STF showcases superb talent, excessive melodrama
Arts & Entertainment — By Leah Weitz on April 22, 2011 8:24 AMOn the weekend of Friday and Saturday April 15 and 16, Puget Sound students were treated to The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide, a play described by one actor as “exactly what it sounds like.”
Directed by Joey Fechtel, the 50-minute play formed a part of the Senior Theater Festival, and portrayed a fourth grade class putting on a play… written by a classmate who had killed himself. While The 4th Graders Present had its moments of both sincerity and sadness, bolstered by brilliant and genuine acting from several players, it ultimately suffered from a too-complicated premise, an awkward script and a melodramatic ending.
The play-within-a-play tells the story of Johnny (Derek Rainey), an awkward boy, and Rachel (Grace Libby), a “fat” girl with beautiful braids, whom he loves.
The drama of the story is evoked by the bully Sally (Theresa Gabrielli) and her boyfriend Mike Rice (Henry Funk), who cause nothing but trouble for the two fledgeling lovebirds. It’s a fun premise; however, the fact that these fourth graders are—stick with me—played by fourth graders, played by college students, leads to all sorts of complications.
The script of the play-within-the-play had to have been plausibly written by a fourth grader, and this sometimes led to fun or cute moments when, for example, Mike Rice struts on stage and announces “I am a bully!” However, it generally worked against the production by muddling the drama. One affectation that the fourth grader’s script included was that of shunning contractions; that is, an abundance of “I do not”s, “I will”s, etc. This particular quality of the script forced a surreality into many of the scenes that served only to confuse and annoy.
Further issues with the script included moments limited by the fictitious fourth grade playwright’s explanatory skills: after Mike Rice announces that he is a bully, he launches into a long, rambling, speech in which he attempts to articulate the feelings which have led him to his bullying ways, a speech which ultimately falls flat due to the supposed playwright’s own confusion on the matter.
Script issues aside, the actors themselves were faced with the daunting task of portraying fourth graders portraying fourth graders. The decision clearly had to be made at some point on whether the actors should portray these fourth-graders-portrayed-by-fourth graders as realistically as they could, or whether to consider the fact that most fourth graders aren’t very good actors.
The Puget Sound cast seemed to choose the first option, and for the most part played their parts well—perhaps a little too well. Would a fourth grade actor really be able to laugh, cry, perform so convincingly? Probably not. However, that being said, the performances still remained the highlight of the show.
Another frustration was the layout of the stage in relation to the audience: the audience sat in a circle around the action, which resulted in the actors always facing away from a significant portion of the audience regardless of where they stood.
Marika Proctor as Lucy Law, the cheerful hall monitor, was one actress who stood out among her peers for her subtle and endearing performance, and made audience members wish that they could consistently see her face.
Ultimately, while the play suffered a sort of Inception-style crisis of identity with plays-within-plays and characters-within-characters, it still managed to have a multitude of enjoyable moments with its more lighthearted subject matter.
It was when it veered to darker territory, particularly at the end with a highly melodramatic onslaught of murder and suicide, that the shortcomings of the material swept up and over the actors, overshadowing their genuine talent with confusion, melodrama and ultimately, dissatisfaction.
[PHOTO COURTESY/JESSE BALDGRIDGE]
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11 Comments
“Another frustration was the layout of the stage in relation to the audience: the audience sat in a circle around the action, which resulted in the actors always facing away from a significant portion of the audience regardless of where they stood.”
It’s actually called ‘in the round’. It’s a thing. It isn’t some avant garde theatre technique, and it’s how STF has been done for years. Next time The Trail sends someone to do a bad review for a show that they don’t understand, at least send someone who has seen a play before. Bad journalism right here.
Just because “in the round” is a tradition doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things. Next time you post an unnecessarily aggressive response to an article, try not to be so ignorant.
While yes, it would have been better if Leah had known that in the round was a real thing and it’s how STF shows are always presented, this is a very well-written review.
If you want to keep doing theatre, it’s probably time to learn that bad reviews are part of it. I’m going to guess that “Jim”‘s emotional reaction is because he was part of the show. It’s hard to cope with, but not everyone is going to like your work. And just because someone doesn’t like your work, that doesn’t make them a bad journalist.
I didn’t see it, but I heard the show was great. I guess that makes me a good journalist.
It has the words “Love” and “Suicide” and “4th Graders” all in the title. Of course it is going to be “melodramatic.” Complaining about it being “in the round” is a waste of space because one of the requirements of a Senior Theatre Festival piece is that it MUST be “in the round”. The journalist would KNOW this if they did any ******* research into Senior Theatre Festival before writing about it.
I think the play’s “Inception”-style crisis is that, similar to Christopher Nolan’s tour de force, the entire cast is far too good-looking to all be in the same place at the same time and for that to be a believable reality. If Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page and Cillian Murphy were all in the same place at the same time not in the context of a gathering of Hollywood’s beautiful people, the world would actually explode. “The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide” suffers similar issues.
Thanks “Krista.” And yes, “Seymour,” I agree that the cast was all very sexy. I regret not having been informed about the “in the round” assignment, however, I still believe it’s still fair to say that the “in the round” format didn’t work well.
Best wishes to the cast and crew, you are a talented bunch. I only wish your source material had been better. I meant you no personal offense with this review. Please keep that in mind as you post your comments here; “Jim,” yours was quite hurtful.
I think that the article is valid in stating that theater isn’t always easily accessible to outsiders–you shouldn’t have to research theater to enjoy a play–it’s performance. I don’t read about cinematography or screenwriting before I watch a movie. The performance should speak for itself. I agree with Leah that all the actors were excellent, but I felt like the play-within-a-play was also a weakness and made the play less poignant. The play was great to watch and was interesting and funny, but to rip into a journalist who feels otherwise only widens the gap between the world of theater and the world of lesser, uncultured folk.
When I was in fourth grade, I put on a sortof play with my next door neighbor, her cocker spaniel, and a few of our cats in supporting roles. It was a play within a play within a movie, within a play. It was very confusing, I couldn’t remember any of my lines for any of the six characters I played. The cocker spaniel gave the most convincing performance, and one of the cats got sick on the carpet in the middle of the first (within the second) within the first bit, within the play. My neighbors mom gave it a terrible review, criticizing everything down to the stage (we performed it in the bathroom, sortof between the toilet and the wall). Although we explained to her that this was commentary on the play. It was about a drunk plumber who gets sucked into an alternate reality, in which he is an actor who plays a prince in a movie.
ANYWAYS. I have never been able to recover from her criticism and because of her, I remain completely immature and intellectually/emotionally stunted TO THIS DAY.
I found her review to be amazing! Great job Leah!Your analysis was right up my alley.
Signed,
Someone who also doesn’t know shit about basic sentence structure or theatrical analysis.
Even if Leah did know the term “theatre in the round” (and why would you expect her to? I bet you didn’t know what that meant before you started taking theatre classes) not any of the readers would know what that meant, so she had to explain what it is so the readers would understand.
and just because STF always has, and MUST, be in the round, doesn’t mean that it works with each show, or that people have to like it.
The reviewer does not profess to be a New York City theater critic. She’s a student who took the time to see the play and write a review for the Trail. In her opinion, the acting was ”brilliant and genuine,” however, the staging style didn’t work well, and the ending seemed melodramatic. Doesn’t sound like a bad review to me. Maybe it wasn’t necessarily the best script for the talented actors and the theater-in-the-round staging.
But hurling personal insults at the writer is spineless and pathetic. So, come on people, get over it already. Time to move on.