14th: Dog Day Afternoon (Guest Post)

Hello friends,
   For a myriad of different reasons, I was unable to get out to GW's performances this weekend. That being the case, Max Young-Jones has stepped in to review 14th's production of Dog Day Afternoon for me. I should be back at it with the reviews myself next week for TRDA's Sweeney Todd and Generic's American Buffalo. For now, enjoy someone's opinion who isn't me!
See you in the theater,
Ed

PS - A special mention should be made for FPP's annual Rocky Horror Picture Show. Congrats on going legal with your 18th year FPP! (I didn't find a guest reviewer for Rocky.. if anyone is interested shoot me a message).

So in the interest of full disclosure, I went to go see 14th Grade Players' Production of Dog Day Afternoon…on Friday at 10:00.  Now normally this is an acceptable time to see a show but as any self respecting FPPerson would tell you, if they don't see your ass in the Rocky Horror line by 11:00 at least, you're not getting to see theirs. Student Theatre and quite a lot of the general GW populace know this, so the audience at the Vernbox was sparse.

Now of course this shouldn't effect performance, but it can. After all the audience are the actors primary source of energy. They're voyeurs that devour us with their eyes just as we devour their gaze in turn. Now I'm not saying that Dog Day Afternoon suffered or flourished because of the small audience, but I do have to note it.

So. On to the review.

Company Presentation

While it doesn't catch the eye, if stared at the poster is certainly arresting (pun intended). Andrea Edman's detached androgynous look shows that if the acting thing won't work out (and it will, see below) she's got a good career as a model. That and and the tagline give a kind of haunting quality  to the whole thing, suggesting that maybe the show is a psycho drama in a women's prison….which it isn't. The misrepresentation of show tone, lack of color, and cluttered top showing Mohamed Sidibay for no real reason other than to sport the 14th logo, make the posters an interesting art piece but ultimately fails for the job they're trying to accomplish. The tagline is extremely catchy though.

OH! And did you know that 14th is selling cups now!? I didn't and they are fabulous. Get some if you can. And if you haven't spent more than your entry ticket buying people in the show candy as part of 14's give a piece/buy a piece for the actors and yourself thing I highly recommend it. It's the little touches.

Set

The real star of the show.

I kid, I kid. Seriously though this was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, and one of 14th's more ambitious designing projects to date. Since the entire show takes place outside and inside a bank that's about to be robbed with a few scenes in the police department, the logical thing would be to divide the acting space into three playing areas, and perhaps play with levels to establish different contexts.

Well 14th had more ovaries than that. Instead, the audience is initially treated to what appear to be flats, a few painted that represent the outside of the bank (complete with door) and a blue painted playing space far stage left on a level that indicate the police station. Pretty boring, until the first blackout and you realize that the bank wall opens into a bank.  That's right, the outside walls fold in and reveal a well crafted and thoughtfully constructed playing space that includes a bank back door, counter, a bathroom, and even a money vault. I wish I knew who set designed this (the program doesn't say) since the entire thing is a masterwork. You could even fold one wall in and one out so that you could have a scene outside the bank as well as a scene inside simultaneously.  I guess my one complaint though would be that the police station, with it's lone telephone, looked a little bear. All in all though. Well done, people, well done.

Lights

Serviceable and that's really all to say. They don't especially stand out, but everyone was well lit even when they had to go to odd places on the stage. There's a moment in the play where the power is cut out, but all they did was just switch a few lights off. To wit while there was no particular artistry to the lighting, there was incredibly good craftsmanship. 

Acting

While some of it was quite charming, and it  was clear the cast was trying their hardest, it was largely mired by a lack of character refinement. If one is going to attempt mannerisms, modes of speech, or accent work one has to be able to do so in a way that it does not interfere with what the character is actually doing onstage. When it worked it worked, but when it didn't it fell flat.

Newcomer Mohamed Sidibay and Charlie's Aunt veteran Michael Farzi who played Sal and Every Side Character Ever respectably, were quite good and quite funny. Although Mohhamed was  hard to hear at times, he portrayed just the right amount of deadpan stupidity, and while his character was frequently confused I was never confused by his character. Michael Farzi on the other hand was perhaps a little too audible demonstrating a slight tendency towards hamminess, but his ability to drop in and out of character and his ability to be hilarious no matter who he was is impressive showing that he's still an acting force to be reckoned with.

However Jake Hoffman, Amy Szen, and Andrea Edman deserve extra special shootouts. Jake's Patrick Mulvaney was incredibly believable, gung-ho, and oddly paternal. It would've been easy to ignore that aspect of his character but Jake's interactions with his staff and his choice to be disappointed in Sam, rather than self-righteous, really hit home. Bravo, Jake, Bravo.

Amy Szen seemingly has little to do since Sylvia is a minor character, but what she does with that 'little' she does amazingly. Although a captive bank teller, she walks the thin line more than anyone of being in league with her captors. Ms. Szen accurately demonstrates Sylvia's inherent strength and it was always clear as to what she wanted and what she was thinking.

Last, but certainly not least, there is Andrea Edman. Having seen her act a few times in the past I know that her talent was never in question but this role really demonstrates her range. Playing the lead Sam Wortzik, a no-nonsense, ambiguously (and then not so ambiguously) lesbian bank robber, Andrea Edman is  thrilling to watch. Ms Edman is also smart enough to know that though her character naturally has a rough demeanor, she is not ruled by it. Her scene on the telephone with her wife Lana (played by Tori Kontor) is heartbreaking precisely because Ms. Edman is able to demonstrate how her characters natural reserve hinders her ability to connect with others. A very humanizing performance.

Directing

Mixed. All in all Cameron Hopkins directed a mixed show. I wasn't sure what it wanted to do tonally and some directorial choices didn't help. While the set was beautiful, the soundless blackouts required to change from the outside to the inside sucked away a lot of the energy giving it a dramatic vibe, which is fine if this were a straight drama. However since it was largely a comedy, energy is key and the moments without stimuli were wasted moments. Adding some music or even doing the set changes in light would have rectified that.

Furthermore a lot of characters were caricatures because they didn't seem directed with a specific focus on action. I did like that Mr. Hopkins knew enough to have the bank start acting more and more like a family, captor and captive alike but it wasn't clear if it was supposed to be funny or tense or whatever during a lot of moments. One may argue that the ambiguity was intentional and it was supposed to be one sometimes and the other the next, or even 'both' but if that were the case it didn't come down strongly on either side and good theatre is all about coming down strongly. I frequently found myself wondering if I should be laughing, not because the jokes were dark or morbid or whatever but because I wasn't sure if they were jokes. That combined with abrupt ending, made me wonder about what I just saw.

The play wasn't terrible it was just terribly confusing. In fact there was some incredibly good staging and character work which was impressive considering that this was a cast of 15. Not a great show, but  not a bad one either. 

See you in the theatre,

Max

Dog Day Afternoon was a 14th Grade Players production that ran in the Westhall Theatre from October 25th through October 28th. It was directed by Cameron Hopkins and was adapted from the Frank Pierson Screenplay also called Dog Day Afternoon. If you want, you can even see the 1975 Al Pacino movie that differs somewhat from the originally screenplay and differs significantly from Cameron's vision since he gender-bent the cast. 

Edited for grammar and format 10/30/12 - ESC