This week I read:
Sam Shepherd is intense, y'all. I certainly wouldn't turn down the opportunity to play Cecilia in "Simpatico" -- but his writing is so sexually blunt sometimes that I find myself blushing even though I am reading in my head. It's not like I am even saying any of the lines out loud. And besides, I feel a little silly when that happens because I am a grown woman anyway.
I picked up this play because the Broadway run featured Marcia Gay Harden. I like her work a lot and we are similar in type, so even though my past experiences with the Sam Shepherd repertoire were sketchy at best, I decided to give this play a shot. (This whole experiment has become all about "What's in it for me?" dontcha know - hah!)
Let me tell you something: another Sam Shepherd play -- "Fool For Love" -- is a really popular tool for acting classes. I've seen soooo many scenes from that play in several different acting classes in my career thus far. I tend to put "Sam Shepherd/Fool for Love" and "overacting actors" into the same bin in my mind. This is probably why I went into reading this play with a little bit of a bias against it. Sorry (shrug).
In the end, however, I have to admit that I did like this play. I wouldn't say I loved it, but it held my interest and it's clever -- it doesn't hit you over the head with its issues, which I appreciate. You have to stay with it to get all the crucial information and if you do, the pay off is worth it I think. I don't know. I finished reading it a 4am and here it is 1:30pm and I'm still figuring out the final scene in my head. I tried real hard to stay with it, but it ends abruptly and I feel like I'm missing something. Sigh. I've had this crummy sinus headache on-and-off all week and I'm telling you, nothing is worse than trying to think on top of a crummy sinus headache.
Like a couple of other plays that I've read so far, I might set this one aside and re-read it later.
