Play Review

This weekend I saw the 2nd act of Liz Dembrowsky’s play An Irish Wake: a play in two acts three times at the Beckman Theatre in Manhattan. It’s a little hard to write about act 2 when I failed to see act 1. So I attribute my feelings of unevenness to that. In my previous post about the show I was going to venture a description about the “two acts three times” part of the title. But I wanted to see it in action first. The act literally happens 3 times. First from Mara’s point of view, followed by Andrew’s and finally Elizabeth’s. I don’t know if it was Liz’s decision in the writing of if it was the director’s, but I found the choice to physically move the set pieces around as a visual and cue to the audience that we were entering another character’s point of view a bit distracting. I found myself checking to see if they did it all the same. I also found that the lighting going all the way to blackout at the end of each monologue a bit much as well, when a simple dimming would have sufficed. I wound up paying more attention to the production end because the acting was just plain awful. The only exception was Jennifer Ankenbrand playing Mara. She seemed at ease in her role and played it off effortlessly. The other main characters just weren’t there. I found them to be trying too hard, and not really “feeling” (if you will allow me to use that expression) their roles. I had the impression that Daniel Cardona and Cara Maltz (Andrew and Elizabeth respectively) were rushing through their monologues, just trying to finish them instead of trying to be in their roles. I didn’t find them very good at all. With such bad acting it’s really hard to get a feel for the play itself. I do think that the characters and their monologues could be developed further. I didn’t really come away feeling like I got what Liz was going for. I know what she was going for, but I didn’t really think it came across through what the characters had to say. Then again, I missed Act 1, the details could have been there. I would like to see Act 1 and Act 2 performed together to see how I come away after having seen the full length. But my impression of Act 2 is that it is a good play, that needs better actors in roles that need to be developed just a little bit more.