it has still been a

it has still been a hectic week at work...all you gits who decided that
we should take on all the work are...oh hangon that was
us...ohshite...anyway all this hard graft (well ok i'll admit i've
worked a 2.5day week this week) has meant that i've not really had a
chance to pick up on anything stupid or especially annoying to rant
about...or so i thought! it was only this evening when i was (well last
week was) invited to go see (well requested) one of my friends in their
show for part of their course.
Now me being all very supportive of up and coming talent in the acting
world etc etc, decide yeah, its a friend who's asked, and i've got more
than one of them in the show, so might as well...well i'd like to say
that i've not been that bored for 1hr 20minutes in a long, long
time...no offence (well probably lots of offence) but there was very
little to hold my interest...the lead played everything
over the audience's heads...which is a little annoying when you're
sitting 2feet away from them...some of the supporting cast were just
plain ropey... and this will sound a little nepotistic but of the 4
times(maybe) that the play took on some life, 3 of those incidents had
either one of my friends or both of them in it as active participants
(i.e. speaking & interacting with the lead) the rest of the time
there was no hooks....with a cast of at least 15, there were lots of
people on stage and when stuff was happening there was nothing to
direct you to any particular thing it was almost like a visual version
of Phil Specter's "Wall of Sound"...just not as interesting...this i
think is in part to the lead not having any sort of presence on stage,
she was almost always drowned out by anything that happened in the
background...ok they're still students, but there was something lacking
and it may be a combination of a lack of experience in some parts, and
quite a baffling script...still there was definate room for improvement
in a fair proportion of the cast.
however that said...there were some very nice things...the lighting was
very well done, and did give an appropriate air to scenes, and the
soundtrack was again appropriate, subtle were necessary and vibrant and
brass when required...and also whilst the overall performance was (i
personally rate) poor, the technical technical ability was apparent in
some of the complicated chorus/movement sequences, and generally
good... all in all it had is moments(well) but just fell down in
grabbing the audiences attention and holding on to it, which once lost
is very difficult to get back...i think there were some people who
picked up right at the end when the lead took her top off,
(?un?)fortunately for me by that point i was counting the moments until
the end. a shame for the NC class of the year before which put on a
varied and interesting show last year...it seems that they were just
unable to reproduce something of anything near that calibre.