Altarcations

My overall impression

“If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is for the play to be heard, then you must conjure its sound from it. This demands many deliberate actions and the result may have great simplicity. However, setting out to ‘be simple’ can be quite negative, an easy evasion of the exacting steps to the simple answer.

Deadliness always brings us back to repetition: the deadly director uses old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects, stock beginnings to scenes, stock ends; and this applies equally to his partners, the designers and composers, if they do not start each time afresh from the void, the desert and the true question – why clothes at all, why music, what for?" -Peter Brook

I was reminded of this during one of the unnecessary, awkward transitions between scenes. And the gun. Oh, the gun. Wow…this was a tough one. The actors were largely quite good, and I hope they don’t read this. It was honestly difficult seeing them trying to navigate the script and staging. But I’ll get to that.

Somehow the script managed to try and humanize child molesting priests by letting the audience in on backroom conversations and then, by the end, shift them into characters that might as well be from some 1800’s melodrama, screaming to the heavens on their knees. The other characters became equally stock, at least by today’s standards. (I don’t think it was artistically intentional.) I really didn’t understand the point of the piece, though there were some interesting exposure of church hypocrisy. There were also some funny moments, and it made me think the playwright might be better suited for comedy.

The problem was the overall direction. Technical choices were amateurish and awkward. There were loooong (and I think often unnecessary) scene transitions where two young men in black casually came out and moved a few things around. The lighting and sound choices were thin. There were random videos of a woman talking about the church, which was jarring. It reminded me a bit of high school theatre, aside from the quality of the actors. (The kid was a little stiff.)

I think Steve Julian has potential as a playwright, but this one was not ready for an audience.