On the list of comedy-killers, torrential downpours and sleepy matinee audiences should be placed right under cancer jokes. Unfortunately, the afternoon performance of BEAST I saw* was subject to both, and the "marauding adventure" felt less like a comedy and more like an incensed playwright's threatening letter to George W. Bush, a letter that happened to exist in the form of a play. Despite the usual fantastic performances by Lisa Joyce** and Logan Marshall-Green, playwright Michael Weller and director Jo Bonney never escape the clutches of the vindictive and angry political agenda of the play, and the characters are seen less as humans than they are as symbols and objects used to illustrate that agenda. Rather than appreciating the story unfolding onstage, I couldn't help but feel subjected to an onslaught of subtextual howls, including "the Iraq war is terrible!" and "we are abandoning our veterans!" and of course "George W. Bush is a total moron!", all of which are sadly true, but don't add up to good and engaging theater. Watching Marshall-Green and Corey Stoll's maimed, scarred, half-crazed soldiers fumble through a series of exchanges with blind prostitutes, backwards truck drivers, and desperate army widows is a lot to ask of an audience. If the point of such a difficult, upsetting journey is nothing more than a grotesque two-hour lambasting of the Bush administration, one has to wonder if there's a better way to incite change in the world.
*I do feel compelled to mention that the performance I was invited to of BEAST was a fairly early preview, and to my understanding, there were still some pretty major changes happening in the process. If they have since found their footing, it's possible that the BEAST onstage now at NYTW is an entirely different animal than the one I saw. However, my personal taste for political dramas is pretty specific, and I particularly dislike the feeling of being a captive audience for a playwright who is preaching to the choir about the evils of war, so it's hard for me to imagine feeling much differently, even if they really nailed it.
**Lisa Joyce is amazing. She really should be more famous by now. She is one of the most consistent and startlingly truthful young actresses today, in a class with Anna Paquin and a select few others. Watch out for this one.
Posts
