That Production Sure Did Suck

[It] just plain sucked! I've seen [companies] suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked. I'd better go; [the] damn weiner [cast could be] listening.

I witnessed an adaptation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice this weekend. I'm writing this statement in case the authorities need it.

The worst of it is that it could have been a great production. The adaptation was a neat idea: the setting was fitting, the broader point of this particular adaptation to contemporary society was well identified, and the changes that were made to it as an adaptation should have complemented the Shakespearean basis. This adaptation could still be great, in the hands of a good director and a good cast. As it was, I packed up and left halfway through, unable to tolerate it any longer.

There was one overriding problem with the cast: they were mushmouthed. I could only distinguish one fourth of what they said, which wasn't hugely problematic for the Shakespearean parts because I know the play but was fatal to the non-Shakespearean parts (from a play by another Elizabethan playwright).

Most of the flaws were, IMO, due to directorial incompetence. Again, the incomprehensibility of the cast's speech was the worst problem; not only did the director fail to fix that, but he provided no compensatory direction, either: cast members were positioned with their backs to the audience while speaking, they continued speaking during extended moments of audience laughter, they spoke too quickly, most had poor enunciation (I actually heard far fewer S's than I should have), and few spoke with sufficient volume (N.B., rapid speech + poor enunciation + low volume = mushmouthedness). Also, many of the cast were trying to speak with accents. I understand the dramatic desireability of this, but accent don't matter if the voice is mushy.

All this was compounded by problems with the auditorium, primarily the execrable acoustics at the sides and rear of the stage that noticeably muted even those few cast members who spoke well. Your job as director, Mr. Director, is, in part, to correct for such things. I sat in the front third of the middle section, so it's not like I'm bitching about life in the peanut gallery. I wonder if Mr. Director considered the sound-dampening effects of an audience full of people wearing clothes?

There were also amplified audial components of the production whose poor design undercut, in terms of performance, all the dramatic value they were supposed to add. Some sound effects were painfully loud, as were some of the microphone-assisted songs. Critical soundtracks were too soft. The accompanying band drowned out the cast at times. The band wasn't particularly good, either, the horn section especially being out of tune with one another. (I think, in the band's case, the problem was actually having live music: it's hard for brass to play an entire tune both quietly and well. Recorded music would have been better for that venue.) The singers were often off-key, which is inexcusably stupid for a live performance with a live band, because you know what? You can transpose music to different keys! If the singer's voice is weak in the original key, shift it!

There were some fixable problems with the acting, too, some due to directorial failure; but compared to the suckulent audial experience, they're hardly worth mentioning.

Now for the full disclosure: the cast were mostly middle- and high-school kids. Which, OK, one oughtn't expect greatness from them; but, at least in terms of sound, this was the worst school-aged production I have ever witnessed. Dammit, Mr. Director, you could at least address the damned mushmouthedness. E-nun-ci-aTe. Slow down. Speak up. These are basic, first-time principles of acting for a reason. And, Mr. Director, because they are still schoolchildren, the responsibility for good speech is as much, perhaps more, yours than theirs.

So, because Mr. Director was incompetent, I'm also going to pick on him for his idiotic notes in the playbill. I said above that there were some good ideas behind this adaptation, and I mean that. But still:

...vicious polarization that has metastasized in our national discourse during the past few years. It has become so easy to take someone who is different in religion, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, even politics, and reduce them to a stereotype, dismissing them or demonizing them. Name calling, labeling, unexamined prejudice and casual hatred — it's all there on our news channels, web blogs [sic], Youtube [sic]...and in Shakespeare's ________.

Look, moron [<--intentional, ironic slur], it was also all there, and just as easy, from the Elizabethan era through the emergence of Teh Intarwebz. Catholic bashing? The words "nigger" and "coon" and "gook" and "mick"? (OK, sexual orientation not so much until recently; first it was dealt with by the criminal justice system and then by the health profession before politics got its hands on it.) It's not that viciousness has metastasized (what do you imagine was said in crowds at Nixon rallies in 1968?), it's that expressive media have metastasized. Just because you never noticed it before doesn't mean it wasn't there (e.g., the America-hatred that culminated in the events of 11 September).

Next, there's

With charges being made in the last few months by the political Left and the Right of a "New McCarthyism" at work....

Um. Did you ever pay attention to those "news channels, web blogs, [and] Youtube[s]" before starting work on this production? Because, see, it's a little more nuanced than you suggest. Charges of "McCarthyism" (I don't know where the "New" comes from, unless it's just a sign of contemporary innovation-discourse) are about eight years old now, dating from when the President's very own press secretary publicly warned, in public, the press against saying anything that might be construed as sympathetic to terrorists (such as, say, context). The "political Left" bitched about McCarthyism for a good seven years after that (and I should know, because I'm quite the dirty fucking hippie commie pinko Lefty), but then they pretty much stopped. Something happened then - any idea what? - that made political reactionaries start screaming "McCarthyism" at the same time that they began carrying loaded weapons to presidential appearances. So, unless by "last few months" you mean "last eight years," which is such a non-standard usage that it doesn't count, and unless history really doesn't matter after all, you are a numbskull.

Lastly, there's something you did with the play that you didn't discuss in your Notes, but which was so egregious that I'ma hafta call you out on it. You took a Jew vs. Christian play and added a layer of Marxist vs. Capitalist, ostensibly inspired by present political discourse...and then you excised the Christian part from your production. Again, do you attend to any of the media you mentioned? All the discussion about religion in American politics? And how a lot of it has to do with reactionary American Christians thinking the Bible is partly about God giving His blessing to American-style capitalism? Yeah, capitalism has its geopolitical religious loading the way that Marxism has its. But, maybe making that point would have been too irreverent and fearless for you.