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Sunday, September 21, 2008
To Kill a Mockingbird Play Review {6:23 AM}
The atmosphere of the much-anticipated play was somber, hushed, quiet. A lone light haloed the stage; an adult Jean Louise, known in her younger days as Scout, steps forward. Her eyes glimmered with soulful emotions, her hands quavered and shook; with her poignant body posture you would almost expect to hear the sound of wistful violins starting to play.
Strangely though, in the play, there doesn’t seem to have much room for wistful violins, nor for Scout’s weird, emotional body posture. A load of farmers marched about Maycomb County aimlessly, looking for all the world like an army Resident Evil zombies. Jean Louise than began a monologue – emotionally, like everything else she does – trying to cram the all background information you would probably find on a TKAM jacket blurb into the audience in as short a time as possible. After hearing her sketchy outline of the first part of the original texts’ plot, I was praying as hard as I could that Harper Lee would not have the misfortune to see her story packaged and delivered as conscientiously as Ronald MacDonald packages and delivers a Happy Meal.
As the play progressed, I prayed harder than ever. My friends and I all got a shock when we saw how the younger Scout was portrayed in the play – a whiny, shrilly girl who screams and throws tantrums impertinently. I was horrified and my friend SiYu put my feelings into words perfectly – ‘In the book,’ he said, ‘Scout was a tomboy and very individualistic. Now look at her! She’s portrayed as nothing but a stereotypical immature child and sounds like a brainless bimbo. The directors,’ he pronounced solemnly, ‘sucked.’
The judge Taylor was also subjected with much controversy. ‘I have nothing against women judges in particular,’ SiYu said, ‘but this judge, ugh. I mean, she looks like one of those actors in a cheap Chinese drama play. Her screechy voice, her self-righteousness, her grand waving hand gestures…ugh.’ SiYu was quite good at summing up, I think.
The worst part in the play, I think, was Miss Maudie. Originally a thoughtful, helpful and insightful woman, she now looks like the lead actress in ‘My Sassy Neighbour’. The Atticus in the play was not bad, mainly because he was so forgettable. I mean, five minutes after the play, I couldn’t even recall his face, much less his acting. The only thing I could associate him to, in my mind now, was that he radiates a plain, mundane mediocrity, personified by the dramatic anticlimax when he shot Tom Johnson. ‘Pop! goes the gun-shot!’
The only actor I consider good was Robert Ewell, who happens to sound so much like an outraged Leonard when he raved and declaimed against Atticus and Judge Taylor I could not help but chuckle. I think the actress for Mayella was okay too, though she didn’t really express the calculating slyness I imagined novel's Mayella to have
What a play, what a night. As I stepped out of the theatre to the warm night air, I reflected to myself that TKAM is not the first novel to be destroyed by bad acting; after all, there was always that Eragon movie. I shall have to wait for the sixth Harry Potter movie installment in order to convince myself that there are worse acting and worse plots in this world than the one I just saw. And, do you know, the Harry Potter actor wants to dress up as a drag queen? Honest!
