London, day four: Evening
Just got back from watching a production of Carousel, which was interesting, but had a few fatal flaws. The first wasn't really the fault of the theatre; the storyline for the show is just really, really dated these days, and goes on for well over 3 hours (too long, IMO, for most modern audiences). In a nutshell, and this isn't really exaggerating it, the storyline is: "It's okay to hit your wife if you both know you really love her." That just doesn't play well in 2009; honestly I'm surprised that the show is still produced anywhere given the lack of a compelling storyline. (Someone would do well to yank the songs and rewrite them into a new story. If it's a hit and makes millions, you saw it here first!)
The second and third problems, though, were more controllable. Because it plays in London, they obviously have a cast of largely British actors. The problem is ... they chose to speak with American accents and only one main actor is any good at it. One woman sounded inexplicably like she was from New Jersey (despite this being set in Maine), and everyone else wandered between sounding normal, suddenly being from the deep south, and occasionally pronouncing words that sounded just weird and were neither British or American. It was more like they chose to add "American spice" to their words rather than to actually sound American, and for Americans in the audience it would have been much better to just speak without an affected accent and let the accent fade into the background instead of inadvertently making it a main feature.
Finally, it looked like the show decided to save on prop money by hiring a computer graphics person to create animation that is projected on large screens either in front of or behind the actors. This sometimes worked, as when the Carousel is animated at the beginning in front of the actors and they artistically leap in time with the horses. It most certainly does not work when it looks like a badly-rendered Spanish Armada has sailed into Maine and camped out in the background. It especially doesn't work when one lonely ship from the Spanish Armada is sailing around distractingly during the final, rousing, speech of the play.
Anyhow, off to bed. Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow, but chances are good that it will be a palace, a museum, or a cathedral.
The second and third problems, though, were more controllable. Because it plays in London, they obviously have a cast of largely British actors. The problem is ... they chose to speak with American accents and only one main actor is any good at it. One woman sounded inexplicably like she was from New Jersey (despite this being set in Maine), and everyone else wandered between sounding normal, suddenly being from the deep south, and occasionally pronouncing words that sounded just weird and were neither British or American. It was more like they chose to add "American spice" to their words rather than to actually sound American, and for Americans in the audience it would have been much better to just speak without an affected accent and let the accent fade into the background instead of inadvertently making it a main feature.
Finally, it looked like the show decided to save on prop money by hiring a computer graphics person to create animation that is projected on large screens either in front of or behind the actors. This sometimes worked, as when the Carousel is animated at the beginning in front of the actors and they artistically leap in time with the horses. It most certainly does not work when it looks like a badly-rendered Spanish Armada has sailed into Maine and camped out in the background. It especially doesn't work when one lonely ship from the Spanish Armada is sailing around distractingly during the final, rousing, speech of the play.
Anyhow, off to bed. Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow, but chances are good that it will be a palace, a museum, or a cathedral.