When we got to the Vaudeville Theatre and started looking for our seats, Neil Labute was just walking around and hanging out in his flannel shirt and jeans! Neil G.D. Labute! Some pretty hardcore rock music was playing, which is not something I expected from the posters/fliers. But, I didn't mind.
However, I did mind when the play started and I was seriously underwhelmed by the acting! It was so predictable! It was predictable and quite repetitive.
I liked the script alright, but I thought it needed more editing.
The twists and turns that revealed Betty's truth were pretty intense, but the two of them bickering to get to those points was...well, it got old.
And they hashed out some issues while completely ignoring others! To me personally, their whole performances were just washes lacking specificity...they didn't allow the characters to change or grow much from where they started at the beginning. Maybe that's the writing. Or the directing. I didn't really care either way, but I wanted something more that I did not get. Mr. Labute has done much better, I think.
Some Notes From the Talkback with Neil Labute:
- He and the actors tweaked the script even when the show went into previews.
- There is a musicality of the silence in a play.
- About the incestuous suggestion between Bobby and Betty in the play: They are constantly misreading each other so, it's only natural that they would misread each other physically.
- You want the characters to grow and have somewhere to go, but sometimes they grow in reverse.
- "The job is to take these stories and find a way to make them fresh."
- When writing a play, you are trying to find the most important 90 minutes of these characters' lives.
Nathaniel: Where do you see theatre going in the future?
Mr. Labute: Space.
"Space." Hanging out pre-performance. Neil Labute. Winning!
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