In Short, I Don't Understand What Disillusionment
Playmakers presentation of "The Illusion"
WARNING
SPOILERS
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Every beginning improv class I've been in, every basic coaching session I've received...every time, the coach/teacher has said not to resort to, halfway through the scene, stepping in from the sidelines and saying, "Aaaand cut. Come on, people. I need more emotion."
The reason for this is simple: It cheapens the show. It's like saying, "Sorry; our team couldn't write itself out of this corner, so we'll say that whole thing was a big fake scene." Audiences don't want you to point out they're watching a play unless you're Brecht... Actually, they don't even want it then; they just expect it, which is different.
In any case, I suppose there are instances where breaking the fourth wall and blatantly, literally, saying, "You are watching a play," ...there are showss that can make that work.
"The Illusion" is not one of those shows.
I liked 'The Prestige' and both it and "The Illusion" have anticlimaxes. I suppose. They also both have a point where you say, "Everything I'd held as true is no longer the truth." ...they're also both ostensibly about magicians and the line between reality and imagination.
However, 'The Prestige' takes away the assumptions and replaces them with one-betters. "The Illusion" just...takes away the assumptions.
A quick synopsis: A rich old man consults a wizard whom he believes can tell him where his son is. The old man had thrown his son out 15 years ago for very little reason other than --it turns out-- he'd held his son on the day he was born and said to himself, "This will be a disppointment." The wizard then uses illusion to show the man how his son has lived for the past 15 years. The young man fell in love with a wealthy man's daughter, they secretly had relations, he killed a nobleman suitor of hers in self-defense, was sentenced to death, got rescued by his love (and her maid, with whom he'd also had an affair), and they ran off together. As the play reaches its climax, it's years later and the young man is cheating on his now poor love, with the wife of the prince. The prince finds out and kills him. The old man, watching this, feels horrible remorse all of a sudden and cries a tear over his dead son... and then the wizard goes, "I think there's been some sort of misunderstanding: your son's not dead; he's an actor. Those were scenes from plays he's been in."
Momentarily funny. The audience laughed. However.
However.
It's just such a cheap out. And to make it worse, just after they go on about how reality and fiction are so fleeting and how the illusion never stops, and just after the audience is like, "Yeah, we got it when you said he was in a play, get on with it already," and just after the old man has his moment of hilarity from saying, "My son's alive! I must...see...h... he's an actor, you say?" and backtracks out of visiting the young man because theater is such a disappointing career, and he leaves in an uncaring rush, and just after the audience is like, "Okay, the twist was cheap, but they've managed to pull it off, and I'm satisfied with the moral of the story: Leopards can't change their spots," ...
...after ALL OF THAT, when no one's on stage but the wizard's Igor-henchman... one of the characters from the illusion, from the supposed play, staggers in from the back of the audience (really REALLY breaking that 4th wall), and he's still the person they showed in the illusion.
So it turns out that It wasn't a dream...OR WAS IT?????
Which certainly falls into the realm of "What is the illusion?" yes. However, it doesn't make any sense. If the young man died, and the father wept for him, he'd learn a lesson. If the young man wasn't dead but was instead an actor, then his father didn't learn a lesson, but the audience did. If the "actors" in the illusion weren't actors at all but the father doesn't know that, then the father didn't learn a lesson, and neither did the audience. The audience left going, "Um...what was the point of that?"
Not good.
On a related note, I saw this play with my mother who, right before curtain-up, said she was excited to hear another of "Kit's Theater Critiques" after we'd seen it.
Days earlier, we had had an argument about how I really don't care what I do for a job as long as it pays the bills and lets me do what I want after my 8 hours a day are done. She replied, saying that was a waste of what God put me on earth for, since God wanted me to be more than just some button-presser, and that I needed to find some jobs that would give me a direction to steer in, since enjoying things is God's way of saying that I should be doing that sort of thing in my life. I didn't take this well, and eventually got her to admit, "Okay, fine. It's not God; I want you to do more with your life."
And then, not knowing what this play was about, she took me to see it tonight, and its blaring message (possibly the only one that didn't get knocked down) was: "Look at how bad this parent is for being unreasonably disappointed with his child's interests/life-path. Laugh at this farce of an awful person who would do that sort of thing."
Ha. Ha. Ha.
We walked out of the theater, and I started in on 'Kit's Theater Critique' by saying, "Well, that was..."
She nodded through those words, steered my little brother in the opposite direction and cut me off there, saying, "We're heading home."
And that was my evening.
Oh. And then my sister posted this.
So I'll be headed to the Unemployment Office in 8 hours and making everybody... well, not happy, per se, but at least... quieter.
