Seminar

Theresa Rebeck

Samuel French, Inc.

2012

71 páginas

2h 22m

ISBN-13: 9780573700590

Nominee! 2012 Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play In Seminar, a provocative comedy from Pulitzer Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck, four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard (JEFF GOLDBLUM), an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting Broadway comedy.

Resenhas (1)

3.5 (Bom)

“The truth is like a great f*ck”

Seminar is a one-act play about four young writers that paid a well known professor to help and teach them on how to achieve success in writing. The comedy play takes place in a modern New York City, specifically in the Upper West Side apartment where those classes are being taught. The show has strong characters and relationships that only grow - or fall apart - more and more during the performance.
I have first read this play in 2019, when I was reading two plays per week - one in Portuguese and one in English - and I remember I really liked it! But as time passed I forgot everything about it and as soon as I saw this play in front of me again, the only thought I had was that I should re-read Seminar and talk about how great the play was! Unfortunately, that’s not the case now!
I still really like the plot and scenes as a whole, but now I saw some problems that I didn’t notice when I first read it! I think the play has a really strong beginning showing us everything we need to know about the characters without just telling us. With that first few dialogues we can already understand the tone of the show and the relationships between the characters - and even relationships with characters that haven’t appeared yet.
But as the play continues, some of the stories and “mini-plots” get forgotten or they finish before a proper ending. For instance, in the last scene the character Martin (Hamish Linklater) appears, he discovers that the girl he liked and was staring to have a real relationship was sleeping with someone else besides him. He leaves the stage after that discovery and that girl Izzy follows him to try to explain or make him feel better. That’s the last time we see them. We saw him in love and trying to conquer her, we saw they getting together, but as soon as a big problem appears in the relationship their story is over.
Over all, I still really like the play, specially the beginning. I have some issues with the end (or, should I say, the lack of a proper ending) but that does not make it a bad player experience, it just makes it unsatisfactory when you read “The End” without felling like the story is over. I really like the characters and the difference between them creating a very dynamic and funny show to watch even though it’s only dialogues. I should also emphasize my feelings towards the character Leonard (Alan Rickman), because he does everything for you to hate him, but he stills gives some of the most funny moments of the play and it must be a very hard and challenging part to play. I hope I have an opportunity to do it when I’m older!

“The truth is like a great f*ck, it’s one of the few remaining reasons to get out of bed.”