2008 Woodie Awards
LyricStage play is no Folly
Matt Shirley
Issue date: 4/13/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment
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The Lyric Stage Company had its best season to date this year, climaxing with show number eight of nine, The Goat, or, who is Sylvia?
That was a massive success for the company, and the Lyric chose to substantially lighten the mood by following with a sweet romantic comedy, Talley's Folly, written by Lanford Wilson.
Preceding this play with an Edward Albee piece was eerily intuitive, being that the last four decades of theatre have been more influenced by him than any other living playwright. Dead playwrights seem to have quite loud voices).
Wilson is certainly no exception, but as a playwright, not being Edward Albee is as much a burden as it is a blessing.
An honored tradition in the whole of theatre, even more so that other mediums, has been the third-act spoken flashback narrative, as in the female character reveals that she once: a) had an illegitimate child; b) was raped by her father; c) had a lesbian encounter; or d) is actually a man.
And the whole dialogue leading to this point has been a kind of masturbatory tiptoeing of the issue, ruffling the fray of the play's central message.
After Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) and Albee's first smash (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), the dialogue became an outlet of artistic absurdity.
Say what you will of its impact, but no matter; the theatre has either been trying to top it or to recover from it for years. Talley's Folly aims to remedy for the latter category.
Not to say that Folly isn't absurd, or at least comic.
Matt (Stephen Russell), a Polish immigrant who settled for an accounting job in St. Louis, and Sally (Marianna Bassham), a Missouri spinster-in-waiting play off each other much like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton did in much of his best work, or for the theatre much like Mike Nichols and Elaine May's finest.
The characters exploit each other's idiosyncrasies in great acuity of the comic stage aesthetic only George S. Kaufman and a few others could rival; the lines are terribly witty.
That was a massive success for the company, and the Lyric chose to substantially lighten the mood by following with a sweet romantic comedy, Talley's Folly, written by Lanford Wilson.
Preceding this play with an Edward Albee piece was eerily intuitive, being that the last four decades of theatre have been more influenced by him than any other living playwright. Dead playwrights seem to have quite loud voices).
Wilson is certainly no exception, but as a playwright, not being Edward Albee is as much a burden as it is a blessing.
An honored tradition in the whole of theatre, even more so that other mediums, has been the third-act spoken flashback narrative, as in the female character reveals that she once: a) had an illegitimate child; b) was raped by her father; c) had a lesbian encounter; or d) is actually a man.
And the whole dialogue leading to this point has been a kind of masturbatory tiptoeing of the issue, ruffling the fray of the play's central message.
After Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) and Albee's first smash (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), the dialogue became an outlet of artistic absurdity.
Say what you will of its impact, but no matter; the theatre has either been trying to top it or to recover from it for years. Talley's Folly aims to remedy for the latter category.
Not to say that Folly isn't absurd, or at least comic.
Matt (Stephen Russell), a Polish immigrant who settled for an accounting job in St. Louis, and Sally (Marianna Bassham), a Missouri spinster-in-waiting play off each other much like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton did in much of his best work, or for the theatre much like Mike Nichols and Elaine May's finest.
The characters exploit each other's idiosyncrasies in great acuity of the comic stage aesthetic only George S. Kaufman and a few others could rival; the lines are terribly witty.
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