The Chicago Reader does the city's most thorough reviewing of live theater, so I'm very pleased to get a "Recommended".
Suzanne Scanlon writes:
"Even if the ending of this rom-com feels inevitable, the maneuvering to get us there is good fun: it's easy to find charm in a script that can move lightly from odd lovers to sapphic liaisons to EPA lawsuits involving beavers."
She also praises the actors, praise which I think is well deserved. I suspect my script wouldn't seem to move lightly if it were played clumsily.
A script, when poorly acted,
might as well be redacted.
I could swear somebody said, "Inevitability is the holy grail of fiction," but Google returns zero results.
ReplyDeleteWell, somehow you're ideally supposed to hit "surprising inevitability".
ReplyDeleteThat seems in line with what I recall of "Poetics"...heckuva trick.
ReplyDeleteYeah, no kidding, some kind of golden mean goal, and probably somewhat dependent on your individual audience member's ability to see through the foreshadowing.
DeleteRight...I would also think narrative tricks age just like comic tricks do. And so you have to surprise in a surprising way, even.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm sure narrative tricks also age. And critics, who consume a lot of narrative, are more likely to see where a story is going than the average theater-goer. As a matter of fact, at intermission I asked a friend how the play would end - would the young couple get together - and she got it wrong - she predicted the opposite ending.
ReplyDeleteEspecially when critics don't have to report until after the show!
ReplyDeleteOh. I hadn't thought of that!
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