To the people who are searching for reviews of my play
Deflowering Waldo and stumble on my blog instead:
First of all, why do you care? Either you like the
play or you don't. Either you want to do it or you
don't. Why do you care what other people say?
Second, you're not going to find a review of it
online. We performed it in secrecy. At night. You
had to know a special password to get in. And you had
to be able to say it correctly, in Russian. And you
had to pay a lot of money directly to a Swiss bank
account prior to the performance. And we did it in my
basement. And the people who saw it were sworn to
secrecy and could never talk about the experience.
Because we didn't want the riff raff to see the show
and then write an online review.
I hope this information helps.
Sincerely,
Adam
I saw it and I thought it was fucking _________. In fact, the climax left me _______ and I couldn't _______ for a week.
ReplyDeleteAn _____, _______ show. Few writers can _______ the way Adam ________.
He's a real ________.
I wonder if that counts as an online review.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the person searching for reviews, obviously, though I wish I could see/read the play. Nevertheless, whenever I see something (movie, play) I sometimes go on the net to see what other people thought. I guess I miss being able to discuss it with others who have an informed opinion. It helps to enhance the experience, and it often makes me consider other points of view.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a good sign, if that's happening. It means that people are walking out the door, getting home, checking the internet and searching for it. All that time, they were probably thinking about various aspects of your play. They took all that time to consider it.
Of course, it could also be someone is thinking about producing it and wants a variety of opinions.
Or maybe you're right. It's someone who is wondering if it's worth it to go.
But what the hell, why not think positive? Heh.
thanks, Laura for being the voice of reason. I guess I can't help being snarky sometimes when really I should be happy a discussion is taking place about my work in which i am not involved.
ReplyDeleteWasn't there a review that compared Deflowering Waldo, for incomprehensible reasons, to William Styron's Darkness Visible? I'm still puzzling over that one.
ReplyDeleteIn that spirit, I create for you an internet review of Waldo, adapted from the very first google hit for the phrase "The Most Pretentious Review Ever":
"There are few places creepier to spend time than in Adam Szymkowicz’s head. It is a head where the wild things grow, twisting and spreading like vines, like fingers, and taking us in their captive embrace. These wild things have laid siege to us even as they have mutated. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, “Deflowering Waldo” is also as cracked as Mad magazine. I’m still trying to figure out what Waldo — who seems to be living in Ralph Kramden’s apartment, as redesigned by Edward Hopper — has to do with the weepy psychotherapist who may be a whore or merely lost or, because this is an Adam Szymokowicz play (after all), probably both.
"As the Good Witch of the North says, it’s always best to start at the beginning and, so, once upon a time, a boy, Waldo receives a psychiatrist into his home. When the boy went out into the world to play, evil was born and followed the boy. When the girl went out to play, though, she got lost in the marketplace, which pretty much sums up what happens to most pretty actresses in New York. Waldo tumbles down rabbit holes inside rabbit holes inside rabbit holes, finally choking on the acrid smoke that billows out of the dream factory in what looks like a Nathanael West rooming house of horrors. They shoot rabbits, don’t they? Yes, they do, and usually before the clincher. Soon, Waldo or Butch or perhaps both enter another story that resembles a tawdrier version of “On High in Blue Tomorrows”, chewing the fat and their naughty lower lips. In “Deflowering Waldo,” the classic hero’s journey has been supplanted by a series of jarringly discordant scenes, situations and setups that reflect one another much like the repeating images in the splintered hall of mirrors at the end of Orson Welles’s “Lady From Shanghai.”
thanks, Ry. That's fantastic. I'm glad it exists and it sums the play and that production up pretty nicely.
ReplyDelete