| I saw it too, and felt similarly. |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 11:04 am EDT 05/31/18 |
| In reply to: re: The revival of 'Night Mother - Delvino 10:07 am EDT 05/31/18 |
|
I saw it near the ends of its run. It was the kind of performance that was so sparsely attended, front-of-house staff invited everyone from rear mezzanine down to front mezz and orchestra.
I very much agree that the production's biggest problem was the disparate acting styles of its leading ladies. Blethyn's theatricality and Falco's verism were a jarring combination that continually took me out of the alternate reality they were trying to create. It also exacerbated other problems in their casting, including their relative closeness in age: I don't remember if there's anything in the text indicating when Mama had Jesse, but, in this production, it seemed like she would have had to have been a teenage mother (in Kent!). They were not believable as mother and daughter in a play that revolves around the mother-daughter relationship. Blethyn's vocal work was high-pitched and shrill, to the extent that I found her so grating, I understood why Jesse would want to kill herself to escape her.
Maybe it was that cozy set, or end-of-run pushing, but I also felt like Mayer's staging tried to find TOO many moments of levity in the script. As soon as tension would build, it would quickly deflate. |
|
reply
|
|
| Previous: |
re: The revival of 'Night Mother - Delvino 10:07 am EDT 05/31/18 |
| Next: |
re: I saw it too, and felt similarly. - bobby2 02:00 am EDT 06/01/18 |
| Thread: |
|
