There's a certain play that shall remain nameless, running in a certain Broadway theatre that has been winning high praise for everything from its text to its actors, director and designers. It's not a bad play and the performances are for the most part quite good. But it's got one glaring problem that no one seems willing to mention and after this season's Tony Awards, it starts to feel as though the emperor has no clothes.
I had great seats when I saw this play—fourth or fifth row center orchestra. Often these are House Seats, so I'd expect that my experience of the show might be as good as one could expect.
Unfortunately, in this case, the play's director and scenic designer conspired to keep me from seeing the faces of their actors for many key pivotal scenes which played on in some instances for 10 minutes, during which I was left to examine the back stitching on an actor's costume or worse, the upholstery on a piece of furniture obscuring my view.
It is wonderful to see actors fully inhabiting their roles in a truthful and organic way on a Broadway stage. Don't get me wrong. I know how rare that is. But it is also a director's responsibility to see to it that this wonderful work is actually visible to the audience, no matter where they're sitting, be it front orchestra or rear side balcony. If a director ignores this obligation, he or she has no business directing a play on any stage, let alone one on the Great White Way.
And a set designer has an obligation, I believe, to constuct a set which not only further illuminates and reflects the lives inhabiting it for the play's duration, but also takes into consideration the paying audience. A set that ignores the audience by getting in between its eyes and those of the actors is not a set but a work of art which rather than contributing to making the whole stronger, stands alone and detracts from the experience. What ever happened to the raked stage? There's a reason why this convention was used for hundreds of years. It allows a director to block actors both upstage and downstage simultaneously without the downstage actors completely obscuring from view what is happening upstage. As exciting or hip as it may feel to break with convention, some conventions are worth examining before they are discarded.
I think at a minimum, an audience ought to expect to be able to hear and see what they've paid dearly to witness. Don't you?