocative, set-warming very well-chosen in particular and helped set the era and mood very well. Sound levels were a bit hit and miss, and they flubbed at least one sound cue with the wrong tape put on, but did the right thing and carried on rather than freezing or scrambling.
-Line flubs happened, including one I rather hope was a deliberate misdirect on the actor's part, referring to another character by a different last name that made them seem to be something they didn't turn out to be. (Of course I also have a secret hope that there's actually five or six alternate endings to 'The Mousetrap' and they pick a different one night to night, but that's not really feasible in a short-run live amateur theatre setting. *casts pondering eye on the West End production*)
-The director's staging choices were rather static, and some of the staging in the more aggressive interactions between two characters in particular made me wonder if the director had ever seen people argue, or whether the actors had just flubbed the intended staging. I won't go into details, but it was almost like staging for TV rather than staging for theatre and it took a big moment and stifled the energy in it.
-The seats in the theatre really suck. Any sitting for longer than an hour and bits went numb, followed by stabbing lower back pain spreading upward to my brain. The play is two and a half hours long. I amused everyone by doing improvised lumbar stretches during the 15-minute intermission.
-Cold and flu season is also a bad time for live theatre.
-And a crossover note. Sherlock would fit into this play so well. One character's lines were very Sherlockian. Lestrade would fit too, actually. I kind of want to do a crossover but probably won't because, well. Shhhh... ;-) Also I've got way too much on the go right now. However it's going in the bunny pen in a spoiler-proof straight-jacket anyway, just in case something can be equitably worked out at some future point in time.
Now. Given this is the Mousetrap, PLEASE no spoilers for it in the comments if you know the ending, alright? ;-)
Shhhh... ;-)
-I may be earwormed by "Three Blind Mice" for the next several days.
-I suspected who the killer was very shortly after the character appeared in the first Act, and knew I was right less than ten minutes later. Ask the people who sat next to me who I swapped theories with during the intermission. There was a silently impressed 'thumbs up' to me at the reveal. I may have preened.
-I was very worried about one of the actresses being out of her depth acting-wise in the first part. She was very 'stomp, stomp, stop on mark, deliver line, make face'-style acting, although she did scream very well. The bottom half of act two though she was fantastic.
-One actress, I swear, she could play any theatre she wanted. She was fantastic and very much character acting. And she was doing double-duty as PR Manager. Gotta love local theatre. :-)
-Almost no one in the local theatre troupe (except the person above, but I think she might be British) can do a convincing British accent, despite having a dedicated accent coach. However, they tried damned hard, bless them.
-The theatre was massively renovated over a decade ago and the upstairs storage loft was changed to balcony seating and they added a drinks bar and so on. On the whole it's really good, but whoever thought it would be a fine idea to have the main theatre exit doors and the staircase down from the balcony all feed into a smallish hallway section, and then decided that was also the best possible location for the coat check stand? That person should be shot. Massive bottleneck every time. As the crowd pushed out, I stayed behind and helped the ushers clean up in the balcony. Yay for no panic attacks! \o/
-So glad I re-watched 'Unicorn and the Wasp' the night before. I love Agatha Christie. The program bio was fannishly written and there were only two or three things on the program as a whole that escaped proofreading.
-Set design seriously did a fantastic job. Beautiful, gorgeous set. I want to have that set as my living room. Lighting was also well designed and very evocative, set-warming very well-chosen in particular and helped set the era and mood very well. Sound levels were a bit hit and miss, and they flubbed at least one sound cue with the wrong tape put on, but did the right thing and carried on rather than freezing or scrambling.
-Line flubs happened, including one I rather hope was a deliberate misdirect on the actor's part, referring to another character by a different last name that made them seem to be something they didn't turn out to be. (Of course I also have a secret hope that there's actually five or six alternate endings to 'The Mousetrap' and they pick a different one night to night, but that's not really feasible in a short-run live amateur theatre setting. *casts pondering eye on the West End production*)
-The director's staging choices were rather static, and some of the staging in the more aggressive interactions between two characters in particular made me wonder if the director had ever seen people argue, or whether the actors had just flubbed the intended staging. I won't go into details, but it was almost like staging for TV rather than staging for theatre and it took a big moment and stifled the energy in it.
-The seats in the theatre really suck. Any sitting for longer than an hour and bits went numb, followed by stabbing lower back pain spreading upward to my brain. The play is two and a half hours long. I amused everyone by doing improvised lumbar stretches during the 15-minute intermission.
-Cold and flu season is also a bad time for live theatre.
-And a crossover note. Sherlock would fit into this play so well. One character's lines were very Sherlockian. Lestrade would fit too, actually. I kind of want to do a crossover but probably won't because, well. Shhhh... ;-) Also I've got way too much on the go right now. However it's going in the bunny pen in a spoiler-proof straight-jacket anyway, just in case something can be equitably worked out at some future point in time.
Now. Given this is the Mousetrap, PLEASE no spoilers for it in the comments if you know the ending, alright? ;-)