Scene Missing

[ateolf]

So last night Mary Beth and I went to the Orpheum and saw just the worst play. Mary Beth had gone into it cold, just knowing the title (Black Men Missing II, it was a sequel) and the basic premise about the effects of over-incarceration of black men in our society. Okay, that sounds interesting, but... This was some weird vanity project with a big church tie-in. When we sat down and I looked at the program and saw "written, directed, and produced by [Some Guy]" and the company's name was [Some Guy]'s Productions Inc. or whatever, I was kinda...hm. Then a little before it started there was the giant boom of a microphone being dropped behind the curtain. I knew this wasn't quite at the professional level of something you'd typically see at the Orpheum (I mean, usually the problem with things there is that they're TOO polished and professional and produced). But yeah, I guess they just drummed up the money to rent the Orpheum, probably a lot fronted by [Some Guy] and the rest raised from his church. It was a very amateurish production, but that was far from the worst part. I'm all, where to fucking begin with this thing? I guess I'll start with the easy stuff. So yeah, lots of mic problems. Often characters' mics weren't on for a bit (once pretty much for the character's entire scene). A couple times the actors hugged and just bumped and rubbed each others' mics. One scene the main character just kept dropping his mic over and over (these are the kind that clip to your clothes or head, it had gotten loose and just kept falling off him). And on top of that the eq-ing was muddled, at least for the acoustics of the room. Now the Orpheum is a very large theater and the audience was at probably around 1/10 capacity (definitely well under 1/4). The story was a giant mess. There were several plot threads but they were just kind of a jumble and none of the characters made any sense as characters and it almost felt like a string of non-sequiturs (at times it almost had a theater of the absurd feel, which I mean, would be cool, and I think all conventions of drama and plot are meant to be broken, but...this was not that, it was trying to be coherent and preachy, literally, it was just a mess of it). Also the passage of time felt all over the place and not consistent at all. And it had what felt like should have been the climax or whatever about halfway through and then the rest felt like a plateau of multiple endings stretching out the last half. And there was a lot of melodrama that came up out of the blue unrelated to what had gone on before. Okay, now I'll get to the real insidious shit. So yeah, it was about effects of over-incarceration of black men in our society, but uh, because they don't act right and pull up their pants and have faith in Jesus. And it was rife with misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and fatphobia. There was also a lengthy fart-noise joke...that was an extension of the bit making fun of the smelly homeless man. It was a string of clichés and stereotypes and empty platitudes. And on top of all that, it didn't even mention RACISM once. Oh, and the fucking resolution (that occurs about halfway through before it just keeps plodding along) is that the one character, after getting out of jail, (no, I'm not making up what you're about to read, someone in 2023 wrote this plot resolution) has a rich uncle who just died and left him all his money and made him rich so now he's able to give back and do good (mostly by buying fancy things for his friends) and this of course after having his time in prison make him want to change and turn his life around (like...pretty much all of the characters decide to turn their live around after spending time in prison...that, uh, rings true with the real issues of over-incarceration). And then this one scene took the cake. This older man who had turned his life around after being in prison, stops a younger man who's charging across the stage with a gun and is going to get revenge on the guy who stole his shoes (which, if I followed correctly, happened five years earlier and the guy still has his shoes on him) and he's all don't throw your life away by doing that. Then he finds out who it was and then, instead of the bad thing of letting the kid go after the guy with a gun...they do the good thing of letting the kid go after the guy with a gun, but now the older guy's there too to help him rob back from the guy and take his own shoes too and humiliate him 'cuz he's bad and they're good and make him take off his pants ('cuz they're saggin' so much anyway). I had offered that we could leave and ditch it during the intermission but Mary Beth felt like sticking it out to the end. But towards the end, in the second-to-last scene it had pretty much just turned into a church service performed out on stage (after it had already had like five scenes that should have been ending scenes) and then she couldn't take it anymore and so we walked out just a little bit early. And hey, as sparsely attended as this thing was, I noticed quite a few walk-outs of people in front of us in the areas I could see. I'm sure there's so much more that I could go on about this and that I'm forgetting to mention, but I mean, I've gotta end somewhere. I will say that it did have this one positive thing in common. One of the songs it used was "For the Love of Money" by The O'Jays, which all my childhood I heard just the chorus in like millions of commercials and didn't realized I don't think I've ever heard any more of the song. (You know, just the "money-money-money-money...money!" part that was used ad nauseam in commercials and shit back in the day.) Anyway, never paid any attention to that song 'cuz it was pretty much just a snipped of a jingle but what I heard of the rest of it made it sound like it might actually be a good song. So...maybe I'll have to check out some O'Jays sometime!