Thursday, January 30, 2025
I have never seen the movie Misery. When I saw that one of the theaters we like was performing the play, I made sure to get tickets. There was a disclaimer in the lobby telling people that there were adult themes, violence, murder, gore and whatnot. I was not surprised (except maybe by that gore part. Gore on stage seems like a lot of work. I was a little surprised) because I had some idea of the plot. Murder was also a bit of a spoiler, because I didn’t know that. (Sorry if I am spoiler-ing you.)
The cast was good. Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for portrayal of A ie Wilkes, but our James Caan (Paul Sheldo ) was better. I felt his pain of broken legs, and his confusion and slow understanding of his situation. The stage play is set only in the house, instead of bringing in the outside world like the movie (I just watched the trailer), and I think it made it really claustrophobic and more dreadful. That was great. The set was on a revolving stage, so while we were mostly in the recovery bedroom, we saw a bit more of the house when necessary.
Now. What about the laughter in my title? This hardly seems like a laugh riot, right? There are several times Paul makes sarcastic comments that are quite funny, and I laughed out loud (probably because I was tense and it was a release). The rest of the audience was pretty quiet at those points. They laughed when violence, gore, and murder happened. IT WAS BIZARRE. Middle schoolers laugh when they don’t how to react – a lot of times when you talk to them about serious subjects they laugh or make jokes because they don’t know how to process it appropriately; you have to understand that is not really what they mean and help them make sense of what they are thinking and feeling.
There were no middle schoolers in the audience. These were straight up adults who apparently don’t know how to process violence, gore, and murder.
Huh.
It certainly was distracting, but not critically so. The show was better than to let 50 people totally disrupt my concentration. Kudos to the actors for committing and not breaking the scene. Also, at the climax of the show, the man behind us (who told us that he had not seen the movie) loudly asked his wife (who had seen the movie), “Did this happen in the movie?” Why? Why would you want to discuss that RIGHT NOW? They also told us that until they got the email reminder yesterday that they had tickets to tonight’s show, they hadn’t known they bought tickets to it. They bought some other tickets and apparently inadvertently bought more than they thought they had. I guess that is the person who asks questions during the climax of the show.
It’s good. If you like a play, go up to the Lakeshore Players in White Bear Lake and see it. If you find it funny, don’t tell me.
I experienced that same scenario last summer when we saw Much Ado About Nothing at APT. People laughed at the most inappropriate times. I found it distracting. I asked Sam about it afterwards. He told me the actors never try to figure out the audience. They just perform.
Interesting. I should have asked the woman who roared through most of the show what she was thinking