Something New, Something Old

It was a “long” night last night with a double bill by Faithworks.
 

I found the 1st play “Getting Married with Dad Dead Next Door” a tad draggy, such that I failed to find a strong message coming through to me (or it got blurred out). Jeremy commented that it’s surprising since I’m usually quite perceptive…maybe I was tired…it was a bit long at around 75min (for a double bill). But I did deduce that the mother knew that the father was dead already, right at the beginning of the play. Maybe because I was paying specific attention to what was said and the mannerisms displayed/acted to deduce it, by virtue of knowing already that there’s a dead dad. But this of course, as Jeremy said, meant that there was no element of “suspense” for me. Maybe this might have reduced the appreciation of the play and caused me to feel it was a bit long. I kept wondering when it will finally come to the point where all of them would discover that actually, the rest of the family already knew that the father was dead, which I expected would be the climax of the show. Unfortunately, the climax didn’t last long. Maybe a little shortening of the post-discovery might have brought it to a more impactful close. Generally, in my personal opinion, the play was nicely structured, the way the scenes changed for each set of characters, but probably needs some tightening up.
 

As for the 2nd play “The Bench“, it wasn’t exactly a play, as in with a main storyline or theme, but more of snippets of happenings around a bench in a park. People come, people go. They did it in a cyclical manner, i.e. about things happening one day at the bench, then another day of happenings starts, with some new characters introduced into the existing characters’ own mini-stories, or more “development” of relationships and about the characters’ lives. I was getting concerned at where this pattern would lead us, and was a little expectant of whether these characters will finally meet at some point (which I think would have brought it to an interesting juncture), but that didn’t happen. The more interesting part came when a geeky guy came out in the 2nd part, providing much comic relief. But it was predictable he would meet the lonely girl and something would develop from there. Both Jeremy and I felt this set-up might have been more suited for film then stage.