Things have been crazy the last few days, particularly yesterday.
Every once in a while I like to do the following...
Wake up
Drive to New York City
See a show
See friends
See another show
See more friends
Drive home and try not to fall asleep...thank you MONSTER energy drinks.
It's kind of crazy but I like getting the double-dose of NYC theatre.
Yesterday was one of those days.
The first show I saw was One Man Two Guvnors. It's a modern adaptation of an old commedia dell'arte play called The Servant of Two Masters. I was actually in Servant out at Utah Shakes, so I knew the original well. I also spent last summer doing commedia in Italy so I know a decent amout about that. The show was right up my alley. It stars James Corden who, on Sunday night, won the Tony for Best Actor. There's a lot that I could talk about regarding this show but in terms of the blog... I just wanted to point out this....
Sunday was the Tony's.
Sunday Night = Crazy Tony parties.
Monday = Try to recover from crazy Tony parties.
Tuesday= Only one show... in the evening... ok... still recovering.
Wednesday=Uh-oh, two shows including the Wednesday Matinee.
The first half was very high energy but then you could see that the cast, as a whole, didn't have the energy to pull off the 2nd half at the same level. A+ first half... B- second half. I felt like I got jipped a bit out of a better 2nd half because they weren't up to it. I didn't pay for them to not be up to it. So, I go back to conditioning. You've got to be in good enough shape and you've got to take care of yourself enough to pull off the show you are doing. They seemed to just "get through" the 2nd half.
Maybe I am reading it wrong... maybe they were sick or whatever. I know what it is to just "get through" a performance. But, as I have said before, nobody cares... we just want a good show. Especially if the ticket was over 100 bucks.
Anyway...
Then I went and saw my friend Justine in the production of Shakespeare's As You Like It by the Public Theatre in Central Park. All sorts of big names involved in this one, Director Dan Sullivan, Music by STEVE MARTIN (wild and crazy), Oliver Platt was in the cast... blah blah blah.
The show was really quite good. It's a huge theatre space that seats around 1900 people and it was great to see a really good production of Shakespeare right before I go into my own rehearsals. This cast was full of good actors... some were successful, and some, I thought, weren't. It was good to sit there and analyze what was working both in terms of delivering the lines and in terms of what works movement-wise in a space that size, since the space I will be working in is also large.
One thing that I found wonderful was that, some of these lines are so good, that sometimes all the actor needed to do was stand and deliver. No crazy movement... no raging emotion... the words are enough. It's hard to trust that but hell... we as an audience just want to have these great lines delivered to us in a way that we can understand them. There were great moments of simplicity in this play and that was a good reminder for me as I move into rehearsals.
And overall... seeing good theatre (and both of these shows I would definitely recommend to people) just inspires me to want to make good theatre... want to put in extra time... work harder...
It also reminds me once again that, having the opportunity to share a great story with an audience is a real gift and a real priviledge. And the odds are that I probably won't ever do this role again... possible this show again... and I need to go all out.
First rehearsal in 10 days. Time to start double-timing it.
Shout out to Justine for her great work in As You Like It!
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