Plays

It's a running joke that I hate plays. And it's funny, ha ha, because I married an actor. I feel bad sometimes, but I know Tim hates what I do. (Well, he hates that a need for the job exists, and sometimes it's too hard for him to listen to me talk about it.) I mostly hate getting bored and feeling stupid because I don't grasp the grand themes that plays revolve around.

Once I watched a play that ended up with an explosion (in sound only, off-stage). Afterwards, someone asked, "That was tragic when she died, wasn't it?" and after I bumbled around and sounded like an idiot for a while, I realized the explosion wasn't random, and was actually an integral part of the plot. I'm not that smart sometimes. I just get bored.

And it's hardest to watch people I know. It doesn't matter how good they are, watching Tim and his classmates act like rustic peasants in Shakespeare, or like farmhands in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is just watching Tim and his classmates put on accents and dress-up clothes. They never stop being the people I know. So when Tim asks if I liked his version of [whatever], I hem and haw and say, "You were fantastic!" Because he is fantastic. I just can't tell what sort of subtlties he's putting into the part. He's always my husband.

But last night I saw one that blew me away. Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Despite the fact that I analyzed whether or not I thought Tim could do all the male parts (he played the next-door neighbor), I still got lost in it. Well, sort of. When a character would rage or cry, I'd think, "That was a good display of emotion! Well done!" instead of just being into the story. But the ending! Oh, the ending! Tim and Meghan (who played his wife) warned me I would cry, and I scoffed at them. I was right. Sort of. Not crying. Full-on sobbing.

It was so powerful. The lights came up way too quickly after the end, and the actors cheerfully took their bows, oblivious to the fact that they just devastated us. I just wanted to go sit in a corner by myself and think about it for a long time. I had some time to kill while Tim got out of dress and makeup, and I started crying again when he appeared. But we then went to the dessert reception afterwards, and I felt robbed out of fully absorbing the emotion and tragedy of the play.