Bias
I missed yesterday because I was furiously trying to get some urgent tasks taken care of in time to go home and grab a nap before the play. I mostly failed in that endeavor. I say mostly because after getting everything urgent out of the way and making sure I was completely ready to go to the play I laid down (wearing my coat, with the tickets in my pocket, ready to jump up and walk straight to the car) and rested for about 15 minutes.
The play was a mixed bag. My wife didn't like it because she felt no emotional connection to any of the characters. I thought it brought up some interesting points and that the dialogue was well written, but in the end I thought I'd be the victim of a bait and switch. The Wikipedia entry for the play says it:
...concerns the relationship between an American professor at Yale University who was a proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and her British fiancé's father, a habitual womanizer who is opposed to it.
So I went in hoping for a lively discussion where both sides of that very thorny issue went at it. Instead it ended up as two hippies (one actual, one sort of a post-hippie) arguing one very limited aspect of the question while basically agreeing on 95% of the issues.
Now I confess this is a pet peeve of mine. I really feel that there's a dearth of intelligent conservatives in contemporary media/art, so I feel the disappointment keenly when I go into something hoping to find one of these rare creatures only to encounter the same fauna I always see. I also confess that I may be expecting a level of balance from the play which was never intended by the playwright, but I also have this tiny, vague but persistent suspicion that from his myopic standpoint the play was balanced, that he covered what he felt was the entire reasonable spectrum of opinions and that everything else was just insanity...
Insanity, now there's something I can get behind
The play was a mixed bag. My wife didn't like it because she felt no emotional connection to any of the characters. I thought it brought up some interesting points and that the dialogue was well written, but in the end I thought I'd be the victim of a bait and switch. The Wikipedia entry for the play says it:
...concerns the relationship between an American professor at Yale University who was a proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and her British fiancé's father, a habitual womanizer who is opposed to it.
So I went in hoping for a lively discussion where both sides of that very thorny issue went at it. Instead it ended up as two hippies (one actual, one sort of a post-hippie) arguing one very limited aspect of the question while basically agreeing on 95% of the issues.
Now I confess this is a pet peeve of mine. I really feel that there's a dearth of intelligent conservatives in contemporary media/art, so I feel the disappointment keenly when I go into something hoping to find one of these rare creatures only to encounter the same fauna I always see. I also confess that I may be expecting a level of balance from the play which was never intended by the playwright, but I also have this tiny, vague but persistent suspicion that from his myopic standpoint the play was balanced, that he covered what he felt was the entire reasonable spectrum of opinions and that everything else was just insanity...
Insanity, now there's something I can get behind
posted by DireKobold at 12:35 PM
1 Comments:
I also saw the play, and I do agree that is wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. I don't think there was enough character development to care about any of them, but I must say I enjoyed the leading lady's performance. I was impressed with the way she was able to rattle all of her dialog off and sound like she actually meant it and was passionate about what she was saying. I also enjoyed her stage presence. She was interesting to watch and some of the poses she struck were almost model-esque. That at least made it a bit more entertaining.
Post a Comment
<< Home