Last Saturday night, I went to see the first performance of the school play, “Abuse”. It was specially written for students and their parents, so the hall was crowded with lots of schoolmates and their relatives, looking forward to watching the show.
The play was about the relationship between parents and teenagers and drug abuse. There were two main characters, Peter and Paul in the show. Peter was an ordinary secondary school student, but he came from a single-parent family and his relationship with his mum was bad. Paul was Peter’s classmate. However, opposite to Peter, he was bright and intelligent. He was a perfect student in teachers’ eyes. However, his family had actually given too much pressure on him. He tried very hard to please his parents with excellent performance in different areas. Both of them, being stressed under different family backgrounds, resorted to drug abuse. The story was actually inspiring and brought out meaningful messages. I was also eager to see the touching scenes of reconciliation of the families.
However, it seemed that the play was not worth so much expectation. It was actually a disaster.
The show kicked off with a sudden “pang” sound, but it wasn’t a sound effect. Just someone had actually broken something. The actors were shocked and they did not know what to do. They continued acting after a few minutes. Meanwhile, the costume was terrible. Peter’s and Paul’s uniforms were not the same and even not fitting them. I appreciated that the costume was hand-made, but the sleeves were not properly sewed! If this job was too difficult, the production team could actually consider using the school uniform with the badge being covered.
Apart from the looks of the cast, I tried to focus on the stage effects and the actors’ performance, but they were also dissatisfactory.
When Peter and Paul were lured by drugs, which was supposed the breath-taking part of the show, the stage suddenly went black and a joyful music was played. There were no clues for what was happening at that time. After a few seconds, lights were on again and Peter and Paul kept on their dialogues. What’s more, when switching scenes, the deputy stage managers should be responsible for moving and changing props and settings. However, they forgot to come out. The setting of Paul’s home was even used in the scene of a street!
What made things worse was the unacceptable acting of the actors and actresses. They had made fatal mistakes. They should have put themselves into the characters’ moods and personalities during the play. However, they had not done a good job in this.
When Peter was arguing with his mom, his mom laughed suddenly, apparently feeling Peter was so funny at that time. She had ruined the atmosphere built at that time and the feeling of hostility totally disappeared. No wonder the play could not engage the audience.
While the inconsistent and dreadful performance was already a nightmare, that the actors forgot their lines gave the play a further blow! When Paul was trying to quit the bad habit, he should make a sincere promise to his mom. However, he forgot about that and just stood still on the stage. The lights then went off to hide his mistake, and also his reddish face.
The audience was discontented with these errors. I thought it was acceptable for the first performance if the problems were mainly about the unnatural acting since they were still new actors. However, everything went wrong from start to finish. From the production team to the cast and even the stage manager made countless mistakes which could actually be avoided through adequate practices and rehearsals. This revealed that there were no proper and enough preparations beforehand, which was the most disappointing.
Even though the show was named ”Abuse”, should no plays be abusing audience’s eyes. It might be a harsh review for the team, but I sincerely hope that they can have a better and excellent performance next time.