Hey all.Well last week I went to see Gregory Burke's,the playwright responsible for the fantastic Black Watch,latest play.Titled 'Hoors',it takes place over the course of one evening.A woman's fiance has died,on his stag weekend,and her,her sister and two of the deceased friends gather the night before the funeral,originally intended to be the wedding day,to prepare themselves for the next day.So here's my thoughts on it...
Pretty bad.
Black Watch was fantastic,the characters were great,the dialogue witty and emotional.The whole thing was just fantastic.This couldn't be more different.
Firstly,you feel absoloutely no sympathy for any of the characters whatsoever.The woman who's fiance has died,it turns out is in love with one of the friends who turns up,and is relieved about her fiance's death because she didn't want to marry him.The aforementioned friend is alright until he decides to let the main woman's sister "suck his cock,right now",proving that he isn't actually all that decent.He's weak aswell,doesn't stand up for himself and doesn't chase what he wants,something that I find annoying.The other friend is an utter sleaze.He was a good actor though,the sexual chemistry between him and the female actresses was great,he just kind of oozed it in his sleazy character.Not an attractive man,but he did provide good onstage chemistry.The final character of the sister was just plain irritating.Materialistic and arrogant,also a bit of a slut,I found her to be highly annoying.So all in all,as you could sympathise with none of these characters,I found the play to become completely irrelevent to me as I didn't honestly care what happened to any of them.
Secondly,whilst there were flashes of the witty dialogue that you can see if you look at Black Watch,overall the conversation felt very bland.The action didn't make up for it and the fact that the actors continously masked each other on the stage,blocking half of the audience's sight lines at a time,didn't help.
Thirdly,and this may not be the fault of Burke as I don't know to what extent he was involved in the putting together of the actual production,the staging was horrendous.The set rotated,which could have been a symbolic and useful tool.Instead,it just occurred at random points in the story,no relevance what so ever. I really felt it just slowed the pace of the already slow action down even more. The set was almost always on diagonals,which contributed to the problem of masking mentioned above.
Basically I just found this a big let down after Black Watch.[erhaps that's just because of my own high expectations,and if I go back and read it with those expectations set aside perhaps I will enjoy it more.Sadly, I somehow doubt it.
Until Next Time 
