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| THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Last Edit: sergius 07:18 am EST 12/19/22 | |
| Posted by: sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| Nothing about THE COLLABORATION convinces. As depicted here, Warhol is fastidious and dazed and Basquiat impetuous and doomed. And that’s about it. The play, such as it is, neither finds nor elaborates their characters or their relationship. Instead, there’s a lot of depthless talk between the two that feels like a sort of Wikipedia summary, all highlights and bullet points. The writing is facile, lazy even. And, most remarkably given the subjects, it’s dull. It seems impossible that either man was this tedious. The first act yawns on and the second pogos around frantically. Watching these actors strain to enliven such lackluster material was cringe inducing. Neither performance succeeds even nearly as incarnation or even basic impersonation. THE COLLABORATION goes nowhere loudly and very, very slowly. It’s a lumbering, emphatic forgery. | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Last Edit: Jeff73 04:47 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| Posted by: Jeff73 04:43 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Posted by: dreamawakening 03:33 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| that is all correct! | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Last Edit: singleticket 01:15 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| Posted by: singleticket 01:00 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| I think there are at least four musicals out there using the relationship as its source material. One is by Jon Batiste. I saw one a few years ago in a workshop (and I can't remember the name of the creator) that was messy and sprawling and frankly weird but that ended up settling for its theme on the vulnerabilities of two men fatally trapped inside their self-created personas. It worked as a dramatic trajectory even though the piece itself was a mess. | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Last Edit: donnyboy 12:54 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| Posted by: donnyboy 12:51 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| I saw it at the Young Vic in London and described it as less a play more a Wikipedia entry on stage, particularly act one. For a play about creative people it was almost devoid of its own genuine creativity - in the writing or the production. I though that actors did what they could with what little they had to work with but I was left with the feeling that they were rather more reliant on the wigs than the script to help them develop the characters. | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Last Edit: DistantDrumming 12:29 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| Posted by: DistantDrumming 12:27 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| I really enjoyed the Andy Warhol Diaries docuseries on Netflix. That said, the series, which used Warhol's actual diary entries as the main narration, left me with the impression that Warhol was not a great wordsmith. And, it appears, likely suffered from some type of mental illness that made him obsessive about certain people, preoccupations or themes. Obsessions are rarely fascinating to anyone but the person experiencing them, so I guess I'm not entirely surprised that tedium may be something experienced in a play about Warhol & Basquiat. Those qualities certainly made certain parts of the series sag. In *some* ways, perhaps the Warhol persona was more fascinating than the man himself. But, I still appreciated the facets of his personality and family history that the docuseries showcased. I imagine accomplishing the same in a play would be a lot more challenging. |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Posted by: hanon 12:37 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - DistantDrumming 12:27 pm EST 12/19/22 | |
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| Several decades ago, I played piano in a restaurant that Andy Warhol came I into. I never met the man, but everyone I talked to said that you needed to avoid getting into a conversation with him, because he was so incredibly tedious in person. | |
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| re: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday | |
| Posted by: Amiens 11:35 am EST 12/19/22 | |
| In reply to: THE COLLABORATION Yesterday - sergius 07:02 am EST 12/19/22 | |
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| As I said on an earlier thread about this production (which I saw at the Young Vic, not at MTC), how does one write a play about two of the most inarticulate celebrities/artists in the world? If nothing else, the play is true to their inability to have a meaningful conversation, but that doesn't make for very engaging theater. I wonder if the play might not have benefited from basing the other two characters on any of those NY types who were part of the Warhol circle back then to offer some insight and interact with Andy and Basquiat instead of a bland art dealer to the former and a fictional generic girlfriend to the latter. Christopher Makos, Bob Colacello, Kenny Scharf, Pat Hackett, et. al. |
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