Last evening, in the matter of an hour, I read A.R. Gurney’s play “Love Letters.” Being the same play I will be seeing with Barbara Eden on Valentine’s Day, I felt a matter of responsibility in gaining some degree of familiarity with the work, as to make its viewing more straightforward and less quizzical. That is, live theater, often, will lose me if I don’t have at least a basic knowledge of plot. I will, almost always, read a work’s source material before a viewing. Films are different, with films, I can usually follow along fairly easily, but with live theater, I’m always paranoid I’ll miss a line, or a cue, and be left bewildered. In high school I went to see Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and couldn’t have been more confused! Granted, that’s Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is, well, Shakespeare. But I had the same thing occur when I saw a local production of “Cats.” Don’t misunderstand, I quite enjoyed the music, particularly “Memory”, of course. But, the plot is still a complete mystery. Verbatim can be said of “Aida.” I get enchanted with the costumes and the lights, and forget to figure out the plot!
Other works, of course, society itself prepares you to see, among them: “Les Miserables,” “Wicked,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Mary Poppins,” etc. All of these, I’ve seen in London, although, me being me, I will admit I did read “Phantom of the Opera,” translated from the French, long before seeing the musical, and I’ve tried, on a few occasions, to approach “Les Miserables,” but I’ve yet to venture far into the novel.
A Random Existence 