Play With a Knife
It isn’t always easy to review a good theatrical production. But it can be fun. It can be challenging in a rewarding way, it can be a chance to stretch a critic’s knowledge of the genre, the milieu, the playwright (if he or she has been around a while), the play itself (if it has a history. It allows the use of weighty or whimsical metaphors and allusions. To review a bad theatre experience, however, can be sheer hell. Not only does the critic have to sit through the thing, he has to afterward blast his brain with martinis and scotch back at the apartment, while his girlfriend thanks her lucky stars she didn’t go with him.
The hapless critic has to come to grips with what he has voluntarily put himself through and what is yet to come. You see he’s made a promise, of sorts, to find something redeeming in every production he reviews. He has nobly pledged, to no one in particular, to not be nasty or cruel or snide in his remarks. He has vowed, one might say, to be supportive and encouraging towards all theatrical endeavors, no matter how poorly conceived or executed.
Therefore, the tortured critic spends the next two days and nights struggling with his obligation to turn in a review, his reluctance to go too far in his disappointment, and his need to vent. He labors endlessly to find just the right words for the occasion, much as a playwright might do. And then he finally decides to release himself and commit his thoughts to the page, no matter how they may be received or interpreted.
Theatre Yawp’s production of Play With a Knife opened Saturday night at the charming Stages Theatre Center in Hollywood, on McCadden Place, right next to the Café des Artistes. I’m told the restaurant is nice, though I’ve yet to eat there.
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Theater: Stages Theatre Center, 1540 N. McCadden Place. in Hollywood.
Web Site: http://www.stagestheatrecenter.com/
Tickets: (323) 636-9661 or https://www.plays411.net/knife
Dates: Through May 31, 2009 - Saturday and Sunday at 8:00pm