Brunch this afternoon at Minado with
Three Sisters at the ART tonight. I have never seen so many audience members sneak out partway through. Lady With a Lapdog (which my fingers keep trying to type as "Lady With a Laptop") was another of my less favorite ART productions, so I will freely admit to some possible anti-Chekhov bias here. But gah, it was a two and a half hour play padded out to three and a half hours by Significant Pauses. And it was a confusing and boring play to begin with. (Extra-boring in the first half, in particular.) At least they gave us a good dose of writhing on the floor. I also don't understand the directorial choice to obscure a lot of the dialogue with loud atonal music (including all the ending lines), or by staging some of it behind a glass wall.
[Note:
I leave you with a quintessential ART moment:
Me: "Excuse me, did you say you were familiar with the original?"
Other Patron: "Well, I read the translation, at least."
Me: "Um, well, could you tell me, when he brought on the singing severed head in a fishtank, what was up with that?"
Other Patron: "Oh, in the original, that was a silver samovar."
Me: "Thank you! That makes so much more sense!"
Current Mood: sleepy