| |||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Pseudo-intellectual gobbeldy-gook,
This review is from: Crowtet 1: A Murder of Crows and The Hyacinth Macaw (Green Integer) (Paperback)
This review is targeted at 'Murder of Crows' only, as I never read or saw 'Hyacinth Macaw'. I looked over 'Crows' at least eight times, and I still couldn't understand it.
Essentially, a teenage girl named Susanna moves into her uncle and aunt's house after her father died in a terrible accident involving chicken manure. She senses the weather is going to change, and tries to convince her skeptical family. They don't believe her, and it goes downhill from there. The plotting of 'Crows' is about as logical as a couple of tourists setting out to see the Statue of Liberty, getting lost and ending up in Disneyworld after driving through Wisconsin. What seened to be the primary point was the environment and Susanna's awareness of it, but goes on so many tangents that it fails to make any point. The play explores the materiastic waste of American society, racism, war and spirituality. If they could have been woven together, the play would have been brilliant. Instead, these themes are seperate, unrelated capsules that are passed by so quickly that one wonders why they were mentioned in the first place. In the end, the story felt like one long tirade about nothing, the playwright being 'a rebel without a cause'. The characters were, to say the least, forgettable. Susanna never develops as a character, nor do the rest of the cast. Any possibility 'Crows' had of characters forming any kind of human relationship was avoided like last week's leftovers. The primary conern apparently was try to create the weirdest people possible. This style of character has been successful, notably in the book 'Gormenghast'. However, the characters of 'Crows' are too boring to be Dickensenian Grotesques and too detached from humanity to be anyone the audience could care about. The dialogue of this play consisted of people talking at each other, shouting or going onto pseudo-intellectual monologues. There was nothing profound, moving or even comical. The whole thing felt like an exercise for the playwright to demonstrate his intelligence. Plays are just as capable of being as meaningful, logical and comic as books. 'Murder of Crows' isn't one of them. Avoid these rants about nothing and read a more satisfying, substantial quirky play, like Friedrich Duerrenmatt's 'The Visit'.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read these plays! (If you have a theatre, produce them!),
By A Customer
This review is from: Crowtet 1: A Murder of Crows and The Hyacinth Macaw (Green Integer) (Paperback)
Mac Wellman is perhaps our greatest living playwright.He is a poet and a verbal acrobat. The language sweeps over you and leaves you reeling to catch up--and you want to. He is a social critic and a cynic on one hand, but he has a great big heart and injects this warmth just when the characters are at risk of leaving you cold. A perfect balance. These two plays are some of his best. The Hyacinth Macaw, in particular, is beautiful and original and moving and--perhaps above all--funny! They are not necessarily easy reads. Mr. Wellman is an intellectual and makes no attempt to hide it. You may need to keep a dictionary handy (not an ordinary dictionary, the OED would be better). But the plays are more than worth the effort. Rich, real characters in often bizarre and unreal settings. This is Anti-Naturalism. Highly, highly recommended. Mr. Wellman is genius underappreciated.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
