2 November 2019 Saturday

[KathyB]

I should be washing my sheets, but I'm choosing to procrastinate on that. I had a Vietnamese rice bowl for lunch, which was excellent and very filling. I love Vietnamese food...

Today is just kind of a blah day on which nothing is happening, but I'm not complaining.

[scenicdesign71]

Earlier this evening I met up with some old theatre friends to finally see Monsoon Season, the play whose landscape backdrop/mural I painted a couple of weeks ago.  Much to my relief after reading the Times's tepid (and somewhat spoiler-ish) review, the house seemed full or nearly so, and the play was thoroughly entertaining.  More than just a (welcome) excuse to catch up with colleagues over drinks afterward, it was a great night out from beginning to end.

The pics on the company's website, while strikingly vivid and expressive, don't entirely do the set itself justice.  But, seeing the mural again with some fresh perspective after two weeks away from it, I was pleased with how generally well it reads in person.  As I discovered even while still working on it (with cues sometimes being built around me), the lighting designer's hallucinatory neon palette -- which is perfect for the play -- makes this faded, grainy postcard image rather tricky to light: warm colors tend to flatten the landscape, while cool ones wash out the clouds entirely.  Fortunately, she has managed to concoct a wide array of different looks for it over the course of 70 intermissionless minutes -- often in recurring quasi-"chaser" sequences where various washes of color play over the back wall in turn, each emphasizing different layers or aspects of the image in swift succession.  There are also a few crisp bright-white looks that capture all the painterly nuances at once, and some deep-blue nighttime ones that erase most of the fine detail but create a gorgeously vivid sense of atmospheric depth and distance.  And the blacklight sequence at the show's climax, revealing a whole new image hidden in the desert landscape, is quite effective.

I was gratified to read the (currently unanimous) dissenting comments appended to that NYT review -- particularly on behalf of the designers, whose work is justly lauded by almost every commenter, in stark contrast to the reviewer's weirdly dismissive mention.  Times aside, the other reviews have been much more enthusiastic overall, albeit equally careless about spoilers.  This might not be life-changing theatre, but it is darkly engaging, sharply directed and beautifully performed.

Recently extended for an extra week, Monsoon Season is now set to run through Nov 23, so at some point I will try to get back down there and snap a few pics of the mural.  (Ed.: photos posted here).