Tonight we went to see a play. When we got our tickets at the beginning of the season, it was called "Playing Fields". A few weeks ago we got a letter saying the name of the play had been changed to "Roofsliding".
I once did a little roof sliding myself. When I graduated High School, I started painting the house. The house has a little roof over the front room, and the day of our graduation practice, I nearly slid off the roof. I had a rescue rope, and used it, but had slid half off the roof. After this, it was time to go up to the school, I didn't change or anything, I figured they were just showing us how to walk properly, and it wasn't worth my time anyway. I was in the front row of the class, and the walk through was fine, for being pointless. When I got home, my Mom asked me if I went up to the school in those clothes. I told her yes, she told me to look at the back of my pants. The rear end of the pair of shorts I had been wearing had completely worn off when I slid off the roof. What was left of my shorts, and the boxer underneath were covered in tar from the shingles. My Mom was embarrassed for me, since I wasn't really. I asked the girl behind me during the actual graduation why she didn't say anything, I think she was embarrassed also. A week or two later, I was up on an extension ladder painting the eaves. The ladder slipped out, I fell straight into some bushes, staring straight into a can of white paint. I had white paint over my entire head, up my nose, in my ears, in my mouth. My little brother Adam was out there painting the shutters, all he could do was laugh at me.
Anyhow, the name of the play was "Roofsliding." This has something to do with some sort of tradition someone knew about from Scotland, where men get up on a roof, and slide down it, and try to stop themselves at the gutter. The only thing "roofsliding" had to do with this play is that the play is set in Scotland, and everyone spoke with an accent. The origional title of the play was "cake", which had a little more to do with the play, "Playing Fields" was somewhere between the 2.
The play was kind of odd. It really didn't seem to have a point. I think the problem was that the thing was originally a 10 minute play, written by a student. This student eventually decided to try to take that 10 minutes and make it last 2 hours. The play had maybe 10 minutes of content, and 110 minutes of filler.
There were some laughs. There was 'sort of' a plot, but not really. If I had to sum up this play very quickly, I would have to use the phrase "...so anyway..." (I know I've done this before with a play I saw, but this one really deserves that response.) If I were pinned down to explain what the message of the play was supposed to be, I would have to say the message was "Scottish people are completely insane." I can't say more, it's more of an experienced thing, really.
The actors did a really good job with what thy had, and the scenery was interesting, but if I were given the choice between putting on this play and doing something else, I'd do something else. (Even if it meant *gasp* doing more than one Shakespeare in a year...) I'm not sure what the thought process was to get this play on the schedule. Maybe it made more sense in a earlier revision.
To top it off, we had bought season tickets for the first Thursday of the season. (The first Thursday of each play's run....) So far, we had exchanged each set of tickets for a different day. I took our tickets in yesterday to exchange them. Normally, they change a fee to exchange tickets, the other times this season I exchanged tickets, I got away with no exchange fee. Not so this time. I got rung up for another $6.40 for this play. It's a good thing I saved a little money on dinner with a gift certificate I had...
We got into the the theater, and there were maybe 30 people in the audience. The place was maybe 1/3 to 1/2 full by the time the thing started. I'd say 40% of the people left at the intermission. We stayed until the end.
One thing about going to these plays, is that it always seems to give Tara and me a chance to mock people. It's not that we are mean, it's just that some of our fellow audience members just naturally inspire that sort of thing. You hear some pretty funny things waiting for an on campus play to star. Tonight, the girl behind us was explaining to the guy she was with about how the shoes you wear tell all about your personality and stuff. She started explaining what her shoes said about her, and followed it up by psycho analyzing the guy based on the shoes he was wearing. The guy just kept saying "That's true, that's true." The only thing I could think was "say what you want, I'm wearing these shoes because they fit my feet."
Anyhow, I'd say pass on this one. Unless you are related to one of the actors, have an affinity for Scottish accents, already bought your tickets and can't get out of it. The Evans will be going on Tuesday, we don't plan to warn them, we know they will leave at intermission, and we really want to hear their take on it when we see them Wednesday evening. We don't want to temper their reaction at all...
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