-the Story-
Confederacy of Dunces is a stage adaptation of picaresque novel of the same title, by John Kennedy Toole. In 1960s New Orleans, Ignatius J. Reilly a knowledgable idealist lives his life roaming around the streets and mocking the contemporary world for it's modern pop culture and lack of intelligence and creativity. Especially his own widowed mother, Irene, whom he still lives with. One night, after bailing Ignatius out of the police station for disturbing the peace, Irene accidentally backs her car into the side of a building due to Ignatius distracting her by insulting her driving skills, leading to her having to come up with five-hundred-thousand dollars to pay for the damages. Because she has only a small fraction of that amount to her name and Ignatius' name, Ignatius himself is forced to find a job. Throughout the play, Ignatius goes through several different jobs over the course of a few weeks. Each job ending with him getting fired as a result of him leading rebellions against each of his employers. From office clerk at a family own pants factory to pushing a roadside hotdog stand. All while writing love letters to Myrna Minkoff, a young woman he fell in love with during his college years.
During the story, there are three other subplots occurring as well. From Irene slowly learning to stand up for herself to Ignatius and forming a romantic relationship with a man who was arrested for disturbing the peace the same time Ignatius was arrested, to a black janitor of a local strip club being part of the owner's plan to up her business by making her employee perform strip teases with her pet cockatoo, to the inept police officer who is demoted to a bathroom stall guard at the station in multiple disguises as punishment for arresting Ignatius instead of the other man earlier.
-Honorable Mentions-
The story has it's complicated moments (as does any comedy in existence) however, it's still funny as hell. Playwright, Jeffrey Hatcher, really knows how to write very tongue-in-cheek comedy, in a British comedic fashion. A lot of Ignatius' dialogue and jokes are made up of an intellectual dialect, yet I could still understand what he was saying and found the jokes and insults all the funnier. Watching this performance made me feel like I was watching a classic comedy, like Abbott and Castello or the Marx Brothers. It's nice to know that even to this day, playwrights are still creating stories that harken back to that golden age of comedy and drama.
This production used almost no props at all. The cast mime the use of the props they're suppose to use while being backed up by the use of sound effects. The synchronization between the entire cast and the sound effects by Mark Bennett and Charles Coes is absolutely spot on. Very seldom is there a delay between the two.
-What I liked-
The look of this production was very median. What I mean is, the production was half and half. The characters wore full costumes, hair and makeup, however there were absolutely no props and very little set pieces. Like in my previous blog on Wheelock Family Theatre's production of Trumpet of the Swan, Confederacy of Dunces reminded me a lot of the works by Bertolt Brecht. In which, he used minimal sets, props, and costumes thereby allowing the audience to use their imagination to fill in the blanks. With the use of Bennett and Coes' sounds, lights by Scott Zielinski, and projection images by Sven Ortel we, the audience, were able to do just that. I definitely give credit to the show's director, David Esbjornson. His decision to make this production semi minimalistic made it all the more enjoyable for me to watch.
The cast performed perfectly. Like in a Brechtian play, most of the ensemble cast played more than one character. And, at times, it was kind of hard to notice who was playing who. With the constant quick changes and the immediate switching from one character to a completely different character, this proved to be a very strong ensemble to watch perform. And, of course, there are the two main leads; Nick Offerman as Ignatius and Anita Gillette as Irene. It's no surprise that Offerman's performance is beyond hilarious. His subtle and dignified performance matched with his intellectually insulting dialogue made his performance the funniest part of the production. Gillette's performance as Irene was very special. She starts off as an affectionate mother who cares for nothing more than her own son and continuously takes the verbal beating by him despite what she's done for him. And, my god does she take such a beating from him. You become more invested in her and actually want to see her evolve more as a character when she starts breaking out of her own comfort zone; partying with her friends and forming a new romantic relationship after living the life of a single mother for so long. And that's just what the two arch for these two characters are about, the two of them learning to break out of their comfort zones in order to escape the uneventful lives they live.
-Overall Recommendation-
The combination of both the classic verbal humor and the Brechtian style of story telling, this was a very well-done and very enjoyable show. The humor is very witty and tongue-in-cheek, the performances are fun and memorable, and the work behind the scenes is very impressive. If you are a fan of classic witty comedies, definitely go check it out. The Huntington Theatre Company's A Confederacy of Dunces continues until Sunday, December 13th. For ticket prices and more information, go to http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/season/2015-2016/confederacy-of-dunces/ You won't want to miss it. If you have already seen this show, let me know what you thought in the comment box below.
No comments:
Post a Comment