The+Long+Christmas+Ride+Home+Critique+-+David+Aziz

David Aziz Farley Richmond Intro to Dramatic Arts 4 February 2017 Critique of “The Long Christmas Ride Home”

The play I will be critiquing is “The Long Christmas Ride Home” by the playwright Paula Vogel. The play was performed in the Seney Stovall Chapel in Athens, Georgia by the theatre department at the University of Georgia. The Seney Stovall Chapel is in the outskirts of the town and a pretty small proscenium theatre. The chapel seats 240 people, so it is a little bit on the smaller side than I was initially expecting. As I walked into the front of the chapel, there is a very small entry room and then immediately behind this room was the entire theatre. The proscenium style worked quite well in this play due to the light setup they had to work with. The many actors had to constantly get on and off stage easily, and this would have only worked on this type of stage. The stage was set up in a way that there were multiple curtains covering the back edges of the stage. There were also 3 large panels that had screen projections on them, that the lighting crew could change at any time during the play. I have never seen a set design with this type of projection system, and I thought it was quite interesting. Occasionally during the play, the lighting crew attempted to change the projections, but I felt like it didn’t really work well with what was happening on the stage. An example of this was when the son was dying and bleeding, on the projections, there were drops of coloring. They used multiple different colors and it did not quite fit well with what was happening. The only color that would make sense in that situation would be the color red. Overall my experience in this theatre was positive and I had no trouble hearing the actors on stage since I sat directly in the middle section.

The next thing that I found very well done during this play was the sound. The percussionist in the play really brought the entire play together for me. I come from a percussion background since I had been in a band before and played percussion instruments. The small details of the sound were what really changed this play from a good play to a great play. I spend a large chunk of my time just exploring all the different sounds the percussionist could make with such few instruments. Without the percussion element in the play, the play would not have come across to me as strong as it might have. Since there were very minimal props on the stage, during the scenes where the kids were trying to knock on their friends doors, there was no way to convey that without the percussionist. On the other hand the music was a little bit too loud and obnoxious for my liking. Whenever it switched over to one of the children as adults, the music was very loud and unnecessary. The majority of the time the music played a big impact on how I watched the play though. There were only very few moments where I was overwhelmed and did not like it. The sound in this play is what made it such a special play. The knocks of doors, the kicking of the actors, the slaps, the banging, and all the micro sounds that were going on really elevated the play to the next level.

The next element that really amazed me about this play is the strength of the actors in their roles. Since this was the first play I have ever been to in my college career, I was not quite sure what I was expecting regarding the actors. The actors really blew me away with how well they knew their lines and how confident they were on stage. They owned the stage and made all the correct moves without hesitation. They all spoke very clearly and I could understand every single word they said on stage without microphones. This is a very key element in all plays that needs to be perfect and they executed it very well. The strongest actors on the stage were the two parents. They really connected to me while I was watching and I felt like they were really the characters. They took on the role perfectly and even looked as if they were meant for the roles. The casting in this play was well executed because I felt like every person on the stage fit their roles very well. There were a few errors as I was watching, such as one of the actors saying a line from someone else. It was very interesting how they used the actors to fulfill different roles in the play as well. At some moments, the actor who played the priest of the church, also was the narrator of some specific scenes. The playwright/director made an interesting decision by revealing the actors who were controlling the puppets and narrating. Compared to a traditional play, the actors are supposed to fulfill one role and never show the puppeteers. It was a clever twist to use the actors that played the children as the puppeteers in the earlier portion of the play. I took notes on who was controlling what puppet based on their hair sticking out of their masks, and it ended up being the same actors who played the older children later in the play. My overall critique of the actors during the play is that they were very well prepared and played their roles extremely well. They even included an element of humor to their characters which was a clever little detail that appealed to their audience very well. The director and production crew understood their audience was going to be college student based and included some humor that would appeal to their audience.

The puppets of the play caught me very off guard when they first pulled them out from behind the curtain. I did some research of the play before I had watched it, and the play usually has more lifelike puppets. The puppets that this play had, looked almost scary. They had pitch black eyes and very cartoon-like features on their cheeks and hair. I did not find the puppets to be visually appealing and childlike. The puppets reminded me more of demonic toys with their very black hair and black eyes. Puppets in this play were mandatory, but I wish the production and design crew could make more lifelike children as the puppets. It did not really connect to me that they were children. Another detail that I did not find quite accurate is that the boy puppet was smaller than the youngest sister puppet. They were not very accurate in the size of puppets compared to the age of the characters in the play. The youngest and oldest sister puppets were the same size, so it was confusing at times. Overall, the puppets added a great point of view to the play, but the execution in the design of the puppets themselves was not up to par with the rest of the play. This is the largest feature of the play, and it was not perfect which was very disappointing to me.

I really enjoyed “The Long Christmas Ride Home.” It was extremely well executed in the sound and stage set up. There was some lacking in the design of the puppets themselves but the actors who played as these children were very well suited for their roles. The casting of the actors was well done and it felt like they were meant for those roles. The projection screens and background music was a little bit dirty at time and loud, but other than that, the play was a very large success and was great to watch.There were no problems in hearing since the proscenium was quite small. The director added some humor to play that appealed to the younger audience which amplified the performance and kept the audience engaged in the play at all times. I was very pleased with this play and would love to see it again and how other directors may play around with the concepts in the play.