Bang the Drum Slowly

Bang the Drum Slowly, a play put on by MCT.

Paula and I, Paul and Barb, went to see it on Saturday
night. I didn't like it.

For one thing, I couldn't hear it. There was no sound system used, and although I could hear the voices, especially the narrator, I could not make out many of the words. He was too far away to lip read.

Scene Changes:

The play went by in a long series of scene changes. Each scene lasted less than a minute, and 10 seconds was not unusual. Machinery was in motion almost constantly, objects sliding out onto the stage and a three part rotating platform which changed while the narrator continued to explain what was going on. I never got confused, but my mind never got a chance to get used to where we were (Locker room, bed room, bar, ...)

Symbolism:

Everything was done with absolute minimum of props and scenery. A bar was a bar because it had two high small tables and four tall red-vinyl chairs and a dummy bar. It had no walls, no bottles, no noise. But this did not prevent anyone from knowing instantly that they were in a bar. Very good symbols were chosen, the acting was perfect, but after a while you got the idea that you were watching an animated comic book or a real jumpy video. The effect was very well done, and I didn't like it at all.

False Locker Room Talk:

I've been around men's locker rooms and other places where uneducated, violent, immature manhood have collected. I did my 20 years in the Army. I didn't like the verbal, and sometimes physical, grab-ass and bullshit talk that goes on constantly. The profanity is constant in such places, scatological, sexual, abusive, depressing and violent talk. Had they done the scene correctly, I would have walked out of the theater. So they cleaned it up. The problem with cleaning it up is that it becomes so completely unbelievable that I can't follow the conversations at all. The man talk was like nothing I have ever heard. It might as well been in some other language.

One of the primary points the play seemed to be making was that Real Men do not show their feelings directly. Indeed they didn't in this play. They hid them so well that I, for one, never found out what any of them felt about anything, and never could tell one player from another. They seemed to be a dozen copies of the same very strange clean-talking semi-male.

Too Fast:

The play was supposed to be filled with machinations and complications, lies and subterfuges, designed to keep a secret and gradually expose it to the other actors one at a time. In each case, there was to be a reaction, and some reflection, and some acceptance, and some change in behavior.

The play went by far too fast for any of that to happen. It was the usual modern production, take a novel which takes days if not weeks to read and absorb, cram it into three hours of acting, and speed everything up to an hour and a half. If I had read the novel, discussed the novel, discussed the play, and saw the play over and over for a period of time, say a year, I would "get" what was being presented. But why should I have to do that? I really am not that interested in the topic. The play should stand alone and explain itself, and this one, like a lot of modern ones, does not do that. It becomes an inside job. Only the actors and the crew know what it all means. In any case, it went by too fast for me to understand it.

So I go away thinking I have seen a very well rehearsed, very well acted, very well constructed, very well delivered production which I wouldn't walk across the street to ever see again. I'm just not smart enough, or sophisticated enough, or well-read enough, or quick enough to appreciate what I saw. Bring back "Oklahoma". I understood Oklahoma, and have seen it all my life. I could even understand the dialog.