Thursday, November 10, 2005

Elysium

Charles Augustus Steen III
November 9, 2005; closes November 12, 2005 (or November 21, 2005, depending which announcement is correct)

Completely dumbstruck, jaw-dropped, hoping I’d been played the fool — that fourth-wall was two-way mirror for sick-but-scientific trial of theatre audiences. Onstage plot, character, emotion were suffocated by fidgety, inept delivery of dense, single-cadence line-for-rhyme opus rapped over numbing, omnipresent techno-track. If original “what-if?” was clever, it was stoned in execution.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greek Gods speaking in rhyme, together in Elysium until the end of time.

An intriguing concept which suffers from a curse, require the actors speak only in verse.

Actors swaying while speaking to a monotonous techno beat, oh how I wanted to flee my seat.

Performances uninspired and unbelievable, so that even the mighty Gods seemed so feeble.

The water of Lethe which ended the Gods reign would have spared me 90 minutes of pain.

Watching this production of Elysium, I wanted to cast my self into the abyss-ium.

Anonymous said...

oh, my, was it really that, um, tragic?

Anonymous said...

If you had done your homework; i.e., read some classical greek drama [Aeschylus, Sophocles, et al], your appreciation would be quite different. Enjoyment sometimes requires preparation; viz. education.