More on those dicks
I saw Bloody Mess at On the Boards last night too and also liked it. It’s too long. But you should see it. They have plenty of tickets left for tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night. Some of the tedious bits are truly tedious; others are tedious inasmuch as a sexy woman constantly pouring water on herself and flashing her breasts can be tedious (there is still much to enjoy in that); and, again, as Brendan points out, there are dicks belonging to naked men who hold cardboard stars covered in foil to conceal their goods (although not very well) while doing this great bit about different kinds of silences — they start off with innocent examples, like the silence of staring up at the stars in the middle of the countryside, and end up with increasingly morbid examples, like the silence after turning off the life support machine, and each time the other guy goes, “Oh yeah, that’s beautiful” — that might remind you of the dictionary of different kinds of sadnesses in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. Of non-literary interest, one of the guys is uncut and one is cut.
Oh, and the first 15 minutes of the show are the best 15 minutes of theater I’ve seen in… well, a year? More? SO GOOD. The show is not without its faults, but the beginning is fantastic and the end is moving and I left the theater feeling inspired to write a novel, which you might remember is exactly how I felt a year ago after ConWorks’ Russian Doll.
As a Forcedents groupie, I'm glad to hear that Bloody Mess is going over well, at least with some of The Stranger crowd. It's not my favorite of theirs, either, and yeah it's a little on the long side, but there's some great stuff in it as well. I hope more people go so the company will come back and put on more shows in Seattle. I'll let Tim and tha Gang know about the kind words here on the Slog.