An Hour's Worth of Narration

An Hour’s Worth of Narration

           

            As a writer, I appreciate a good transition.  A good transition in my mind is something that goes from A to B with an “ab” in-between.  Transitions help move along stories smoothly so the audience can focus on the story as a whole as opposed to many juxtaposed chapter chunks.  In theater, transitions are used in a literary sense because of the structure of the show and a physical sense because of what happens onstage.  These physical transitions could be a shift in the lights (i.e. focusing one on side of the stage or a total blackout), a rearrangement of the set, or a “distraction” to the audience to disguise the stagehands setting up for the next scene.  Elon’s production of The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman chose to use historical and biographical context of the show and Hellman’s life to transition.  While I appreciate the risk they took with this, I do not think it benefitted the production.

            Hellman’s play had few set changes, but the ones that were there were long.  To hide the stagehands resetting for the next scene, director Kirby Wahl had the schoolgirls talk about how the scandal at the heart of the play was based off of Miss Pirie and Miss Woods’s scandal in Scotland in the early 1800s.  The schoolgirls also discussed the major political events around the time the play was written (i.e. Great Depression, banning of homosexuality onstage in New York) and Hellman’s background before and after writing the play.  Typically, these tidbits of useful information are found in the Director’s note inside of the program.  (Contrary to popular belief, yes, people read them.  Or, maybe it’s just me.)  I would have preferred them there, honestly, because the narration grew old on me after the first two transitions.  Yes, I understand that homosexuality was taboo when the play was first performed, yes, I understand that Hellman was accused of being a communist because of her writing, and yes I can therefore conclude that her subject matter which made her a famous voice of theater led to suspicions of her being a communist.  I was able to put two and two together before the next transition, and that disturbed my flow of the piece.

            Fortunately, the cast’s performances were top notch (especially Bonnie Flaherty’s interpretation of Rosalie) and I very much enjoyed watching the play itself.  I just felt like the director did not trust us to absorb the contextual circumstances of the play, so it was constantly drilled into the audience’s heads every transition.  While this did not make me deem the play totally unbearable, I would have enjoyed it more with different transitions.