subUrbia: A REVIEW
Last Thursday Kevin passed along a couple tickets to the Second Stage production of Eric Bagosian's "subUrbia." This has been a favorite show of mine for a few years, primarily because it is high on my list of shows that I would want to design.
The show is just a bit dated at this point (It was originally produced in the mid 90's and is a bit tangled in the mire of that time period) so I was thrilled to find out that Bagosian himself had done some rewrites and edits to the script to bring it into a more current time frame. I really wanted this show to be good. Unfortunately I ended up being disappointed.
The cast was decent. It included two child-stars (Kieran Culkin and Gaby Hoffman) and several award winners and nominees, but the only real stand-out was Peter Scanavino as Tim, the disaffected former Naval Airman, and the de facto leader of the group of slackers that the show centers around. Whether he has a brilliant make-up artist, or just lives the lifestyle himself Scanavino certainly looks the part of a guy on a 3 day bender, and he carried the cast through the rest of the show. Whenever he was on stage he commanded the attention of the audience well above the rest. The others on stage worked to varying degrees of success, but none of them really managed to connect fully to their roles or the audience. Hoffman was especially lackluster and never seemed as if she belonged with the rest of the cast. Her character, Sooze, is the one bright spot in the show, the one character with the ambition and possibility to move beyond the situations of the town they live in. Through her we should be able to see in sharp relief the opportunities that everyone else is allowing to slip past. Instead she came off as spoiled, and snobbish, placing herself above it all without motivation.
The biggest problem I had with the show was the set. The design opportunity of this show, the thing that appeals to me, is that it is an absolutely real place, that has to portrayed in that way. The grounding reality of the show is in it's setting. The entire show takes place in the parking lot of a suburban convenience store and includes the interior of the store, as well as the roof, dumpsters, and some of the surrounding details. Scenic designer Richard Hoover did a solid job of creating the reality of the space, and I applaud what he managed, but it was also part of the ultimate downfall of the play. Hoover chose to present the entire front of the store relatively flat to the audience. His mistake came in presenting far too much of the interior. The depth of the store interior ate a LOT of stage space. 90% of the play takes place outside the store and while it was visually appealing to have the storefront represented so well it ultimately left too little room for the action and forced the actors into a small lane of space that really only allowed for movement parallel to the seating. The limited movement in the limited space (coupled with the limited acting) left the whole show feeling shallow. This was a textbook example of the design impeding the show. I'm not sure if a deeper design, with more acting space could have saved the whole thing, but it certainly couldn't have hurt it.
In all I'd say B-, which depresses me. There's potential here that they missed.
The show is just a bit dated at this point (It was originally produced in the mid 90's and is a bit tangled in the mire of that time period) so I was thrilled to find out that Bagosian himself had done some rewrites and edits to the script to bring it into a more current time frame. I really wanted this show to be good. Unfortunately I ended up being disappointed.
The cast was decent. It included two child-stars (Kieran Culkin and Gaby Hoffman) and several award winners and nominees, but the only real stand-out was Peter Scanavino as Tim, the disaffected former Naval Airman, and the de facto leader of the group of slackers that the show centers around. Whether he has a brilliant make-up artist, or just lives the lifestyle himself Scanavino certainly looks the part of a guy on a 3 day bender, and he carried the cast through the rest of the show. Whenever he was on stage he commanded the attention of the audience well above the rest. The others on stage worked to varying degrees of success, but none of them really managed to connect fully to their roles or the audience. Hoffman was especially lackluster and never seemed as if she belonged with the rest of the cast. Her character, Sooze, is the one bright spot in the show, the one character with the ambition and possibility to move beyond the situations of the town they live in. Through her we should be able to see in sharp relief the opportunities that everyone else is allowing to slip past. Instead she came off as spoiled, and snobbish, placing herself above it all without motivation.
The biggest problem I had with the show was the set. The design opportunity of this show, the thing that appeals to me, is that it is an absolutely real place, that has to portrayed in that way. The grounding reality of the show is in it's setting. The entire show takes place in the parking lot of a suburban convenience store and includes the interior of the store, as well as the roof, dumpsters, and some of the surrounding details. Scenic designer Richard Hoover did a solid job of creating the reality of the space, and I applaud what he managed, but it was also part of the ultimate downfall of the play. Hoover chose to present the entire front of the store relatively flat to the audience. His mistake came in presenting far too much of the interior. The depth of the store interior ate a LOT of stage space. 90% of the play takes place outside the store and while it was visually appealing to have the storefront represented so well it ultimately left too little room for the action and forced the actors into a small lane of space that really only allowed for movement parallel to the seating. The limited movement in the limited space (coupled with the limited acting) left the whole show feeling shallow. This was a textbook example of the design impeding the show. I'm not sure if a deeper design, with more acting space could have saved the whole thing, but it certainly couldn't have hurt it.
In all I'd say B-, which depresses me. There's potential here that they missed.
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