|
||
|
|
Peer Reviews The Good
Times are Killing Me! Reviewed by Keith Waits Entire contents are copyright © 2007, Keith Waits. All rights reserved.
Cartoonist and writer Lynda Barry, here adapting her much-lauded children's book for the stage, does a fine job capturing the rhythms of childhood speech and the confused perspective of kids bewildered by the grown-up world that surrounds them. The story of a burgeoning friendship between two girls, one white, one black, that is eventually fractured by the intrusion of adult influence is a worthwhile script for a company of young actors. Unfortunately, the production by the Student Theatre @ Bellarmine fails to realize the full potential of the material. The piece is staged too broadly, by a cast that spends too much time mugging shamelessly and delivering line readings that are lacking in any subtlety or shading. During the first act, actors were either proclaiming loudly or mumbling through dialogue while missing cues enough to allow the pace to drag. Things improve slightly in the second act, as the plot moves in a more serious direction, but the insightful final scenes play out anticlimactically, as the director lets the opportunity slip by to stage the drama the writing provides. As the main character, Edna, Ashtin Riney manages the strongest performance, and you can find some glimpse of what might have been in her work and that of Brittany Hoagland as her younger sister. Together they manage to find the breathless speech patterns of youth and develop some effective character interaction. One point of curiosity lies in the fact that the
racial theme of the story is played out in an artificial
manner, with the Caucasian characters described
as "maroon," and the African-American
characters as "blue". The concept is
reinforced by the colors in the costuming and tattoo-like
make-up worn by a multi-racial cast. The idea is
interesting but ultimately doesn't work, I think,
at least in this production. It seems to obscure
the theme of racial division, until the action
of the second act makes it more explicit. Since,
if memory serves, both the original book and stage
adaptation depict the characters as clearly white
or black, what motivated this choice that only
further dilutes the play's impact?
The Good Times are Killing Me! Posted Nov. 3, 2007
|
|