Quick review: Good for a few laughs, but too unrealistic to make me think about real issues as it was intended to do.

I had a show on my college radio station where I played mostly modern
classical music. That’s when I first started thinking about
“prolific” artists. I noticed that I tended to dislike the music of
composers who were described this way in liner notes. Furthermore, I
wondered why, in an era of information overload, when thousands if not
millions of people are trying to get public attention for their work,
would anyone view being “prolific” as a positive thing. I’d much
prefer someone who produces a small number of great things to a great
number of small things.

So, when I read in the program to Reel that IU MFA playwrite Paul
Shoulberg was described by his advisor as “the most prolific
playwright I’ve had in the program in twenty years”, I got just a
little worried. In fact, although I’m sure the professor didn’t mean
it this way, it struck my mind as a backhanded compliment, a sort of
“well, this is the nicest thing I can think to say about him.” Again,
I’m sure that wasn’t intended. But I was worried.

Sadly, my concern was not in vain.


Reel tells the story of an impossibly small film crew trying to
complete the filming of a key scene of a love story. Now, a few years
ago I worked with my friend Alex on a short film for a film class she
was in. Our crew of vounteers was larger than the crew for this
supposedly hollywood-financed film starring an Academy Award winning
actor and directed by a somewhat legendary director. Now, I can’t
begrudge them for trying to limit the size of the cast, but they could
have at least pretended that there were more people around. No one
ever spoke of off-set assistants, costumers, sound engineers, or
anyone else who wasn’t seen on stage. This was especially striking
because the program offered a two-page glossary of different on-set
job titles, which I had presumed would be so that we didn’t get lost
in the jargon. Alas, no. The story really seemed to present a film
that would have listed six people (including the two actors) in its
credits. I don’t fancy myself some expert on film production, but
I’ve seen enough credits roll to know that this never happens, and it
made it impossible for me to believe that this really a film being
produced. I’m also at quite a loss as to why that glossary was in the
program.

Now, it would be one thing if we were being asked to believe that
somehow this was an intense labor of love by people with so much
experience and talent that they could pull it off even with so few
people. Instead, each of the members of this impossibly small crew
was also impossibly incompetent. Actually, I guess the cold,
arrogant, Lesbian cinematographer was good at what she did (she was
certainly very confident that she was, and the audience didn’t see any
evidence to the contrary). But, the director was such a wimp that his
reputation for quality films seemed completely baffling; the
gaffer/screenwriter-wannabe, who was apparently responsible for the
set up of everything, never seemed to get anything set up; the
all-around assistant at least seemed to be trying to do good work, but
was so disenchanted with the hollywood scene that her work suffered
horribly; and the two actors were completely over-the-top shallow,
self-centered, and unprofessional, albeit in markedly different ways.
It’s hard to imagine that Shoulberg really pictured an actual film
being made. The script seems more like it was written by someone
whose familiarity with dramatic production was watching the credits at
the end of a movie or two.

Ok ok, so it wasn’t realistic. I don’t need drama to be realistic.
It’s certainly possible for drama to use an unrealistic setting and
yet to grapple with very real issues. Maybe that’s even what
Shoulberg was trying to do here. Besides some kind of commentary
about show-biz, the play seems to be trying to get its audience to
think about the meaning of love. I can appreciate the irony of a
heartless bunch of hollywood insiders trying to produce a work of art
about this emotion that most of them (admitedly) have never
experienced. But the play failed to make me feel this irony. The
characters were too two-dimensional, the inter-relationships too
simplistic, the situation too unrealistic for me to really ponder on
the meaning of love at all. So, I mostly just felt impatient.

Having given all of this negative commentary, I should pause and say
that the play is not without its moments. There are some funny
one-liners, some of the over-the-top personality stuff is enjoyable,
and a couple of plot twists certainly caught me off-guard. I should
also compliment the performers, because I thought they became their
characters well, however silly that task may have been. But, from the
play, I’d expect more. In the program Shoulberg describes his writing
style as “theater for the indie-film crowd” and “dark, poetic truth
with tragically flawed characters”. I’m not sure how this play could
be considered poetic. I didn’t find much relationship to truth. And
the characters’ tragic flaws are stereotypical and simplistic, making
them much more laughable than dark.

In 2003, IU produced another student work called The Alien From
Cincinnati (by Jonathan Yukich). My quick review of that work was
something like “at least as funny as most sit-coms”. Sadly, I was
reminded of this back-handed compliment watching Reel. This play is
more reminiscent of a sit-com than an indie-film. At the same time
that I’m so disappointed, I find myself sympathizing with Shoulberg.
His heart seems to be in the right place, and I think he’s got a good
deal of talent. I’d like to think that I’d like some of his other
works much better. And I’d really like to think that he’ll slow down
and instead of turning out three full-length plays a year, just give
us a really good one every year or two.