No One Does It Like Walnut

I saw Diamond Bar High School's production of Noises Off a while back. It was, to say the least, a mediocre production. I understand that it was a high school level performance, but still, there's got to be a basis. I may be a bit biased because my own school put on this play last year. Considering that the set is the main character of the show, I would have thought that Diamond Bar's set may have rivaled our own. Their set was much smaller as a result of their smaller stage. At times I felt as though the audience may have been too close to the stage, as if the set could fall on us. What's more is that when the stage was to be turned intermission, the crew did not seem to have any sense of professionalism. Girls were running across the stage in street clothes and barefoot while the set turned. At one point, the set even knocked into the proscenium causing the audience to gasp in horror. I felt as though Diamond Bar was just resting on the fact that they were a high school cast and so be it. Not the kind of attitude that people pay money for to see.

My only other objection was the initial blocking for the Lloyd character. Instead of planting him in the audience as our production did, he was kept in some technical booth in the back of the theatre. For his first few lines, he spoke them over a microphone completely hidden in the booth. It wasn't until a few minutes later that he emerged, only to approach the stage with his back faced to the audience for about 15 minutes. It was completely ineffective in my opinion.

The humor was lacking and missing in between. There were moments of intense laughter that would quickly die out just as they came. This left for an unsatisfying performance. The diction also contributed to this as it was difficult to understand anything that was ever spoken in the British accent. The pace was so out of hand that at one point, the friend that attended the performance with me, leaned over and asked what was going on. This was probably halfway through the second act.

This came together for, as I said, a mediocre performance.