CM+Aunt+Dan+Critique

Chris Muthig April 5, 2011 THEA2100 Dr. Richmond // Aunt Dan and Lemon // Critique 1. The one thing I most noted about // Aunt Dan and Lemon // was Lemon’s ability to be completely sincere in her beliefs. Lemon brings up ideas, especially her ideas about the Nazis, that it seems nearly no human being should be able to genuinely agree with. However, the actor playing Lemon, as has been said, act as her lawyer. This was performed beautifully in the production. The look on Lemon’s face showed that she truly believed what she was saying, which made me respect Lemon. Having read these lines, I felt how uncomfortable the writer was trying to make the audience, but seeing Lemon explain it to me, I must say I didn’t agree, but I had a great amount of respect that someone felt so sure of their beliefs, even knowing others didn’t agree. 2. The body language of the actors spoke a great deal to me during the performance. The character that comes to mind best would be Lemon’s mother. Often in a position of being the weaker person in the conversation, her words had little strength and meaning behind them, which mean her body language had to. She used her hands, curling the end of her dress nervously or resting them on her legs uncomfortably, to show exactly how she felt during her conversations with Dan, when Dan wouldn’t let her verbally communicate these feelings. 3. The lighting created the feeling of a memory. Memories never are complete, and // Aunt Dan and Lemon // used primarily directly overhead light during these memory scenes to create this aspect. It created shadows on faces that made it difficult to see facial features unfortunately, but also gave the feeling of a memory. Not being able to see a person’s face completely, or only noting certain features of it are common in memories, and in these scenes. 4. The set was simple, but elegant. The table was set behind Lemon’s armchair to show that everything that happened there was towards the back of her mind, and she had to search and find it. The table was also efficiently used to create a bar, two bedrooms, a garden and more. I am particularly a fan of imagining a scene for myself as it brings me more into the play, so this set worked well for me. 5. The transition from memory to reality was so smooth. In several scenes, the people that Aunt Dan once told Lemon about, pull up a chair right next to Lemon’s armchair and begin having the conversation with Lemon. This idea is fantastic. These people that she has never met are so real to Lemon that she imagines herself hearing the stories from them and not Aunt Dan. 

1. Lemon’s performance was genuine and difficult, but her hand gestures distracted me greatly. Doing several very long monologues is not easy especially when you are simply sitting in an armchair, but Lemon used the same hand gestures over and over again that did not add to her story. Most of the time these gestures seemed to be out of habit of the actor rather than an attempt to add to the performance. I really began to notice this when another viewer’s head obstructed my view of Lemon’s hands and all I could see was her face. This made her performance wonderful and I found myself positioning my head so that it would continue to happen throughout the play. 2. My least favorite scene of the entire performance was the death scene. I cannot say whether or not someone being strangled would react in such a way. Perhaps they would, but I know the actor’s performance as he was strangled was too much for him to handle. This was evident when after he was supposed to be dead, in fact as Mindy said he was dead, I could see his chest heaving trying to catch his breath. I would say his ability to control his breath and really seem dead, when he is center stage with full light emphasizing him, is more important than any slightly other the top movements when he is being strangled. 3. Dan is a young woman of great intellect who is a professor, but often I don’t think her expressions resembled that. Often, the author creates this characteristic in Dan. However, in one scene, when Dan just stares at Lemon’s mother, she is left mouth agape, with an expression that reminds me of a high school girl attempting to make a point. As a person who has received looks of disbelief from professors, I know that this is not how a professor would look at a person they feel is being dumb. While these expressions only happened a few times, when they did, it made me forgot who Dan was and was equivalent to the actor breaking character for me.