Saturday, October 28, 2006
he's gay! and latino! he's...
My friend Miriam had an extra ticket to the Borderlands Theatre production of ¡Gaytino! Never one to pass up a free theatre ticket, we walked the 500 blocks or so from her house to the Leo Rich (and got a little lost once at the TCC).
Overall, it's a fun, if mildly cliche, one man show. I'm not really in a place to criticize that though, since I did my own much shorter one man show in college that was just one run-on cliche. There were several technical glitches that were annoying, but Dan Guerrero, the playwright and actor, rolled with them with grace. One got the impression that these tech glitches happen fairly often.
I'm a fan of autobiographical one-person shows. I love the history. It was an embarrassment of riches when both Bea Arthur and Elaine Stritch (don't forget: I want tickets to see her perform in Scottsdale for my birthday) both had one woman shows on Broadway at the same time a few years ago. I do wish Guerrero would have done some more singing. He was channeling Merman better than most chanteusses I've heard.
I was also impressed with how he was able to keep the show moving at a relatively decent pace - with few lulls - using very sparse elements: one costume, very basic light plot, a stool and a projection screen. He was a little "actory", but our seats were close up, so his performance probably played mroe realistically to the back of the house.
Slightly off-topic: I also want to just touch on a comment an anonymous poster left in my thread about LTW's "The Baltimore Waltz" last week. I gave an honest and fair critique of the show, which I am still happy to discuss with whomever posted the comment. The comment itself was pretty snide and seemed to come from somebody connected with the production who didn't like that I critiqued the show. If you can't take criticism, you shouldn't be in theatre. That's the first thing.
The other thing is to grow a pair and not post anonymously on somebody else's blog attacking them for not totally loving your show. Like I said in the original post last week, the show exceded expectations and it was an enjoyable way for me to start my weekend. But it was far from perfect (as is so much of the theatre I've seen - and participated in myself - over my past four years in Tucson). How you get that I have "little to no respect" for LTW from that is beyond me. Grow up and maybe then we can have an honest conversation about the theatre scene in Tucson.
Overall, it's a fun, if mildly cliche, one man show. I'm not really in a place to criticize that though, since I did my own much shorter one man show in college that was just one run-on cliche. There were several technical glitches that were annoying, but Dan Guerrero, the playwright and actor, rolled with them with grace. One got the impression that these tech glitches happen fairly often.
I'm a fan of autobiographical one-person shows. I love the history. It was an embarrassment of riches when both Bea Arthur and Elaine Stritch (don't forget: I want tickets to see her perform in Scottsdale for my birthday) both had one woman shows on Broadway at the same time a few years ago. I do wish Guerrero would have done some more singing. He was channeling Merman better than most chanteusses I've heard.
I was also impressed with how he was able to keep the show moving at a relatively decent pace - with few lulls - using very sparse elements: one costume, very basic light plot, a stool and a projection screen. He was a little "actory", but our seats were close up, so his performance probably played mroe realistically to the back of the house.
Slightly off-topic: I also want to just touch on a comment an anonymous poster left in my thread about LTW's "The Baltimore Waltz" last week. I gave an honest and fair critique of the show, which I am still happy to discuss with whomever posted the comment. The comment itself was pretty snide and seemed to come from somebody connected with the production who didn't like that I critiqued the show. If you can't take criticism, you shouldn't be in theatre. That's the first thing.
The other thing is to grow a pair and not post anonymously on somebody else's blog attacking them for not totally loving your show. Like I said in the original post last week, the show exceded expectations and it was an enjoyable way for me to start my weekend. But it was far from perfect (as is so much of the theatre I've seen - and participated in myself - over my past four years in Tucson). How you get that I have "little to no respect" for LTW from that is beyond me. Grow up and maybe then we can have an honest conversation about the theatre scene in Tucson.
