This is terribly juvenile of me, but...
BITCH FIGHT!!
In sorrow and fustration (one imagines) more than anger, Adam Broinowski has a rant about cruel and unusual treatment his play (sic) Know No Cure has received from the 'crickets'.
In response to a positive account at the VCA's Spark Online, he writes:
However, I am prepared to admit that an outside eye might make a performance text out of Broinowski's blank-faced, blank-verse text. Broinowski did his writing (and his cast) an enormous disservice by directing Know No Cure himself.
See also Michael Scott's "play whipping" at The Program and Cameron Woodhead's reluctant demolition of the play in The Aged. (And we all know, when critics -- and doctors -- start showing kindness, you must be terminally sick!)
In sorrow and fustration (one imagines) more than anger, Adam Broinowski has a rant about cruel and unusual treatment his play (sic) Know No Cure has received from the 'crickets'.
In response to a positive account at the VCA's Spark Online, he writes:
"finally an engagement by a critic with the piece which goes beyond the demand for simple narrative. You would think, from the other responses, that no one had seen the wooster group over the last 20 years..."But, like the first commenter to take him on, "A Hairy Ape", I have seen the Wooster, and still wanted to shoot myself.
However, I am prepared to admit that an outside eye might make a performance text out of Broinowski's blank-faced, blank-verse text. Broinowski did his writing (and his cast) an enormous disservice by directing Know No Cure himself.
See also Michael Scott's "play whipping" at The Program and Cameron Woodhead's reluctant demolition of the play in The Aged. (And we all know, when critics -- and doctors -- start showing kindness, you must be terminally sick!)
Labels: Adam Broinowski, bitch fight, criticism
posted by Chris Boyd at 5:37 PM
7 Comments:
Not having seen the play, I can't comment. But one quibble - there's a long tradition of writer/directors, from Moliere to Barker.
Some shining examples, Alison... I'm thinking more of playwright/directors like Michael Gow who flattened their own work with a monoscopic view of it. (Gow finally got one of his own plays right last year... 20 years after he wrote it. And having already seen productions by Neil Armfield, Peter Kingston & others.)
Broinowski's direction was leaden. As "A Hairy Ape" points out, the actors looked like they lacked a through-line so the gear changes looked random and arbitrary. Magical. (Paraphrasing here.)
In the College of the Arts' spirit of free and fair debate, I note that A Hairy Ape's comment has been removed or moderated.
Was it still up when you looked, A?
Hi Chris et al,
The 'Hairy Ape' comment was still up an hour or so ago when I looked. Though for my money, North Atlantic is a superior show by The Wooster Group...
dw
Thanks David. Yes, it's back up.
Review of a review
It seems the point has been missed.
Perhaps I should have written Bertolt Brecht. The Wooster Group comment was made with regard to my decision to play with and challenge the familiar process of character identification and passivity alive and well in theatre. It was this which was missed by some critics and not others (see VCA Spark on-line, Brendan McCallum, or another review tba).
That said, understanding the time constraints on critics and the differences in preferred pacing in audiences (KL audiences like faster shows), I take on the suggestion for more 'sign-posting'.
And yet, while the piece has its flaws, and may not have been under confident on opening night, a number of practical realities making this a difficult production, the kind of criticism which resorted to 'stylistic' (as opposed to formal) choices, which spoke for an entire audience as if they were unanimous, which ignored the very real collaboration between director, designers and actors from beginning to end, suggests a lack of interest in engaging with ideas, the juice of theatre, effectively reducing the work to degrees of consumable satisfaction. This disappointing denial of the political imagination flattens the potential theatre has to challenge an audience in urgent times.
Thanks for your comment, Adam. I've responded, sort of, here.
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