Last Night's Theater..
Let's see if I can actually make it up to three posts in two day!
Last night, I attended a play read, “Savage in Limbo” by John Patrick Shanley. Shanley is probably best known as the write of the movie “Moonstruck” which won him (as well as Cher) an Oscar, and gave some buzz to his next efforts “The January Man” and “Joe vs. the Volcano”. The only plays I've seen by him are this and “Welcome to the Moon”. Both of these take place in bars in the Bronx. “Moon” is mostly men, and this one is mostly women. Also, just about all the characters in both plays (as with Moonstruck) are Italian, which seems a bit odd from an author with a very Irish name.
After the reading (it was fully staged & blocked, although with a minimal set, and only a rough estimation of costuming --- I'm guessing that the actors just grabbed something close out of their closets), there was a discussion with the audience --- The general feeling was that it was a interesting character study, but none of the characters was really likable, giving the audience nothing really to hold on to.