DIE-ALOGUE

Last week we went and saw a dramatic representation of urban habitation in non-conventional locales. Sounds a bit fancier than we saw a play about a bum, but in all honesty that's what it was. It was touching in some parts, however for the most part it displays a lot of forced dialogue and what appear to be lines cut from movies we never saw for a reason. There were moments when the characters speech really went with the emotions they were displaying, and everything meshed and was believable for the audience. That was why I kept watching with this particular topic; hoping that would happen again. It didn't happen as often as I'd have liked, but it did happen.

For instance, most scenes between Dimitri (the bum) and Louie (the pigeon/imaginary friend of Dimitri), were fairly real. They were played as two friends having a real conversation apart from the world, like nothing else mattered. There was real emotion, there was real thought, and cares and wants there. The strongest was the first game, called Conversations, between Louie and Dimitri, and the final moments of Dimitri's lose of understanding for the world he knew seeing it become less and less concerned with anything that isn't an individual.

Sergent Tracy seemed to be an interesting character partly because he didn't seem to understand fully what his character wanted. It became clearer as the story went on, more so at the end, what he wanted. And as he lost a person that he cared about, he really stood out with his lines and meaning. He seemed like he knew what it was to say those things and for possibly the first time in the whole show it didn't seem like he was pushing it, and you could see why he was chosen. He had one moment at the end that didn't seem like campy, cliche cop dialogue and that is what stuck with me.

But, like so many things in life. It also had moments that didn't work. Much like the hull of the Titanic really didn't work after the collision with the iceberg. None of this is the actors fault, I learned afterwards that the script was still in the working stages while the play was being performed. This might mean that lines were thrown in just to tie together the script and not to display anything at that point, but it really shows. Take for example Officer Charles, the only moment when he might have been believable was when he was screaming at Dimitri before actually arresting him. All his other threats are police brutality, and would never even cross the minds of real officers, plus the seemed totally unrealistic. Bernie was only slightly better. The only lines I really believed from him were, "what," "huh," "I'm sorry, I just can't get involved." It is my opinion that the writer wanted these characters to be more disliked instantly than viewable as real. A poor choice overall, but there's still time to rectify it.

As a whole, the show works. And works well. Acting needs some fine tuning, but I believe that this might be in part to the strange nature of an ever-changing script. Dialogue needs some reinforcement, and the connections need some work, but all in all Louie's at 1st & Main delivered quite the show. The actors did what they could, but the script needs a bit more tweaking before it's next debut. A hearty round of applause to all involved, it was a great show, but occasionally you might have been better off book.

Mike Cole