Almost an Evening - Almost a Decent Play

This past week, I was given the opportunity to sign up for a waiting list for two free tickets to an off-Broadway play called Almost an Evening. After signing up, I forgot about it since the waiting list didn’t sound like a very promising opportunity to actually get tickets. Yesterday afternoon, I got an email saying my two tickets were indeed reserved. After leaving the library at about 7:00, wife and I met to go see the show.

Side note: “Off-Broadway” is a term used to describe any show in Manhattan that plays in a theater with 100-499 seats. If a show has fewer than 100 seats it is called “off off-Broadway.” If there are 500 or more seats, it is “on Broadway.” What does it matter? Essentially, it is all about money. The union contracts are dependent upon the different categories.

Eventually, I’m going to learn my lesson that when the tickets are free, they probably aren’t worth it – but that reality is still lost on me.

For free tickets, our seats were tremendous. We were in the third row, close enough to the center to get a great view. I felt badly for those patrons with much worse seats than us who plunked down $20 to $50 a pop.

The play had an outstanding cast, including Mark Linn-Baker (best known as Larry from Perfect Stranger), F. Murray Abraham (an Oscar-winning actor), and a handful of others who are rather well-known for their work. While I wasn't impressed with the play, I thought the actors were excellent.

According to the promotional material Almost an Evening contains:

"...three short plays unsuccessfully tackle important questions. In Waiting, someone waits somewhere for quite some time. In Four Benches, a voyage to self-discovery takes a British intelligence agent to steam baths in New York and Texas, and to park benches in the U.S. and U.K. In Debate, cosmic questions are taken up. Not much is learned."

The show has received outstanding reviews – but, in my opinion, it was rather lousy.

The best part of the play was the last ten minutes, when it the play depicted the play ending and the actors depicting audience members discussing how the play was “stupid” and they “didn’t get it.” I thought that conclusion was rather clever because it humorously depicted those who badmouth the show as ignorant and simple minded. That ending made very difficult to be too negative – we just watched them making fun of people for saying the same thing that I was thinking.

I will admit. Those of you who know me know that I am nothing more than a simple minded fool – but I didn’t get it, and I thought the show was stupid.

Feel free to leave scornful comments on how I missed the brilliance of a magnificent show in the comments below.