Reviews for Motifs and Repetitions and Other Plays

The average rating for Motifs and Repetitions and Other Plays based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-05-23 00:00:00 Tammy Bowen C.E. Gatchalian has a minimalist approach to theatre that I find very intriguing and, at the same time, very frustrating. I love his storytelling in this collection of four plays about sexual frustration and the behavior it can lead to. As a theatre artist, however, I'm frustrated, as there seems to be no room for a production to add anything to the plays that isn't there already. Of course,there's nothing new to that. Beckett does the same thing, really (unless you want to go up against his estate), and Gatchalian's plays are like a sexualized version of Beckett's blasted landscapes. In the title play three young people deal with their interlocking obsessions with each other."Hands" is about a family torn apart by the father's intransigence. "Claire" offers an intriguing conversation among three adults involved in sexual relations that eventually led to death. The most interesting, because I think it's the most elliptical, is "Star," a one-man show about a man's obsession with his sister. This volume dates from 2003, and there are three more plays/collections from Gatchalian on Amazon written after it. I'm looking forward to seeing where his vision takes him.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-13 00:00:00 Ruth Bellenger Reading David Mamet's, "Speed-the-Plow", felt like taking loads of stimulants and sitting in the corner of a Hollywood producer's office as he is first offered a chance at a movie with a big name that he just can't pass up before I jump ship and follow the producer and his temporary assistant to his house where she persuades and seduces this fellow to be a better man and produce an "artsy" adaptation of a book concerning radiation and its effects on humanity before being snapped awake and sent back to aforementioned producer's office where he tries to pick between a good friend and an obvious money maker or the experimental movie that seems to now mean something to him--amidst all this I laughed at the typical stupidity and their self-aware debasement of culture as if I'd not seen or read it before, and somehow with the razor-sharp dialogue and the absurd characters I found I didn't mind the familiarity of this, on the surface, anti-Hollywood play because the characters drew me in and I never minded going along with them even if my heart felt as if it might explode from the sheer frantic energy going back and forth every second of this story. A good companion piece, that I've always felt was underrated, is David Mamet's movie "State and Main" that has in it the master, Philip Seymour Hoffman.