A Cast of Millions

The professional theatrical press is still enjoined from writing reviews of The Farnsworth Invention prior to its official November 14 opening.  But that hasn’t stopped bloggers who have seen the play from writing whatever and whenever the want.  For example, this recent entry from somebody who saw the play last week:

The cast was ABSOLUTELY HUGE, and I really think that the play could benefit from a downsizing—this is just my snotty, uninformed opinion. For example—there were all these characters that we see once and then never again. I like when there are a million characters and I like it when an actor plays a ton of them, but there were so many actors that the effect was totally, in my mind, diminished. At curtain call, I said to Jess “I feel like I didn’t even see half of those people during the show.”

This assessment is consistent with the view expressed by somebody else I spoke to last week, who said simply, “too much story, not enough character.” The ironies in that statement are manifold: Not enough ‘character’ in a play with 150 of them, and too much ‘story’ but they still don’t get it quite right…

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