Bby Jean Genet
By Roof Top Productions
At Mietta's Landing Jan-Feb 1996
Reviewer: Kate Herbert, reviewed around 17 Jan 1996
The production of Jean Genet's lost play, Splendid’s, has been promoted as confronting theatre. Unfortunately, it is just a lot of boys in suits shouting. I thought I was inside Killing Zoe.
This version of Splendid’s, Roof Top Productions fourth show, is cleverly located on the littered landing at Mietta's. The location is saddened by the detritus not only of the set but of the Mietta's memorabilia price tagged below.
Seven gangsters have taken and killed a female hostage in the Grand Hotel, Splendid's. The group haggles for power, struggles for recognition and finally implodes. With all the posturing, yelling and face-pulling poorly derivative of Scorsese, it is difficult to discern the quality of the text but this is definitely B-grade Genet.
There is no dynamic range in this production. They start shouting and have nowhere to go but louder. Genet's characteristic violence intercut with lyricism is muddied. The poetic becomes leaden. Characters have "solos" much in the way of a Jazz score but all the characters, apart from the drag queen, become a melange of De Niro, Liotta and Tommy Lee Jones.
"Let's save the deaths for the ending," quips a character early on. This Genet irony is lost in a production which takes itself rather too seriously. I thought it interesting to note that the program listed every actor's agent but not the character he played.
KATE HERBERT
230 wd
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