Word: scripted
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...plans. The role of Dvornicek is necessary both to sketch and flesh out the lines this play keep crossing between a Noel Coward-style romp and a post-modern mockery. The first scene is the weakest and least lively, probably because it is the most "straight" and Stoppard's script seems confined at first by the boundaries he had set for himself. The show really begins in the second scene where the silly tunes become the perfect complement for the slippery dialogue. After a brief intermission the pace keeps up at a careless rate that borders on the chaotic...
...spare. The costumes and set are adequate, but not especially imaginative. For a play of this kind where the action flip-flops between the straight and satirical, a few more quirky details would have been appreciated. One creative touch was the addition of a piano player (in the original script Adam Adam plays the music) on stage. The Quincy House JCR may not be the best place to stage a show, especially when considering seating. Advice to the visually or vertically challenged: get there early...
Kessler, who leads playwrighting workshops for psychiatric patients, has obviously drawn on his experience in writing Orphans. Painful childhood memories and deep emotional trauma make the play resemble a group therapy session in places. But the accomplished script and acting ensure that this heavy psychologizing mostly succeeds...
Sounds promising, but Peter's Friends is awful, with glimpses of wit. The script is hopelessly schematic: one long, drawing-room chat in which people dish each other, then leave the room so they can be talked about. Kenneth Branagh's direction shows none of the care he lavished on his Henry V and little of the rowdy dazzle of Dead Again. He also misuses some wonderful actors, including his wife, Emma Thompson; she must put her radiance on hold to play a prematurely old maid who wants Peter to "fill me with your babies." Though the plot...
...spit, polish and bluster. Frank Slade is a piece of work, all right, and playing him Al Pacino is always an actor acting -- in love with his own prodigious technique. For which, thank heaven, it permits him to range boldly outside the conventional lines of Bo Goldman's script for Scent of a Woman...