Post by joem on Oct 22, 2016 21:59:10 GMT
A revival of two one-act plays - "Heart's Desire" and "Blue Kettle" - for an evening of surprisingly surreal, bordering on absurdist drama, by Caryl Churchill.
Some spoilers below, maybe.
"Heart's Desire" is the more successful play of the two. A scene where a family (husband, wife, aunt and occasional drunken irruptions by son) anxiously await the return from Australia of the daughter of the house. The scene is replayed time and time again, with minor variations, gradually moving forward in time but without a definitive version of what really happens - if anything happens at all. During the process we learn, or think we learn, different aspects and nuances of the characters and the state of the family. Is it a dream? Is it different versions of a potential truth? Who knows, but naturally the premise provides enough comic opportunities for the audience to enjoy plenty of laughs and perhaps think a little about what on earth is going on.
"Blue Kettle", ostensibly about a conman trying to get something out of a string of plausible but probably false biological mothers, soon abandons plot for playing on words with "blue" and "kettle" featuring increasingly in every sentence as substitutes for other words. What bothers me is how this is described in reviews and elsewhere as being outstandingly innovate when it had been done more than twenty years before, with regularity, by the Monty Python team. Think "Spam, spam, spam..."
Some playwrights are very lucky indeed to be the darlings of critics and reviewers!
Some spoilers below, maybe.
"Heart's Desire" is the more successful play of the two. A scene where a family (husband, wife, aunt and occasional drunken irruptions by son) anxiously await the return from Australia of the daughter of the house. The scene is replayed time and time again, with minor variations, gradually moving forward in time but without a definitive version of what really happens - if anything happens at all. During the process we learn, or think we learn, different aspects and nuances of the characters and the state of the family. Is it a dream? Is it different versions of a potential truth? Who knows, but naturally the premise provides enough comic opportunities for the audience to enjoy plenty of laughs and perhaps think a little about what on earth is going on.
"Blue Kettle", ostensibly about a conman trying to get something out of a string of plausible but probably false biological mothers, soon abandons plot for playing on words with "blue" and "kettle" featuring increasingly in every sentence as substitutes for other words. What bothers me is how this is described in reviews and elsewhere as being outstandingly innovate when it had been done more than twenty years before, with regularity, by the Monty Python team. Think "Spam, spam, spam..."
Some playwrights are very lucky indeed to be the darlings of critics and reviewers!
