| The Band's Visit, A Study in Boredom | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 12:20 am EST 01/05/18 | |
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| Left this show disappointed, and a bit surprised at the enthusiasm around me. I really enjoyed the first half hour or so, but I felt like it never became more than its initial promise of a boring town where nothing happens. Small people live small lives, facing small, inconsequential struggles which aren't enough to motivate full songs. The people are interesting, but they're never much more than stoic and unfulfilled, and there's never a moment of transcendence or discovery. I might have gone along with that if it had been a bit more cheerful, but it falls into a key of sad and listless early in the night and never quite gets out of it. As we got into the long middle, I missed the humor of the early song, "Welcome to Nowhere", which summed up the setting in words that, alas, came to be true of the show itself: boring, barren, bland, basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah". The one word from the lyric I leave out is "bullshit", because even as the show is dull, it's well-intentioned and respectful. Indeed, its earnestness was part of what bored me the most, even as it was also the main charm to be found in everyone's hard work. Brantley, of course, found it magnificent. It's just the sort of empty vessel of faux-smartness that makes him feel fulfilled. I was surprised, though, to hear someone afterward talking about it as a rare example of the mature, adult musical. For me, it was a musical manque, a small gesture pointing to the much bigger thing happening in a different theater at a different show. |
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