The Veil

Taking a break from writing my paper about how social media is affecting theatre ...to be distracted by social media. Damn the irony! Right now I am suffering from the fact that I have finally found a topic that interests me, a fair amount of information, but I only have a page to write it all in. The longer papers will come later. This is supposed to be a warm up for the paper that is supposed to be a warm up for our dissertation (too many layers). I am not sure how they expect us to fit an introduction, lit review, coherent argument with support and a conclusion all into one page double spaced. So I'm going to step away from that for a moment to talk about The Veil.

On Saturday Sarah and I managed to get discount tickets to see the new production going on at the National Theatre, Conor McPherson's new play The Veil. I was quite excited to see the show as I had gotten a sneak peek of one of their tech rehearsals during a back stage tour. After Sarah and I took our seats the curtain rose to reveal an absolutely breathtaking set. I mean gorgeous. What had once been a beautiful and wealthy estate had slowly fallen into ruin and disrepair. Please if you get a chance look through the production stills! You could see the garden through the windows at the back of the set, and there were even trees overhanging the tops of the walls. These would gently sway with the eerie wind that would sound behind the windows. Amazing! The sound, lighting and costume design were all equally lovely! Really the design was the star of the show.

Really I felt that the week part of the production was the script itself. The show really didn't quite know what it wanted to be. Did it want to be a thriller? A ghost story? A character drama? Or something else. What ended up happening was that it was a little of all of these, but none of them completely. Often an interesting idea would be introduced only to be left without being developed. Which, when done consistently for 2 and 1/2 hours, becomes extremely unsatisfying. At times the play seemed both too long and too short. We would have endless dialogue scenes in which quite a lot of character backstory was revealed, and no one really knew why. Or there would be a lot of exposition explaining something that should have been left to action, or had already been shown to the audience. On the other hand whenever the plot would move forward the script would move quickly past the event without commenting or even fully realizing the moment.

The cast as a whole was perfectly amenable. At times they would belabor their weighty emotions, but this was not helped by the script. On at least one occasion a character described something as 'their own personal hell'. However I really liked both the actress playing the Lady of the household, Fenella Woolgar, and the actor playing her groundskeeper, Peter McDonald. I would have like to have seen more of them throughout the show. There was one moment in particular which I think should have been expanded. It is hard to describe the moment, as I would have to explain the events of the preceding scene, and its really not worth it. Anyway, there was a split second as he is departing, he says her name and they make eye contact. I could feel the audience around me sit up and think 'oh, this scene is going to be good'. Right then another character walks in and ruins the whole thing. He departs, leaving the audience and the actress upset and frustrated (ok I am just assuming about the actresses feelings, but she sure looked that way)!

On the whole not the most amazing theatre going experience, but definitely worth the price of admission! I look forward to filling more of my time with new and interesting theatre experiences. Not sure what is next up, but hopefully it will be soon.