WAITING FOR OBAMA (PACE Center/Stream Theatre)***

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/12

Available until: Livestreams at 7.30pm every day until 17^th January. There are also matinées on 13^th, 16^th and 17^th January at 2.30pm. But if you're not bothered about seeing the actors, it looks like you can listen on Spotify for free.

Waiting for Obama is a radio play but in this production, the actors sit or stand, socially-distant, on a stage. They read their parts from books or tablets, as they probably do with a radio drama. One actor takes the role of the narrator and reads out stage directions.

It is interesting to be able to see it as well as hear it but I’m not sure it really adds very much? It is helpful to know exactly how many people they are and to know which one is speaking – I think it might have been quite confusing on the radio. The stage directions would have helped but there are some scenes where quite a lot of people are present and there are no stage directions.

But mostly there is no big advantage in being able to see the actors. There seem to be two cameras, one which gives you a shot of the whole stage from a distance and one which is at the side of the stage. This one can move enough to be able to see the profiles of whichever actors are in the scene but you only see the profiles. You don’t get to see the actors properly in close up. It is possible there is a captioned performance (but if so I don’t know which one) but I don’t think you would be able to lip read very well from the side and you can’t really see Martha’s face at first because her hair is in the way.

So it kind of makes me wonder why they bothered to take the risk of opening up the building and letting in so many actors who are basically risking their lives for a radio play when we weren’t even getting a good view of the actors. (There is a stage adaption too but this is the radio play version.)

There are lots of good things in the play which is by John Moore. It looks at gun crime and why people do or don’t decide to have a gun in their home and the complicated and sometimes tragic reasons behind that. The story focuses on one family, an elderly couple (Hank and Martha), their son Peter and his wife Katie, their grandson Benny, and Benny’s girlfriend Jenna. They think Barack Obama will be coming to take their guns away.

It is very important to write plays like this but the way it is written is quite strange. At first it is really interesting and I liked the characters and I was totally gripped by the story and I could see the different sides of the argument even though I didn’t actually change my mind. But about halfway through it all goes a bit weird.

There is one bit where the characters come out of character and basically decide to skip half the play. That kind of interrupted the play and reminded us it was just a story and I also wasn’t sure if they really were skipping half the play (it is understandable if plays can only be a certain length due to coronavirus restrictions). Also there are things you find out about some of the characters and it should have been a big shock and really emotional but it made me feel confused and I wondered how much of what I’d seen was actually real. Then the ending should have been really sad and terrible but the way it was written made it difficult for me to take it seriously. I think it was supposed to be metaphorical but I think sometimes making something into a metaphor can make it less powerful and Waiting for Obama got a bit too close to being funny which was definitely wrong.

This is just my opinion and not everyone agrees with me but I think if a play is looking at something really important, you really need to understand what is going on and believe in it.

There are some very good performances. Laurence Curry does well at playing Barack Obama. He has the big stage presence and intensity you would expect from a president but at the same time he seems like a normal guy. He shows Barack as being understanding and human but with very strong beliefs.

The two performances that really stand out for me emotionally are Luke Sorge and Drew Horwitz as Benny and Peter. Benny is the first character who really drew me into the play emotionally, he is a likeable but vulnerable character. It takes longer to get to know Peter but when he shows emotion, Drew really brings that across and it’s a very powerful moment.

Chris Kendall and Leslie O’Carroll have a really good onstage rapport as Hank and Martha, they manage to make the relationship seem very solid even though they argue a lot. Jessica Robblee’s Katie is a character who seems to divide opinions with the other characters and you can kind of understand that but I had a lot of sympathy for her. Jenna Moll Reyes plays Jenna (she has the same name as her character) and she seems very sweet and kind but quite elusive. It’s a shame she’s not in it more. Mare Trevathan does well with reading the stage directions, she reads them really clearly and she really becomes part of the story, she’s not just a narrator.

So it was good and I liked it but the way it was filmed did affect my enjoyment.