![]() The good news is that everyone came back after the intermission. Friday night, for some reason, it was split in two with a 15 minute intermission. We have to feel something.Īllen’s play, now almost 40 years old, was written and is most often performed as a one-act. But among those things, perhaps the most important of all, is that the actors have to flesh out the characters who we have some visceral reaction to them. From a totally incredulous Jewish girl from West Allis, played by Liz Getschow, to a manic Trichinosis played by Max Williamson, the entire cast seemed like a parade of cardboard cutouts.Īny good comedy demands several things. While Kietzman and Dolan set a low bar, the rest of the cast was unable to climb over it. It was almost as if their arms had a life of their own, independent of anything else. No matter what the script had them say, no matter where they were standing, every line seemed to be accompanied by two arms, stretched out to the side, palms up. The two main characters, Hepatitis played by Tim Kietzman and Diabetes, played by Joe Dolan, gave new meaning to the word "overacting."īoth of them monopolized the early part of this play, and the main thing that struck me was how unconnected to anything their arms were. Stephanie Graham, making her directorial debut with this play, got virtually no help from the cast. Francis, Ma Fischer’s, Jo-Cat’s and Wisconsin Avenue drizzled throughout the production, an obvious attempt to rip laughs out of an audience. To me, they were cheap and sophomoric. The play was dotted with references to Milwaukee, with things like Cudahy, St. That precision was significantly missing Friday night. Some people think it’s Allen’s take on the big questions of life, including the meaning of God.Ī play like this needs precision from a director and from the cast. ![]() ![]() This is a very complex play, difficult to understand and hard to appreciate. Two ancient Greeks – Hepatitis, a playwright, and Diabetes, an actor – are searching for an ending to a play that is going to be in a contest.įrom there, the play wanders through an unconnected series of scenes and events. But the one I saw Friday night left me almost totally without so much as a grin, much less an outright laugh. This may well be a very funny play, somewhere. ![]() He is widely praised for his films, he is a curiosity for his sometimes bizarre personal life and he is a test for anyone to either reanalyze or make come alive.Īnd it has proved very difficult for the cast at Soulstice Theatre to get a handle on Allen’s play "God," which opened Friday night. Comedy is hard to make come alive on a stage, and the comedy of Woody Allen can be especially difficult. You can’t pigeonhole the man who many believe, as do I, is a genius filmmaker. ![]()
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