MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - All An Act / ROMEO AND JULIET - McDowell Drama Club - February 7 & 8, 2020
Unsubstantial death is amorous.
The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
Friday night was the murder mystery, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, Ken Ludwig's snarky adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic detective tale, a All An Act. Saturday night was Shakespeare's tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET, deftly adapted by Nicholas Emmanuele, at McDowell Little Theatre. Reflecting on the two experiences, the theme and treatment of "death" had some surprising similarities.
Ludwig's approach to the Christie mystery is more light-hearted and comic than Christie's own stage version, with more cuts and jabs from character to character than I remember from previous iterations. The fellow travelers on the train from Istanbul to Calais at first seem distanced from one another. However, we realize that they may not actually be isolated - in fact, they not only have connections, but a common interest, being a shared loathing for one particular passenger. The hatred is always tempered by the humor of the text, and the superficial nature of the relationships between the characters. Their passion is what sparks them, and the swarm and frenzy around the object of their hate. Life is not what is valued by them; rather, they are driven by anger and vengeance.
Anger and vengeance also drive the families of Verona, and while their passions somehow remain in the realm of sparring and non-fatal engagement, a love and sympathy get in the way, and transform what should have been an innocuous clan slap-fest into multiple incidents of manslaughter and leading to lovers' suicides. Here, though, the deaths, as treated by youthful high school performers, are not ever so tragic that they draw our emotions, or even artificial responses from the cast and audience.
In both situations the central act of homicide is not the primary focus. It doesn't come off as something the be damned by society or by the audience. In the first, the killing is understandable, if not lauded, but both the onstage personae and many members of the audience. It is inevitable. Likewise, the plot of ROMEO AND JULIET is so well known, that the fate of the star-crossed lovers and the collateral damage is never in question; we are well aware that they are in their last twenty-four hours.
Death in these two plays feels inconsequential - even though we affirm the importance of all persons and their lives, we accept the murder of a horrible individual in ORIENT EXPRESS; we accept that from the moment that the chorus at the start of ROMEO AND JULIET forecasts the plot, there is an inevitability to the major characters' tragic demises. And we as audience do simply allow the deaths to occur, without lament or even hope that there might be a different outcome.
Of course, this does allow the audience to not be tied to the emotive plot device of the death of a character - it is not the what happens, but rather the why it happens and/or how it happens that captures our attention. Either expecting death or knowing even wanting death allows the performers and observers to distance from "the feels" and engage more with other aspects of the experience: the meaning of life, the criminal mindset, the reality of consequences, the intentional moral examination of acts of passion.
As I left each of the productions, I was thankful for the companies that produced the works, I was thankful that I wasn't wrought with emotions, and I was thankful that the thoughts that I was having were about the way plays speak through actors and designers to audiences.
- ROMEO AND JULIET
The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
- MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
Friday night was the murder mystery, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, Ken Ludwig's snarky adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic detective tale, a All An Act. Saturday night was Shakespeare's tragedy ROMEO AND JULIET, deftly adapted by Nicholas Emmanuele, at McDowell Little Theatre. Reflecting on the two experiences, the theme and treatment of "death" had some surprising similarities.
Ludwig's approach to the Christie mystery is more light-hearted and comic than Christie's own stage version, with more cuts and jabs from character to character than I remember from previous iterations. The fellow travelers on the train from Istanbul to Calais at first seem distanced from one another. However, we realize that they may not actually be isolated - in fact, they not only have connections, but a common interest, being a shared loathing for one particular passenger. The hatred is always tempered by the humor of the text, and the superficial nature of the relationships between the characters. Their passion is what sparks them, and the swarm and frenzy around the object of their hate. Life is not what is valued by them; rather, they are driven by anger and vengeance.
Anger and vengeance also drive the families of Verona, and while their passions somehow remain in the realm of sparring and non-fatal engagement, a love and sympathy get in the way, and transform what should have been an innocuous clan slap-fest into multiple incidents of manslaughter and leading to lovers' suicides. Here, though, the deaths, as treated by youthful high school performers, are not ever so tragic that they draw our emotions, or even artificial responses from the cast and audience.
In both situations the central act of homicide is not the primary focus. It doesn't come off as something the be damned by society or by the audience. In the first, the killing is understandable, if not lauded, but both the onstage personae and many members of the audience. It is inevitable. Likewise, the plot of ROMEO AND JULIET is so well known, that the fate of the star-crossed lovers and the collateral damage is never in question; we are well aware that they are in their last twenty-four hours.
Death in these two plays feels inconsequential - even though we affirm the importance of all persons and their lives, we accept the murder of a horrible individual in ORIENT EXPRESS; we accept that from the moment that the chorus at the start of ROMEO AND JULIET forecasts the plot, there is an inevitability to the major characters' tragic demises. And we as audience do simply allow the deaths to occur, without lament or even hope that there might be a different outcome.
Of course, this does allow the audience to not be tied to the emotive plot device of the death of a character - it is not the what happens, but rather the why it happens and/or how it happens that captures our attention. Either expecting death or knowing even wanting death allows the performers and observers to distance from "the feels" and engage more with other aspects of the experience: the meaning of life, the criminal mindset, the reality of consequences, the intentional moral examination of acts of passion.
As I left each of the productions, I was thankful for the companies that produced the works, I was thankful that I wasn't wrought with emotions, and I was thankful that the thoughts that I was having were about the way plays speak through actors and designers to audiences.
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