Cocina y zona de servicio

Undercooked, that's the perfect word to describe the play we went to see this friday with robbie. As we rode in his red yaris the words of a young student in our theatre class fluttered around my head "it was INCREDIBLE, the play was so much fun i loved it", did you arianna? really?

Cocina y Zona de servicio is an award winning dramedy written by the recognized duo that is Agnes Jaoui & Jean-Pierre Bacri, after a very succesful run in theatres the play was then adapted into another succesful venture, a movie in 1994. This year that play was put on La Plaza ISIL, directed by Marisol Palacios and starring Montserrat Brugue and Sergio Galliani.

The first thing you see when you enter the theatre is a perfectly put together kitchen, a glimpse of a beautiful living room and hallway, freshly washed sheets hanging from a cord in the outdoor hallway, yes, pure perfection... that is of course if you built a house, but it was scenery that i was looking at and even though it was beautifully built it showed no creative process, it didn't showcase the main concept of the play, because being the first thing you see, it should be, in my opinion, the most representative of the main concept of a play.

The play is about a group of friends who reunite after 10 years without seeing each other, although this seems like just your average reunion, there is and emotional backstory to it, Martina was or still is emotional about her old friend (who is now rich and famous and married to another old friend), the reunion begins an hour and 30 mins later, leading into total chaos which eventually "climaxes" (notice the use of "" since it doesn't climax, it just ends) in a discussion in the kitchen and all the characters are seen crying and depressed.

Rather than having an actual plot, the play developes through a series of mishaps that emotionally break the characters. This gives it enormous potential however this is a play that never reached boiling point, and after the first hour i was praying for it to do so, the climax of the play did get some laughs out of me but in the back of my mind i kept thinking "this could be so much better".
The acting became comedic one second and dramatic the next (especially with Martina, Montserrat Brugue is very good with comedic exaggeration but this performance fell in an awkward in-between, had it all been comicly exagerated it would have worked.)
The character Carla also had potential but the actress wasn't very good, i think she portrayed the character giving only 50 % of her energy because it seemed that whenever she walked into the scene it slowed down and eventually fizzle away, her dialog (and most of the play) was full of curse words that could have been exploited for her advantage, given more punch but she fell short of "punch", she didn't have any.
Even the actions of the actors when they weren't saying anything felt very awkward and just plain bad (when they were relfexive or depressed there was the typical fake-lean-on-the-wall and the character of Freddy always had his hand on his hip, that just made my eye twitch because it felt so fake and awkward, it was plain wrong.)

The music, OH DEAR GOD THE MUSIC. Even though the songs that were chosen are very popular and well known by everybody, they had no relevance what so ever to the play and personally i think made the play very cheesy especially during the PAINFULLY long scene changes.
At times, a song would play for a little more than a minute and the characters would do actions and say no words, i think this made the play look like a montage from a movie and overall i think that's what happened with the play as a whole, it tried to seem like something that would work on televison (like a sitcom) and lost its way through the process, i think it was trying too hard to be funny, so hard it seemed like it wasn't trying at all or perhaps it wasn't, relying too much on it's actors, on the script it self and on the lackluster directing.

Overall, the play never lived up to its potential and never quite exploded in such a way that it would turn into pure comedy magic, it just flatlined with some spikes of laughter but never really caught my attention.
After the play was over, the thought of putting this play ourselves occured to me, to make it better and more entertaining, however, i couldn't help but wonder:
If we did, how could we turn this play into something more artistic that has more of a concept rather than just putting a play that represents more how things would take place in real life?