Cloud 9

I love previews! The fresh feel of a piece as it unfurls itself for the first time, it's quivering hopeful face turned towards us begging for acceptance, love, understanding. I love when the director stands diffidently in front of us and begs our indulgance with any technical issues, offering their new baby to the light tender touch of its first audience. 

I'm not in love with the play. It's bleakly comic farce of Victoria's sexually repressed colonialism just makes me uncomfortable rather than amused or titilated. The actors are working up a sweat trying to keep the pacing going but it flags in places. the crashing blackness of scene changes are awkward, they merely highlight the difficult exits some characters must make. The difficult entrances of others and given the deftness of some of the changes with light (particularly 'boys best friend is his Mother') it leaves me wondering if some of the staging is still very much in flux at this point. Oh to have the funds to come back in the middle of the run and see it in full flight!

Act Two awaits! 

Also what's so awesome about glass boxes? I've yet to see one do anything. 

Better in act two. The box gave us some vignettes to setup characters and show us these actors we've come to know as new people. The blackouts while still as stark felt more in tune with this act. 

Victoria is my real problem in act two, it still feels like she's not acting for gelded but being pulled but others.