I saw DISTRACTED by Lisa Loomer at Roundabout last night and I really enjoyed it. It’s essentially about a Mother dealing with the fact that her 9 year old son may have ADD. The play takes an intelligent, multi faceted, and balanced look at some of her choices in dealing with the issue. I loved that it didn’t preach to the audience. Instead, it said, “this is a tricky issue and different people will deal with it differently”. Oh, and it’s wildly theatrical and hilarious.
In skimming the reviews, I get the sense it got mixed reviews and that some critics loved (and others did not) the ADD quality of the show. What I mean by that, is that Mark Brokaw’s production moves FAST from snippet to snippet and there are lots of video projections pulling your attention one way or the other. Part of the point of both the script and the production is that we adults live in an ADD world - between our crackberries, iphones, websites, tv shows, etc etc is it really such a surprise that kids have a tough time focussing?
Personally, I loved the ADD quality of the show because it made the audience viscerally go through the same things the characters were going through. The first time I ever tried this as a writer and director was with my play NOTIONS IN MOTION in which the characters can never make up their minds and keep changing their opinions based on new facts. Similarly, the audience keeps being presented with new facts and has its’ own hard time making up its’ mind as to what is real and what isn’t.
Personally I almost always find this thrilling in the theatre. When a production actually gets an audience to go through the same thing as the characters it is, I think, a triumph. What do you think? Have you ever seen a show that did that to you? Did you like it?
[Cross posted on www.JeremysGreenRoom.com]
