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May. 16th, 2009 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherBack from the play. The programme booklet contains nothing I recognise as an official endorsement, and the adaptation-for-stage is credited to the director, so I continue to speculate nervously about the prospect of lurking intellectual property lawyers.
It was one of those school plays where the props, costumes, sets, and cast are all assembled out of what was available, and one is expected to politely overlook any consequent shortcomings - except when they're pointed out for the humour value. There was an official announcement regretting that due to the present shortage, the role of the giant would not be played by somebody of appropriate stature and we would all just have to pretend; enter the giant, immediately apparent as the shortest member of the cast. (The fact that the tallest member of the cast was playing the dwarf, on the other hand, passed without comment, since they were able to trim all the references to his height without affecting the plot and rely for the rest on the goodwill of anyone who knew better.) The climbing scene played at a 90-degree angle for health & safety reasons was also amusing, and the sock-puppet eels were downright cute.
I should say that it wasn't all shortcomings. There was some excellent acting, and a couple of very clever sight gags. All in all it was a fun night out, for reasons which were largely orthogonal to the success or otherwise of the adaptation.
I don't want to say too much about the adaptation, since much of it can be summed up by noting that it was a school production, better than one might have feared, and probably no worse than one might reasonably have hoped. There was, however, one strikingly odd thing, in a way that "it was a school production" completely fails to cover, and it has to do with the framing device.
They left out the frame story from the film, which wasn't the odd thing: one may regret it, but given the logistical challenges involved it's understandable. There was instead a prologue and epilogue in which the narrator addressed the audience directly to provide context; this wasn't the strikingly odd thing either, although it did seem rather pointless, since without the rest of the frame story it didn't connect to anything and could safely have been left out entirely. The strikingly odd thing was that the prologue and epilogue were condensed versions, not of the frame story from the movie, but of the other frame story, the world-weary one that only appeared in the original novel and got left out of the movie because it was too depressing. The depressingness was toned down somewhat (which, again, what was the point?), and the ending was given a different emphasis, but it still sat strangely with the youth of the narrator and the generally cheerful tone of the production.
It was one of those school plays where the props, costumes, sets, and cast are all assembled out of what was available, and one is expected to politely overlook any consequent shortcomings - except when they're pointed out for the humour value. There was an official announcement regretting that due to the present shortage, the role of the giant would not be played by somebody of appropriate stature and we would all just have to pretend; enter the giant, immediately apparent as the shortest member of the cast. (The fact that the tallest member of the cast was playing the dwarf, on the other hand, passed without comment, since they were able to trim all the references to his height without affecting the plot and rely for the rest on the goodwill of anyone who knew better.) The climbing scene played at a 90-degree angle for health & safety reasons was also amusing, and the sock-puppet eels were downright cute.
I should say that it wasn't all shortcomings. There was some excellent acting, and a couple of very clever sight gags. All in all it was a fun night out, for reasons which were largely orthogonal to the success or otherwise of the adaptation.
I don't want to say too much about the adaptation, since much of it can be summed up by noting that it was a school production, better than one might have feared, and probably no worse than one might reasonably have hoped. There was, however, one strikingly odd thing, in a way that "it was a school production" completely fails to cover, and it has to do with the framing device.
They left out the frame story from the film, which wasn't the odd thing: one may regret it, but given the logistical challenges involved it's understandable. There was instead a prologue and epilogue in which the narrator addressed the audience directly to provide context; this wasn't the strikingly odd thing either, although it did seem rather pointless, since without the rest of the frame story it didn't connect to anything and could safely have been left out entirely. The strikingly odd thing was that the prologue and epilogue were condensed versions, not of the frame story from the movie, but of the other frame story, the world-weary one that only appeared in the original novel and got left out of the movie because it was too depressing. The depressingness was toned down somewhat (which, again, what was the point?), and the ending was given a different emphasis, but it still sat strangely with the youth of the narrator and the generally cheerful tone of the production.
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Date: 2009-05-16 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 05:43 pm (UTC)I can think of a movie with a giant, a rock face and a framing sequence that would make a good musical.