Gut Responses

Today is a holiday for some and a Friday and sowhile I slave away here in Rorschach's Northern DC Office, I know that readership of this blog will drop off like a Sunday Matinee audience member at a large theater of your choosing somewhere in the City. Therefore, I will hold off on publishing our next Ask the Cast segment for Monday, when all of our readers will be bright eyed and bushy tailed.

MONSTER continues this weekend with performances tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. Last night we were once again joined by students from Peter Marks's Theater Class from GW. Apparently the students were appropriately appalled by the appalling bits and experienced a rather honest response when the heard the Monster ask why Dr. Frankenstein gave him a (redacted). I love the honesty that a younger audience can bring to a performance. Adults will sit there and act like nothing shocks them but younger audiences tend to let you know what the are really thinking. That makes for a pleasant change sometimes and should be embraced.

Sometimes you get so caught up in what a reviewer who has seen a thousand shows thinks instead of someone who may be coming to the theater for the first time feels in their guts. You forget what it was like the first time live theater made you feel sick, cry, jump in your seat or made you feel better about the world you live in.

Now on to Trey Graham and his review in the City Paper. Well the less said of that the better I suppose. Overall Trey seems to not be a big fan of the script and spends a lot of time comparing this production of MONSTER to its previous iteration at Olney. I would once again like to point out however that the design of the show and some of the performances get special note. Go here if you want the whole bloody run down (scroll to the middle of the page). And here is a choice bit about the design:

. . . Sivigny builds a little wooden avalanche for actors to scramble and scrap and posture (and electrocute one another) upon, while swoops of that fabric frame a playing space that bleeds nicely out into the dark-arched recesses of Rorschach’s high-ceilinged home in the former Calvary Methodist sanctuary. There’s fun to be had with shadowplay (courtesy of lighting designer David C. Ghatan) and with various thunderclaps and heartbeat noises (William Burns) . . . -Trey Graham- Washington City Paper