Monday, April 26, 2010

Monday Nite Title Bout (April 26)

Every week, I compose listings about the week's shows for Metromix NY. I'm usually disappointed by the titles that playwrights choose for their work: most of them don't entice me into the theater. So I'm reviewing the titles.


BANANA SHPEEL
I think. On its own, “spiel” is a great word: it has the connotation of a juicy story, plus it's German/Yiddish for “play”. Add the image of a classic pratfall and you've got a clever cross-lingual pun that might only work in NYC.

THE BELLE OF BELFAST
The echoing in this title helps it stick in the mind. And with just a touch of lyricism to “belle”, it re-emphasizes the Irish setting of Belfast and pegs a protagonist for us. Good one.

THE BURNT-PART BOYS
I have no idea what to make of this title. What's a “burnt-part” and how does it modify “boys”? Maybe it's some sort of club, a nod to other insiders that will get explored in the show. But if you know nothing about the play, this title doesn't help you.

DE NOVO
Latin phrases are a flag for pretension―especially when they're legal jargon like de novo.

THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY
A rare, truly great title! There's real poetry to “elaborate entrance”, not just in the phrase's assonance but in its rhythm. It also sets up good expectations for a specific event in the show. And “Chad Deity” is a great name, a little satiric or allegorical. Take it all together, the title implies a thrilling deus ex machina.

GRACELAND
This show isn't a rock opera of Paul Simon's 1986 Grammy-winner, nor is it set at Elvis's homestead. Nope, it refers to a large cemetery in Chicago―which is okay when you're a Chicago playwright working in your hometown but less so when you get an out-of-town premiere. Why beg the confusion? Maybe because the word promises an actual or metaphoric setting for a transcendent experience.

LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING
What works here is the seesaw contrast between the precision, density, and sibilance of “lascivious” and the vague, dull, cloddish-sounding “something”. Though it's a dangerously generic title (“something” don't contain much information), the poetry helps to counter that.

LETTERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
This title sounds like a 1950s sci-fi paperback―which isn't an insult! It creates an atmosphere with only a few words: it takes a whimsical pessimism to address letters to “the end of the world.” And it begs the question of what period we live in, the writer's or the recipient's. Even if “end of the world” is metaphorical, it sounds cool.

PASSION PLAY
The name of an entire genre gets a workout. Passion plays are traditional dramas depicting Christ's martyrdom. But this title also encompasses the modern romantic connotation of “passion”, with a touch of ambiguity: Passion Play could be the punning title to a rom-com (the fun of “play”). Or it could be borrowing sobriety from the medieval genre for a operatic melodrama. Too much? Maybe.

RESTORATION
As always, the caveat of the one-word title: not much information. But Restoration isn't dull; it's got a lot of meanings that the play could illuminate. It could allude to art/architecture, to a position of power, to the period of English history. It could (and probably does) refer to the protagonist's arc as well. Not bad, for a one-word title.

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