I entered the machine and never left. And then I got "Scorched" and didn't like it.

So I've been in London for over two weeks now. In my last post I talked about Shunt and how I asked if they needed any volunteers. Well that Saturday I volunteered for their bar night at the warehouse. It was a lot of fun as I became and impromptu bartender.

Last week I volunteered as a stage hand for Money. This comprises of me getting dressed up as a guard and directing audience to where they need to go. It also includes scene changes - so those moments when I was wondering "wow, how'd they change the scenes!?" I now know. Because I'm one a few who's running around in the dark and smoke. Everyone I've met thus far have been pretty awesome and I've enjoyed hanging out at the machine. Nigel keeps encouraging me to use the Shunt performances on the weekends as an opportunity to show workshops of things I'm creating for my performance lab class. And I think I just might take him up on that.

I also saw Money again last Friday - and, yep, I still love it!



Someone had recommend Scorched by Majdi Mouawad playing at the Old Vic Tunnels. Hmm, a play in tunnels underneath the Underground? Sounds right up my alley. Unfortunately it wasn't. First off, I really like the concept of having a theatre underground and I really like what the Old Vic has done down with the space -- for the most part. However, the space it much too narrow to have that many seats (I'm guessing around 100 seats - I'd suggest half that.)  I was so far back that it was difficult to see the stage, especially because some guy who was about a foot taller than anyone else was right in my line of vision. So I had to constantly maneuver around his head to see the action.

Now on the the actual play. Scorched depicts the quest that twins, Janine and Simon, are sent on posthumously by their Lebanese mother Nawal, who had been silent for five years prior to her death. The quest is to find their father and brother - one they thought was dead and they other they didn't know existed. The story jumps back and forth from the mother's past, in search of her child given away by her family, to the twin's present search of the reason behind their mother's silence.

The play has a lot of potential but falls flat. The supposed humor or lighthearted parts aren't funny...at all. There is too much exposition in the first act, making the second act convoluted and and contrived. There were some lines that made me laugh - not because they were funny (I've already covered that) but because of their overt earnestness. It's short-comings are made even more apparent in some of Patricia Benecke's over-compensation in direction. There were, however, some wonderfully fluid and striking transitions. But when the sprinkler came out, I was completely taken out of the story. That moment where Nawal talks about witnessing a massacre on the bus could have been much more powerful with a simple, raw and honest delivery. The need for theatrics (and this is coming from someone who LOVES theatrics) was unnecessary. Also, the big reveal at the end wasn't that shocking - I had already guessed it as the moments leading up to it had been so over-dramatized that the play had given itself away.

For me the saving grace of this production is Jennie Stoller who plays the Nawal in her last years (the character is played by two other women - one for the young Nawal and one for the middle-aged Nawal.) Her performance is haunting and engrossing. She doesn't overact, nor does she hold back. She is the fully realized embodiment of a woman with too many secrets whose horrific past had made her stubborn and impenetrable.

I did like the setting of the tunnels - the sounds of the trains added to the sound scape of the play. The rumbling of trains overhead evoked the rumbling of the war-torn Lebanon as well as the inner-turmoil of the twins. However, I'm not sure how I would feel about it for other plays because it can be quite distracting.

The few lovely and poetic moments are overshadowed by the overall lack of focus in writing, direction, and acting.