We went downtown around 3:00 am and waited all night in camp chairs. There was already someone there, but nothing happened other than our napping and reading.
As for the production, we thought it was awful. Nichols did his usual job of letting the actors do whatever they wanted rather than building a coherent ensemble, so there were about eight or nine different plays up there. Some of them (Walken's and Kline's) were interesting. Some (Hoffman's and Portman's) were not. Some were just bizarre -- Streep's somersault reeked of something an actor would do in the rehearsal room that someone else thought was nifty, so it was kept, in spite of it being absolutely antithetical to the character. I'm not a fan of the translation, either, so that didn't help. The most notable part of the evening was a brief rain delay in Act Two, which Kline ad-libbed a reference to later.
I wouldn't call it a disaster, but it was in the same area code.
(The best production of the play I've ever seen was in the 80s at La Jolla. Phoebe Cates remains the only actor I've ever seen who was able to nail all the aspects of Nina. Just stunning.) |
