photo: Ric KallaherA family awaits the cremated remains of the eldest son, who died over thirty years ago in the Vietnam War. The standard issue arguments are trotted out, with each cardboard character too neatly assigned a set of beliefs: dad still believes that we were fighting the good fight in Vietnam (if he didn't, then his son's death was for nothing) and mom is still living in the past (so that she doesn't have to face the present). This play is the opposite of revelatory - it feels derived from a hundred plays and movies we've already seen - and the writing is so formulaic that I didn't believe a single minute of it. That's saying a lot, considering that the cast is headed up by the likes of Lois Smith and Larry Bryggman, two indisputable treasures of the stage who can usually make me believe anything.
Also blogged by: [Aaron]
1 comment:
Yeah. I'd have loved to say nicer things about it, but there was rarely a shred of anything convincing in that play, and Lois Smith, who I've not seen before, would NEVER have even registered as a treasure to me if you hadn't been the third person to point this out.
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