"Gruesome Playground Injuries."
A review.
The title dragged my mind towards Luke Haines who wrote "Murder After Park," and "Unsolved Child Murder."
These songs were both brilliant. They asked questions and delayed answers which as every schoolboy knows is what the thing we call 'art' is all about. Haines was an artist, a musician and an author.
Thus far, he hasn't won any awards but has won my admiration and those of the few who still follow him.
He also once wrote a play.
Never got produced.
Like mine.
But we are not bitter.
Better to peel the next lemon than cry over the one you once sucked dry,
Peel the limelight.
Gruesome Playground Injuries by Ragiv Joseph.
I was won over by the cast and crew of this Bangkok performance. Especially during the questions and answers section. That's not to say I was glad it was over. I wasn't. I just enjoyed and envy the cast and crew. It was an extremely tough production executed professionally.
The story is about a stalker, an obsessive lover who follows his desire through the ages of his self-abuse and destruction. The woman of his dreams reluctant as she sees him for what he is.
A loser.
A meditation of the pain of love. Gruesome Playground Injuries. Remember. That which we cling to too strongly will eventually destroy us. This, I believe is the message of the play.
Try squeezing a glass of the finest wine too tightly. It will break. You will lose both your wine and your glass and quite possibly your best drinking joint, Your sanity might also break. Do not stalk women, even childhood friends.
Past lovers, real or imagined, are in your past for a reason.
Keep them there.
Do not hold on too tightly to anyone because they will eventually let you down.
Trust me.
A cast of two, Siree Riewpaiboon and Jaime Zúñiga. both disturbed in their roles, both clueless in love, perhaps demonstrative of a society I left behind years ago. Both actors delivered the lines with passion and verve. Well crafted performances......The plot follows their relationship through the twists and turns and avenues of a troubled time... Hospital beds, walking sticks, love to the end.....
Why are they are both so dysfunctional, perhaps this is the point of this production. Why? We don't know. Perhaps the reason we are all dysfunctional, bad parenting and shitty religions.
Wonderful direction by Peter O'Neil, who was a real gentleman in person and a great man in every sense of the phrase. If anyone deserves to be producing plays it is Peter,
My only quibble is with Shakespeare. He started it. Everything you watch on HBO and the cinema screen began with Shakey.
He bloody started it.
Now lets get on with it.
Drama, death, murder, revenge.
We see this on the streets of Bangkok.
I demand more on the stage.
I demand a murder.
NOW!
The Beat Goes On..
