Last week I saw Laer’s Last Prayer, which was not put on by a specific company but rather was the writing and directing project of one man, Stephen F. Murray. I find it difficult to review such personal projects (Like The Untangling at the Junction a few weeks ago), because any negative feedback seems particularly pointed since there’s one person bearing so much of the responsibility. Here’s an excerpt:
Stephen F. Murray’s “Laer’s Last Prayer” is a found poem made up of “King Lear,” “Twelfth Night,” biblical passages, and nursery rhymes. Laer (Elliott Fredland) reigns from a wheelchair, a senile old man tended to by his resentful son, Jack (Nick Lake), and his eager to please doctor, Kent (Brian Hurst).
You can read the rest of the review here.
I liked the idea of the play more than the actual execution. I tried to get at that a bit in the review by talking about the disconnect between absurdism and emotion. Any theater people out there want to tell me if that disconnect is ever bridged in Beckett-ish plays, or if the gap is purposeful?
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I think I may have liked it a bit more than you did. I still have bits and pieces of it bouncing around in my head, which is not something that happens very often. And while I agree the end wasn’t quite satisfying, the more I think about it my urge is actually in the opposite direction of yours: I kind of wanted it to pull back further into absurdism and ambiguity, letting the staging and words resist clarity. But then I have an unusual love for ambiguity…
Rats, I must’ve written the review wrong. Because I did find a lot of it interesting, and I’m glad I saw it.
Also, I noticed in the program that the director/writer said he’d reworked this several times, and the latest iteration added more narrative structure to it. I wonder if you would’ve liked the early versions more, since it sounds like it was even more abstract to begin with.
I just think stating that your play is about dealing with the intense emotions one feels when one’s parent ages and dies, and then keeping those emotions at arm’s length for the duration of the play, presents a problem.
Oh no, your review was fine. I was responding more to your last paragraph on the blog post here when I said I think I liked it a bit more than you.
I’m thinking our experiences of the play were quite different, actually. For me, those intense emotions were there in the staging, the songs, the words, the absurdism, but I wanted them to carry through and be intensified and instead I found that the addition of a certain amount of narrative clarity lessened them.
(You’re quoted on the Laer’s Last Prayer website now!)