There's a play on Broadway right now with a phenomenal cast. Acting this fine, you'll rarely see on Broadway. And at a recent performance I witnessed something fascinating. There was one moment, not so far from the end of what had been a very engaging evening of theatre, where an actor sat on stage and worked hard to "emote." Suddenly, it was as if the entire play had screeched to a halt.
Coughing erupted from virtually every corner of the house. Certainly, all these people could not have been suppressing coughs for the first 90 min, I thought. And it occurred to me that we go to the theatre to watch people struggle. We are entertained by characters and their conflicting objectives pitted against one another. Not a new concept, I realize, but still...
When this actor (who I will not name) tried to play an emotion, suddenly hundreds of us turned off. We became disengaged, and, so, we noticed, perhaps, a tickle in our throats that we hadn't been aware of before because we had been so rapt in the conflict before us.
Just a little reminder of how vital it is to the creation of good theatre -- a good play, musical, opera or film, whatever. Without conflict, there's nothing worth watching.
After about 60 seconds of this "pause," another character entered with her own agenda and we were back on track and the play ended quite powerfully. But it was chilling to see how easy it is to de-rail even the most polished performance.
