Round Rock

My overall impression

I checked this out because I love westerns in any form. To their credit, Round Rock was a truly strong effort from the actors. However the constant breaking up of scenes stole from their momentum. These scene breaks might have worked in a film, but this was a play and as soon as the story might be getting somewhere the scene would end and the audience would have to wait in the dark for a couple minutes while they switched locations…Sorta jarring. The direction also seemed a bit rushed as if they were speeding so fast through their lines that they weren’t permitted to milk any moments. The is was most apparent during the last scene where I could have used a little more air in the scene to feel the moments.
The actors spoke in Western vernacular with such ease that when they sped up I lost a good 35% of the slangy words. This may have been the directors intention to make it more “natural” but that shouldn’t come at the cost of the story, and there were things I just plain missed.
All in all I recognize that this could not have been an easy play to mount and I commend it’s production team and writer. There certainly isn’t enough shows like this around, I only wish it had tried to be less like a film and more like a play.