'Pillowman' opens at Ephrata Performing Arts Center

[harshlight7]

these guys are just spitting lines back and forth at each other, playing to type. this is a glorified high school drama production, all surface with no depth. shows like this piss me off to no end. all self-satisfied bombast. when the director dared to utter the name "tarantino" at the beginning, i knew it was over.

[08djdiggle]

It's nice to be word perfect, but speaking from experience, this show is a monster when it comes to lines. Just an absolute nightmare, especially for any actor playing Katurian. He has about a thousand monologues, about 4 or 5 of which go on for 3 to 4 pages on their own, so while I would say, ALWAYS strive to be word perfect, for a show like this, I think the small amount of paraphrasing that went on is absolutely ok. As long as you got the meat.

[topstep]

I agree totally with spaceoreo. Paraphrasing is bad and amateurish. McDonagh writes very rhythmically, and his beats, phrases, pauses and dialogue needs to be honored as written, even if they seem odd to the person saying them. Paraphrasing just muddles the writer's 'voice'. It's a tough show though - kudos to anyone who attempts it.

[brizmofent]

Forgive me for saying this, but this production genuinely looks poor. The comedy in McDonagh's plays involves playing the opposite, this production just looks hammy and amateur. In particular, the guy playing Ariel, from the very first time we see him, is playing the 'type', no substance. A misunderstanding here of the subtleties of the writing.

[harshlight7]

@brizmofent agreed. compare the clips of the broadway production starring professionals to this and the difference becomes a thing of pain and sorrow to behold.

[spaceoreo]

In light of knowing it was for a TV commercial, I can understand why the swearing was excised, but there's still no excuse for wholesale paraphrasing.

[reptyl013]

we had a specific time limit this was like our 4th try

[spaceoreo]

The play's great. The guy playing Tupolski paraphrases just about every line in the scene, which is a little annoying, which, given the fact the script is so precisely written...is a bit sucky. And er...they cut the swearing. Criminal.

[VoloVersio]

The guy playing Tupolski is great, even if he paraphrases a little bit.

[spaceoreo]

The very fact the guy paraphrases SO much dialogue automatically precludes 'great'. It's dodgy as fuckery.

[VoloVersio]

I understand wanting him to stick word-for-word to the script but you're being too harsh on him for his paraphrasing. He adds a few words, switching maybe a couple of words around in a sentence, ya, but he gets the specific sentences across in most cases. As long as he's not intentionally trying to re-write the script or something..that'd be truly criminal.

[spaceoreo]

Every now and again you slip up, screw a line, reverse order in a chunk of dialogue, preface a sentence with a 'so' or 'okay'...it happens. But when a script is written with specfic, 'likes', y'knows' and 'anyways', y'get the feeling the playwright wrote 'em for a reason. It deserves to be respected as written, and delivered as written.

[reptyl013]

the reason he paraphased and why we cut out the swearing was this was being videotaped for a commercial for tv and they told us he had a certain time limit and we werent aloud to swear. i was in this production

[harshlight7]

@reptyl013 why the hell would you agree to those conditions in the first place? you compromised the whole sound and feel of the piece to film a fucking commercial?!

[googlesucks123456789]

can you not watch this whole play?