aaMustGoOn

//__Must Go On__// Abby Amato

//Must Go On// is a highly ambitious farce directed and written by John Kundert-Gibbs. The play centers on a failing news program located in Atlanta. The show is made up of many characters that you have seen before, the egotistical news anchor, the ambitious news woman, the flamboyant make-up artist, the over the top Australian and a whole lot more. The premise of the play is two-fold, on one layer it displays how these stereotypical characters would entertainingly operate in disastrous, real-world scenario, and on another level, it tried to implement an incredibly technical, original way of staging and utilizing technology. There were some positive aspects of the play such as the comedic stylings of the actors Cole Earnest and Nathan Cowling, as well as the detailed set. Some of the aspects that did not translate well were the use of the television to connect two stages, the over the top fight scenes and the seeming lack of plot. The idea behind the play was creative and had the potential to be fun and lighthearted, but as often seen with a complicated, novel way of presenting something it became overdone and contrived, while also being very hard to follow.

The acting performed by Cole Earnest and Nathan Cowling was to me the most memorable of the entire cast. They fully committed to their roles. Nathan Cowling’s character, Sam, seemed to be at the center of all the action in the play and often voiced the way the audience was feeling (comically annoyed by Brooke’s stupidity, perplexed and slightly judgmental towards the strange guests, etc.). Usually if the audience was feeling it, Sam would allude to it not so subtly on stage. Cole Earnest, playing the fake Aussie, was hilarious and seemed incredibly at ease using his accent and delivering his lines. While other actors seemed to struggle with delivering their lines smoothly (such as the actress playing Gwen), Cole Earnest seemed to know his lines very well and delivered his Aussie-centric lines with relative ease, making it easier to watch and believe. Both seemed to be in command of their lines and who their character was, this seemed to pose a problem for some of the other actors, most notably the character Gwen. This could be due to a lack of fleshing out the character in the script or more due to the actor not being fully comfortable with her lines yet. Nathan Cowling appeared to be filling in for awkward pauses with other actors especially during his scenes with Gwen in the beginning while he was preparing her for the show.

The set of //Must Go on// was quiet impressive. We had seen the beginning construction when touring the theater building earlier in the semester and the transformation was astounding. The green room set looked highly realistic and was based in the realism style of making the set appear as close to real life as possible. They did a good job of presenting a set that was consistent with how the script presented the limited financial situation the show found itself in. The set looked as if the building had probably been built in the 60’s, but had been decorated in the 80’s and had not been touched since, which is highly believable. The news program set was also done in a realistic sense in a separate room. They created a small space where the main two hosts take up much of the space, and at least two other spaces that accommodated the needs of the guests that visited the set. //Must Go On//, according to Austin K. Butler, the lighting designer, posed the interesting feature of how to light two very different sets that are not on the same stage. The lighting on the greenroom stage was more naturalistic, how you would normally find light t o be indoors and throughout a day. The lighting on the news set stage was more obvious to draw attention to the news anchors, as it would be on a real news program.

Splitting the set between two different rooms was an interesting choice to make. It allowed for a more realistic feel for how it would be on a television show that would have a strong division between the ‘behind the scenes’ and what the television audience would see. While providing realism, it also provided a large amount of confusion and distraction to the play. It made it hard to focus on any one point in the play. Also the split stages seemed to create major problems for the beat of delivering lines. Many of the scenes were characterized by awkward stop-and-start speaking, with the cast in the greenroom set having to speak around the cast that was on the screen that was hooked up to the news room. It made it hard to follow the separate conversations and definitely made the conversations have uncomfortable pauses. As an audience member it also made it very difficult to choose which conversation to focus on since everything presented was important to the plot.

A major feature of the split sets and television screen that in my opinion really did not work well was the major fight scene right before intermission. This was completely overwhelming. Not only were the actors in the greenroom set that was placed in an intimately small theater screaming incredibly loudly, so were the cast members in the news room that was being fed in by the television. This caused an overload. I know this probably was designed to make us feel just how crazy and hectic the cast was feeling and to put us right in the action, but it honestly made me want to leave the room. The audience had no idea where to focus. There were so many subplots being thrown around in this moment, like Brooke and Ruby have a lovers’ quarrel, Sam and Phyllis squaring off, and Bill, Eustace, Brick, and Gwen screaming about opossums, that I had no idea where to look and felt like I was missing out when only being able to put attention on one at a time when they were all occurring simultaneously. Many audience members remarked upon how the fight scene made them very uncomfortable and some even left after intermission in fear of being subjected to that again. I can see that the director was probably trying to really emphasize just how much the show had sunk into stress and histrionics, but it proved to be too overwhelming for the audience in that small space and would have benefited from either doing that scene on a larger stage with a bigger separation between the audience and the actors or toning down the screaming. The scene was entirely too long and caused many of the audience members to lose their interest.

The plot of the play also seemed stagnant to me. I think the problems of the plot went beyond the script; it was not necessarily what the actors were saying, it was that the play never really seemed to progress and while there was the over-arching plot development of the show being canceled, it never seemed to move on from that and various petty arguments. It took the cast about half of the first act to all get on board with knowing the show was going to be canceled. Then the play took a turn for rancorous and focused on a least a half dozen small fights between different members of the cast. I thought the slight focus on sexuality to be confusing. I could not tell if the director had included this for the shock factor, for comic relief, or to make a statement about gay issues. This took up large portions of the play, especially the fight between Ruby and Brooke, but it sort of seemed highly unbelievable. There also did not seem to be any movement forward in the plot once everyone found out about the show being canceled. It just seemed to seem to pool around this and pretty much halted any further action. I thought an inordinate amount of time was spent on the scene where they try to get out of Brook what the boss had told her the fate of the show was and the fight scene, the latter did not even get resolved or push the plot along. The plot picked up a little in the second half with less fighting and the admission that the show would not in fact be canceled, but I honestly do not think this play had enough material in it to warrant two halves and an intermission.

This play was plagued by some issues concerning a split stage, such as timing, flow, and rhythm as well as too much emphasis on screaming and split attention, but it did have some success in how the set was designed and the overall performance of the actors. I believe that if they could have used a different space to stage the play, with more room between the audience and the cast as well as less emphasis on fighting and the split staging, then maybe the play could translate better.