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I love
romantic comedy, and one of my favorite directors of classic film comedy is
the great Ernst Lubitsch. "She
Loves Me" is based on the same play (Parfumerie, a Hungarian comedy by
written by Miklós Lászlóa in 1937) as Lubitsch's "The Shop Around The
Corner", one of my all-time favorites, so I'd been interested in
directing it since it first came to my attention.
Although a
lot of what I'd directed could be classified as 'romantic comedy' to some
extent or another ("My Fair Lady" and "The Baker's
Wife" most obviously), this was the first really hard-core 'delicate
and shimmering' classic-style romantic comedy I'd ever directed. If I had
my way it's really all I'd direct, but, surprisingly, there aren't all that
many like this.
Great
romantic comedy depends entirely on characterization and timing. I was
blessed with a fine cast of characters the audience was sure enjoy. As for
the timing... I liken it to a soap bubble; the bubble slowly gets bigger
and bigger. It is delicate, it shimmers, but it is very easy to pop. Any
little glitch, pause, hesitation, pops the bubble, and you have to start
blowing it up all over again. It is most important that the action unfold
smoothly and seamlessly, to slowly cast it's spell over the audience.
If you
accept that premise, this show started out with a BIG handicap: conflicts.
The entire cast of this show were probably at the same rehearsal, including
tech week, no more than twice. Literally. And they are on stage together,
coming and going, for the majority of the show. There's no blame for this;
we're all volunteers, and the situation is the situation. Be that as it
may, I don't think we ever learned the timing and mechanics well enough to
put over the material as a whole. There were fine performances and
wonderful moments but it just never seemed to fire on all cylinders. That's
ultimately my responsibility, but to this day I have no idea what I could
have done to fix it. File it under
"long list of things left to learn".
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