Nina Ramlall
THE 100-050W
Professor Moss
23 May 2018
Performance Critique
Finian’s Rainbow was the first musical play that I have seen or professional play for that matter. I have since seen that production three times because I really enjoyed it. I had to see the play for an English class I was taking and I was very skeptical, I thought it was going to be very boring. I wasn’t a big fan of theater then but this play exceeded my expectations which I think is one of the reasons why I like it so much.
The play was performed in the Irish Repertoire Theater. This theater is very small and so was the stage. There were no stage curtains as you would imagine a theater having. Going into the theater and seeing how small it was and noticing that it didn’t have a lot of the features that one would imagine a theater having perhaps from the images seen on TV or online I was a little disappointed. I knew that it was an off-Broadway show but I was expecting a little more. That being said I was already convinced that the play wasn’t going to be good before it even started.
The play was very well staged and directed. Although the stage that the performers used was very small and they made very good use of the limited space they had and it made you forget that the stage was that small during the performance. The scenes transitioned smoothly from one to the other without any interruptions. The stage was painted with light blue and clouds painted in white to represent the sky. There were pillars in the theater that happen to be in the area they used for the stage. They managed to strategically use these pillars as trees in the play.
The play was very well organized. Each scene followed a logical sequence which made it easy for the audience to understand the play and knew exactly what was happening and why it happened. Each of the main characters was sufficiently developed through both the musical numbers and dialogue. The performers were excellent. They did a fantastic job acting out the events of the play and made it worth the watch. The performance of the actors really showed how committed they were to the play. They were very convincing and did a good job of developing the characters through the emotions of their characters. The tones and expressions also contributed to helping the audience get a feel of the personalities of their characters. The character that stood out the most for me was Woody’s sister, Susan, who was played by Lyrica Woodruff. She didn’t play a big role like the performers Melissa Errico, Ryan Silverman and Ken Jennings who played Sharon, Woody and Finian but she stood out the most to me because of the part that she played. She played Woody’s silent sister and she had to dance to express herself. She captured your attention with the way she danced with grace and enthusiasm to make you understand what she was trying to say. Another person that stood out for me though she wasn’t a performer was the pianist. The piano was on the stage towa...
