Yesterday was a solo-show double header, as I read Dan Hoyle's Tings Dey Happen while waiting for the house to open for George Wyhinny's solo show, Secrets of the Forest.
Tings had fantastic, vibrant characters set in the middle of what is pretty much a privatized sector of the country- privatized by oil companies. I loved the imagery it provoked and I would really like to see it onstage. Up to debate is the character of the Nigerian stage manager, who commented on the play but also seemed to force it along, at one point saying [paraphrased] "do the ending now". If it weren't for those moments, I really liked the fact that the sort of narrator-character was not only not Dan Hoyle, but a Nigerian commenting on the writings and performance of an American talking about Nigeria. Because one of the things I am personally so critical of is the honesty of the playwright to the work, the stage manager pulled it together for me, giving it a sense of (if not in fact) honesty. However, similar to Danny Hoch's Taking Over, which I saw at Berkeley Rep a few months ago, it seemed almost too short. Both plays are definitely aimed at the short attention span of today's teenagers, but I do think they both lack a cohesive plot with a beginning middle and end. I'm not sure what I really took away from Tings, other than these images of and snippets of feelings about Nigeria. In his essay preceding the play, he says he's trying to challenge the audience to a new political theatre experience. I'm not sure he did that. Maybe I just have very high expectations, but I did not feel that as a reader I was asked to take any big steps- the play never drew me in that far. Perhaps I have to see it.
On the other hand, George's senior project (at Stanford), Secrets of the Forest, was absolutely gorgeous. And extremely well done, both on the artistic staff's side and on George's side as playwright and sole actor. The show is about George's Ukrainian family during WWII, torn between Russia and Germany with little way out. It was a truly beautiful story that I was extremely touched by, which is why I hope George will continue to work on it and perhaps get it produced in another venue. However, there were two things that I really didn't like, and I intend to write George an e-mail about them because I otherwise really do believe this show could go somewhere.
1. The character of George- as himself, a 22 year old interviewing his grandmother and telling us about Ukraine, took me right out of the show. Every time he showed up. I would be getting chills one minute and the next the momentum would be gone because he would show up as the show's narrator. Young George was great, and I think it could actually work really well if we learned about Ukraine in Ukrainian school, like he did... or something. I'm not sure. But that character needs to go.
2. The show starts off with a song, and ends with lyrics. I wanted music at the end, either by switching and putting the lyrics at the beginning and the song at the end, or keeping the beginning and end the way they are but adding music, either sung or recorded, at the end, to say this is the end of the show. As mentioned in my last post I am really working on endings- and in this case I knew exactly what it needed.
I am off to take apart Caryl Churchill's Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?
Until tomorrow (I hope)!
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