My review of our school's production of "Carmen" for the school newspaper

Yes, I can quite clearly not be arsed to blog properly. So here, thanks to the miracles of copy/paste is my review of our school's joint production of 'Carmen' with LEH, the girl's school/kennel next door, for the school magazine. For some reason I have ended up writing most of this year's magazine; I've already scribed a theatre review and a rowing report and am signed on to do an opinion piece about our environmental policy AND a short story. Anyway here is my review:

A review of Carmen
After watching most of the major Hampton/LEH productions in the past few years and even having a starring role in the Junior Christmas Play four years ago, I consider myself a connoisseur of Hampton Drama. Indeed, I happened to actually enter the Garrick Building the other day to borrow a cassette/iPod adaptor for my car, so I’m basically one of the foremost thespian experts in the school. This allows me to write with frankness about the LEH/Hampton production of Carmen that I had the fortune of watching on Thursday 20th October 2005. In order to mentally prepare myself for the show, I did some research; apparently it’s about some gypsy woman who sings a lot and not, as I had first assumed, robot superheroes who transform into cars at will and zoom about solving crimes.
But onto the show itself. I was meant to be getting free tickets to the performance to write this review, but nobody at the door knew I was coming and I was glared at by the ticket woman, so the production immediately lost points for that. I was eventually placed up on a balcony surrounded by proud parents gushing about how talented their little darlings were. This set off warning bells in my brain; I think I was literally the only non-affiliated member of the audience. After the first ten minutes of stompy dancing and drawn-out solos, the essential difference between us became clear: the eyes of my fellow audience-members were shiny and brimming with tears of pride. Mine were glazed and staring into the middle distance. I mean, there is only so much posturing, stamping of feet and weird stop-motion dancing that one production can handle, and this version exceeded its budget in the first five minutes. I realised that I was in for a long evening when, hoping we were near to the interval, I checked the programme and realised that we were only six songs into the fifteen-song first act.
Perhaps this is just an inherent fault in the opera itself. The essential problem with Carmen, or at least the version I saw, is that none of the main characters seem to be sympathetic. Escamillo is a posturing arrogant twat. Don José is a pathetic whining loser. Carmen is a selfish whinging hussy who randomnly changes her mind every three minutes. While this may have been the point (the opera was originally damned by critics for being “superficial”), it just made the characters seem like distant cypers who floated about the stage following random personal compulsions. For example, at no point in the production do we understand how or why the Don José likes Carmen so much – the depths of his passionate and fiery love seemed stem from one song and manifested themselves in the actor looking a bit sad and occasionally holding his head. This was the essential problem; the performances of the leads, although incredibly impressive and tone-perfect, were also over-rehearsed, soulless, totally lacking in passion, and filled with that ‘ohmygosh look at us we are just so talented’ smugness that plagues the Senior productions at Hampton and LEH.
Of course, it’s very easy to criticise unjustly (fun too), but the production wasn’t a complete disaster by any means. I mean, the wall hangings, which had seemed to have been painted by LEH first years, were very nice. And there was no faulting the individual performances – there was some serious talent on display. The orchestra was (as usual) brilliant. Marios lived up to his reputation with some awesome dancing, very revealing cream tights and a weird postmodern interpretation of a bull costume that indicated that the wardrobe designer had probably been drinking. Currry as the smuggler Dancairo was a highlight. Even the LEH girls were alright. And as I have already said, the leads put on superb technical performances; it was just a pity that they lacked the essential passion and fire that the story demanded. I think that the most indicative fact about this production is that they managed to compress Bizet’s original four act epic opéra comique into two hours, making it seem almost incomplete (at the exclusion of, perhaps… characer development? Just a guess), and yet it STILL felt drawn out, far too long, and had me checking my watch repeatedly as the cast launched into yet ANOTHER repetition of that bloody toreador song. We get it, he’s a toreador, very good, hurry up and get on with the plot.
The latest production – My Fair Lady – is on in the coming week. All signs point to it as a return to form. We’ll see. In the meantime, if some pushy LEH drama mother offers to sell you a memorabilia DVD of Carmen as a memento, I advise you not to buy it.

What do you think? Too harsh? I think it's too harsh. Of course, that's not going to stop me from sending it in. I wonder if I can say the word 'twat' in a school publication. Probably not. What am I saying there's no chance this piece is going to be published at all I might as well have given in a picture of myself naked and riding a rocking horse in lieu of this review. Oh well, at least it's nice to be mean to some drama students every now and again. And I didn't even mention that the girl who played Carmen was really FAT. I'm basically awesome.