I liked Our Town The Skin of Our Teeth, mildly and by the time I got to The Matchmaker, I could not finish it. Non-realistic plays are the norm in the traditional theatre of the east, so I have no problem relating with that (in fact, the stage manager here is a direct relative of the Sutradhara of the Sanskrit plays) - what spoilt the experience for me was the technique applied across three plays proved "too much of a good thing". Two of the plays also contain a stage manager who talks to the audience. He does this through minimal and stylistic stage settings, stylised performances, shifts in time (back and forth) and the direct interaction of the characters with the audience. Fed up with the traditional methods of how plays are produced, acted and directed, the playwright here makes sure that a "realistic" approach to his play is impossible. Wilder uses the same technique of breaking up the illusion of verisimilitude that the proscenium stage provides, which essentially makes the viewers into voyeurs peeping into someone else's reality through the "fourth wall": and this is his intention. I am sorry to say that it was somewhat of a let-down. So it was with considerable excitement that I picked this book up at a second-hand bookshop. I loved Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner especially the way he managed to use the essential unreality of the stage to telescope time so that generations pass before our eyes, partaking essentially of the same Christmas dinner.
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