Friday, September 3, 2010

"Kalvkött, carne de ternera"

I saw this play almost two weeks ago, so my memory of it is a little rusty, but I’ll write a little review nonetheless. In short, I liked the play, but pretty much hated the production.

The story takes place in Sweden and Argentina in the 1970s, exploring the relationship of a young Swedish man and a young Argentine woman who fall in love (presumably – that part is more or less implied) and proceed to get married and all that jazz. I was psyched to see a show about language barriers and cultural differences, and especially pleased that the show featured Scandanavia.

Given the script, the production could have been much better. The male lead was good, convincingly Swedish in both manner and accent. The young female lead, on the other hand, took every opportunity to diva it up, resulting in some comedic and disturbing moments that were supposed to just be, well, normal. To quote one of the Argentines I went with: “Even Isa could tell that actress sucked, and this isn’t her first language!”

This production also made use of “everyone’s fave new theatrical device” : projections. For the most part, these were tolerable, sometimes even interesting, but there was one scene in which María (played by the aforementioned diva extraordinaire) danced around ‘emotively’ while brightly colored patterns à la Kid Pix were projected onto the wall behind her. As my father would say, gross me out with a spoon.

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