Review

I have to see plays and review them for my...shocker...Theater Reviewing class. So far we've seen three plays (almost one a weekend) and turned in one review. I really disliked the first play, a new one called "The Secret Lives of Losers," and so wrote a harsh review. A harsh but really funny review, which I think fulfills the two roles of a reviewer -- to inform and entertain.

I just got back my prof's grade on that review. He said it was "a really really good review" ...and gave me a 90/100. A 90? For a 'really really good review'? You've got to be kidding me. He made two minute corrections to it, said it was funny and that he laughed out loud, but all I got was a 90? This guy has some ridiculous standards. If my awesome review only got me a ninty (he said I should try to make it shorter (note: the length was 3-5 pages, and mine was just a hair over three) and that I should watch to make sure I'm not 'needlessly cruel.' I'm the first to admit my review was harsh, but the play was bad. Therefore, it isn't needlessly cruel.)

Arg.

At any rate, I've wanted to show y'all my (in my opinion EXCELLENT) review. Here it is:

Megan Mostyn-Brown’s The Secret Lives of Losers needs to stay a secret. I can’t imagine anyone who would be interested enough in the lives of losers to pay to see this production.
This play is intended to be “one girl’s journey on the road to realizing that potential has an expiration date and if…we don’t take the plunge…we might miss out on who we really are meant to be,” according to the note from the playwright in the playbook. This is a story about…well, a bunch of losers. Neely, our hero if we could call her that, is a 19-year-old clerk at a local Amoco with kleptomaniac tendencies. She is burdened with Nelson, her 15-year-old brother who is fiercely addicted to methamphetamines and ‘Wheel of Fortune.” Their parents are both completely out of the picture; her father died and her mother is ‘finding herself’ in Bolivia, leaving Neely struggling to keep Nelson and herself fed. She finds some comfort in her best friend Alex, a small-time pot dealer with a young baby. Baby Sophie was abandoned with Alex while her mother attends college, leaving Alex constantly depressed.
But things go from interminably boring to merely bland, as —Alex becomes interested in talkative and overly peppy Sylvia, as Neely discovers the new cop in town has taken an interest in her, and as Nelson starts lighting things on fire. The plot trudges along while DJ, the police officer, encourages Neely to break out of her sickening life and look for something better. He does this by giving her, of all things, a crawfish as a pet – a bottom-feeder as low and nearly as worthless as Neely. Neely is eventually moved to a spiritless change of sorts, though what follows just seemed confusing.
When it ended, the audience didn’t believe what they were seeing qualified as a closing, the halting, half-hearted applause only beginning when the actors tipped for their bow. It’s impressive, frankly, that the audience was awake enough to remember to applaud at all. In trying to describe it, I find myself searching for synonyms for ‘boring.’ I’m not sure there are enough for this humdrum play. Losers might be successful with fans of poor-quality reality TV shows like Cheaters, but then again, that particular audience might find they have too much in common with the characters of this play and feel repulsed by the blandness of their own lives. This play is as stimulating as babysitting Sophie, who was played by a plastic doll in a car seat.
The problems with this play begin with the playwright, who called herself a “burnt-out actor.” What an enlightened point to begin a writing career. This play appears to be an attempt at a more depressing and less irreverent Napoleon Dynamite or Clerks. Unfortunately for Mostyn-Brown, those works look like Shakespeare compared to her play. The relationship between teenaged Neely and the 29-year-old DJ is strained at best, uncomfortable at least. Mostyn-Brown seems to mistake the effects of crystal meth for those of weed – meth suppresses hunger, leaving the user emaciated. Mostyn-Brown has Nelson always craving Corn Nuts. This is sloppy work for a playwright, particularly when the play is performed in the former meth capital of the country; thanks to the Internet, I found the effects of crystal meth in less than five minutes. But the biggest flaw in the script is the complete lack of motivation, which is why the audience was uncertain at the close – without a point, it is hard to know when the play is over. Mostyn-Brown also has a penchant for cussing; the play begins with the f-bomb, which is appropriate, considering how much of a bomb this play was.
For all of my complaints about the script, however, director Meredith McDonough managed to pull the story together. The actors were all dressed appropriately, particularly the neon-favoring Sylvia – not that this was a challenge; the costume design only required a trip to WalMart. McDonough had the actors doing all of the set changes in character, which was a refreshing and interesting choice. The set design was clever in the low-budget but effective spinning set pieces, enabling the actors to easily and swiftly move the production from an outdoor park to the inside of Neely’s house. McDonough also has music during the set changes to prepare the audience for the tone of the next scene; my personal favorite was what I’ll call “Club Fortune,” a hard-rock mix of the Wheel of Fortune intro. McDonough also influenced the stage design that left the secretive treasure closet always on stage. When said closet is opened to reveal Neely’s stash of stolen items, the clutter is backlit with purple, adding a level of sophistication missing from the story.
But all of McDonough’s directing could not save actress Anna Safar from hanging herself with her inability to correctly play Neely. Despite Mostyn-Brown’s other writing flaws, she wrote clever sarcasm, which Safar butchered with an awful sense of timing and a huge idiotic grin. In the hierarchy of actors, the plastic crawfish is above Safar. At least the crawfish portrayed its part correctly. Thanks to Safar, Neely comes across not as the lost, sarcastic clerk that Mostyn-Brown wrote, but as an inane child.
Fortunately the other actors don’t let themselves be utterly dragged down by Safar. TJ Chasteen is brilliant and even manages to be riveting as the depressed, static Alex – one almost believes that is how he actually lives. Jason Reynolds makes Nelson a realistic and even fun drug addict, while Patrick Du Laney plays a completely believable drifting small-town officer. These three make the play almost bearable. But then Angela Cristantello walks on stage as overly peppy Sylvia, and one is reminded of all the reasons to hate it. Cristantello is obviously uncomfortable with the character, and so overdoes an already overwrought character. If she would relax a little and stop striving to convince the audience that she isn’t actually as irritating as Sylvia, we might believe her. As it was, I just wanted her to get off the stage -- which wasn’t an unfamiliar thought during the hour and a half I sat through the production. But what more can one really expect? This play about losers is, in the end, the biggest loser.