#immoral art

[canisalbus]

✦ Cockroach ✦

[blitheringbongus]

Personally I think they’d be cute

[nesperus]

who are y’all voting for?

(in all seriousness, americans, do your civic duty and vote!!)

[vinnyschminny]

Paeden ajd Walter yay

[dasboligrafo]

TheatrePass Diaries: A Little Life at Brooklyn Academy of Music

Heh. Yes, bitch. I saw this one. I have so very many thoughts about this (probably?) good play about a bad, bad book. This placeholder post on the play the Post deemed "the most torturous New York theatre experience ever" to be completed during my next pointless conference call...

Placeholder no more:

First a tally of whats wrong with this play: it's based on a very bad book: it's very, very long; it's stomach-churningly violent; it's so long and violent that it's eventually deadening. It has moments of utter discordance, even cringe, and not just (I think) from adhering to its source material (which, did I mention, is very bad?) The casting occasionally felt like a very large pebble at the bottom of a really hard shoe. There are few (no?) moments of simple pleasure. Some of the audience maybe hadn't read the book and were clearly not sufficiently trigger-warned 😬 The start time did not allow enough after-work hours to get in the right amount of prophylactic drinking (infinity hours?!); I understand why you can't have infinity long intermission, but same. And -- perhaps more seriously than some of these jokey/obviousy grievances -- some of the van Hove choices felt a bit played out.

And yet....

So, one of the reviewers panning the play (lol, all of them) published last month argued that the play was bad bc it kept none of the things they loved about the book, the things that made all of the horrible parts of the story bearable. Straight off, thats a red flag for me. I have trouble imagining any sort of critical reading of this giant WOOF of a book that could be uncomplicatedly enjoyable. The "enjoyable" parts of the book (the non-torture porn parts, I take it), presumably the fucking endless descriptions of the gorgeous, talented (Mary Stu) MCs and their perfect New York lives -- it all reads very much like wealth porn. Without turning this note that's supposed to be about the play into a comprehensive take down of a book I obviously despised, I won't speculate here about the motives of the author (who is not a gay man) in writing a kind of reverse fairy tale with the trajectory of a romance (but no HEA) about the lives of post-AIDS New York gays performing aesthetically flawless lives while awaiting the too-punctual arrival of the reaper. Like, given that they all fucking die at the end whats the enjoyable content here -- descriptions of the natural stone kitchen island countertops they got to use first?!

Van Hove's adaptation dials all that shit way down, reducing it to mostly plot turns (the really gay one has a painting in the MOMA!) and mildly annoying/ridiculous exposition ("Oh my God, Jude [played by an actor on the wrong side of 40s], your sylph-like beauty!"). What he doesn't fucking dial down like at all is the violence, taking it brashly, unflinchingly, to a cartoonish, cringeful nadir -- the scene when Dr Evil runs over Jude's legs with his car, depicted on stage by a sort of comically large headlight-style lamp and Jude's gratingly childish screams.

Thinking about the assemblage of directorial choices, I can't help but conclude (hope springs eternal?) that van Hove found this book as weird and problematic as some of us. Like, I don't think van Hove doesn't know what a hot dude is. Ffs, I don't even think they were wearing boxer briefs in the sex scenes! (you know exactly what I'm talking about.) I don't think van Hove thought playing an Arcade Fire song as a moment of joyous, fun catharsis wasn't weird and jarring. I don't think he thought his play wasn't sheer fucking torture without a moment of pleasurable relief.

Because his critics are right, you know. The book has parts in it that are fun, even enjoyable to read, and I think that's absolutely crazy! It's the ultimate authorial gotcha, making you like reading about bougie shit to the point you forget about child sex slavery, and this author is no Nabokov.

There's also the matter of precedent: van Hove's adaptation of The Fountainhead, an equally immoral/boring af veritable tome that simply nobody should read, ever. That play was 3+ hours long and featured, in its closing act, an on-stage clock measuring the excruciating duration of Howard Roark's final monologue (15+ minutes that might as well be 1,000 after 3 hours).

Sidebar -- a finance bro type got an usher to demand *in the middle of the play* that I show my ticket to prove I was in my right seat. I never forgot my bitterness over this; I stopped donating to BAM beyond the basic member level after that. Like, did you even watch the play?! (@ the usher, I know the bro definitely enjoyed the book.)

I gotta wrap this up I guess. A Little Life the play is not boring -- though this being my 7th or 8th van Hove, the giant on-stage Box of Doom didn't surprise quite as much as it might have. Yet-- even though I wasn't surprised, its descent, like a giant, gliding bell jar, in the play's final act, was still devastating. I wept disconsolately, slumped in my seat, through the final 5 minutes and the awkward standing ovation. I asked myself why I bought tickets to the torture show about a book I hated. I guess if i believe my theory that van Hove also hated the book, I'm at least not alone. Is that good theatre?

And -- it's possible that I don't get this book and van Hove actually liked it. I know a lot of people (including, notably, several gay men) who unironically enjoyed -- even loved -- this book. I accept there's a dimension of melodrama/stigmata-passion play pastiche that resonates with certain gay audiences that I don't find personally accessible.

If that's true, then the play was a failure, because you hate every second of it, and then there's no thought experiment facet to analyze after the fact to palliate the horror.

But is it, nevertheless, good theatre?

[rambunctioustoons]

new and improved FazCo robots for all your testing needs!

[zimtlees]

Sighhh...immoral Orel au or inmoral I really dunno what's the tag????!!???!

I think he's just crazy like that????!

[dndadsepisodecovers]

Ep. 15.01 8 Simple Rules for Dadding my Teenage Paeden

[wishfulsketching]

Walter is the best dad!

In my head, Walter is very small. Like Cid in FFIX as an oglop lol

[ai3xx0]

IMMORAL OREL

HONESTLY honestly ive always thought about somethint similar but I've never really envisioned how orel would look, or given his/christina's personalities any thought. when i saw @marnorourastar 's post about it and saw orel i just HAAADDD TOOO..... it was too good to leave behind tbh. also if the colors look weird i made this in mspaint and it looks better on my pc

[puppyeared]

you are umasou

[miguxadraws]

there is a saying that goes like "the devil is the father of lies"

well, in this case, the mother! Ragatha decides to scam ppl because obviously that's easier than getting a job

au belongs to @spitinsideme

[wh0-is-lily]

A Poster for, 'Immoral Tales,' 1973 Dir: Walerian Borowczyk

[mj-thrush-gxn]

Walter the Immoral.

[silusvesuius]

yes good Sir we're working on that dominion+empire bond

and we go on dates!

i like face

[gamsdoodles]

welp