.
WARNING
SPOILERS
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Every beginning improv class I've been in, every basic coaching session I've received...every time, the coach/teacher has said not to resort to, halfway through the scene, stepping in from the sidelines and saying, "Aaaand cut. Come on, people. I need more emotion."
The reason for this is simple: It cheapens the show. It's like saying, "Sorry; our team couldn't write itself out of this corner, so we'll say that whole thing was a big fake scene." Audiences don't want you to point out they're watching a play unless you're Brecht... Actually, they don't even want it then; they just expect it, which is different.
In any case, I suppose there are instances where breaking the fourth wall and blatantly, literally, saying, "You are watching a play," ...there are showss that can make that work.
"The Illusion" is not one of those shows.
I liked 'The Prestige' and both it and "The Illusion" have anticlimaxes. I suppose. They also both have a point where you say, "Everything I'd held as true is no longer the truth." ...they're also both ostensibly about magicians and the line between reality and imagination.
However, 'The Prestige' takes away the assumptions and replaces them with one-betters. "The Illusion" just...takes away the assumptions.
A quick synopsis: A rich old man consults a wizard whom he believes can tell him where his son is. The old man had thrown his son out 15 years ago for very little reason other than --it turns out-- he'd held his son on the day he was born and said to himself, "This will be a disppointment." The wizard then uses illusion to show the man how his son has lived for the past 15 years. The young man fell in love with a wealthy man's daughter, they secretly had relations, he killed a nobleman suitor of hers in self-defense, was sentenced to death, got rescued by his love (and her maid, with whom he'd also had an affair), and they ran off together. As the play reaches its climax, it's years later and the young man is cheating on his now poor love, with the wife of the prince. The prince finds out and kills him. The old man, watching this, feels horrible remorse all of a sudden and cries a tear over his dead son... and then the wizard goes, "I think there's been some sort of misunderstanding: your son's not dead; he's an actor. Those were scenes from plays he's been in."
Momentarily funny. The audience laughed. However.
However.
It's just such a cheap out. And to make it worse, just after they go on about how reality and fiction are so fleeting and how the illusion never stops, and just after the audience is like, "Yeah, we got it when you said he was in a play, get on with it already," and just after the old man has his moment of hilarity from saying, "My son's alive! I must...see...h... he's an actor, you say?" and backtracks out of visiting the young man because theater is such a disappointing career, and he leaves in an uncaring rush, and just after the audience is like, "Okay, the twist was cheap, but they've managed to pull it off, and I'm satisfied with the moral of the story: Leopards can't change their spots," ...
...after ALL OF THAT, when no one's on stage but the wizard's Igor-henchman... one of the characters from the illusion, from the supposed play, staggers in from the back of the audience (really REALLY breaking that 4th wall), and he's still the person they showed in the illusion.
So it turns out that It wasn't a dream...OR WAS IT?????
Which certainly falls into the realm of "What is the illusion?" yes. However, it doesn't make any sense. If the young man died, and the father wept for him, he'd learn a lesson. If the young man wasn't dead but was instead an actor, then his father didn't learn a lesson, but the audience did. If the "actors" in the illusion weren't actors at all but the father doesn't know that, then the father didn't learn a lesson, and neither did the audience. The audience left going, "Um...what was the point of that?"
Not good.
On a related note, I saw this play with my mother who, right before curtain-up, said she was excited to hear another of "Kit's Theater Critiques" after we'd seen it.
Days earlier, we had had an argument about how I really don't care what I do for a job as long as it pays the bills and lets me do what I want after my 8 hours a day are done. She replied, saying that was a waste of what God put me on earth for, since God wanted me to be more than just some button-presser, and that I needed to find some jobs that would give me a direction to steer in, since enjoying things is God's way of saying that I should be doing that sort of thing in my life. I didn't take this well, and eventually got her to admit, "Okay, fine. It's not God; I want you to do more with your life."
And then, not knowing what this play was about, she took me to see it tonight, and its blaring message (possibly the only one that didn't get knocked down) was: "Look at how bad this parent is for being unreasonably disappointed with his child's interests/life-path. Laugh at this farce of an awful person who would do that sort of thing."
Ha. Ha. Ha.
We walked out of the theater, and I started in on 'Kit's Theater Critique' by saying, "Well, that was..."
She nodded through those words, steered my little brother in the opposite direction and cut me off there, saying, "We're heading home."
And that was my evening.
Oh. And then my sister posted this.
So I'll be headed to the Unemployment Office in 8 hours and making everybody... well, not happy, per se, but at least... quieter.
.