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re: creepy narrators

Posted by: Guillaume 04:21 pm EST 01/18/15
In reply to: re: "Diner" last night - Lroay 02:56 pm EST 01/18/15

I'm trying to think of shows wherein the use of a narrator was effective and more important, necessary.

Whenever the curtain goes up and I see a narrator I immediately get a sinking feeling that the writers were unable to find a compelling reason and fresh way to tell their story and we're going to have an evening of the same old same old.

On the other hand, I thought the narrator in Stoppard's Travesties worked extremely well, as an example of a show that needs the narrator in order to tick.


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re: creepy narrators

Posted by: perfectlyfrank 07:31 pm EST 01/18/15
In reply to: re: creepy narrators - Guillaume 04:21 pm EST 01/18/15

Narrators can be extremely effective. What would Our Town or The Fantasticks be without them?


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re: creepy narrators

Posted by: BruceinIthaca 11:55 pm EST 01/18/15
In reply to: re: creepy narrators - perfectlyfrank 07:31 pm EST 01/18/15

Not to mention "Into the Woods." I missed him in the film, though I understand the choice they made--having an on-screen narrator would have broken any sense of the "filmic" as they conceived of it. And the solution seemed to me a good and touching choice.


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re: creepy narrators

Posted by: BruceinIthaca 06:17 pm EST 01/18/15
In reply to: re: creepy narrators - Guillaume 04:21 pm EST 01/18/15

I think the narrative in The Grapes of Wrath was very effective, and, in a very different way, the use of the Stage Manager and Sabina in Wilder's plays. Also, in A View from the Bridge.

I don't think it's lazy at all, but I think it shifts the mode of the performance from dramatic to epic--it makes it more like hearing a novel, where we are aware of the presence of different points in time.


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