Last of the Red Hot Lovers Critique PDF

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Last of The Red Hot Lovers Last of the Red Hot Lovers is a comedy by Neil Simon. The main character is a middle aged and married man named Barney Cashman. During the course of the show he brings back three interesting women back to his mother’s apartment with questionable intentions. The duration of this performance was about two and a half hours long and consisted of two acts. There were two actors in this performance, the man who played Barney, and the woman who played Elaine, Bobbi, and Jeanette. The lighting and set in the show remained the same for the entire duration of the performance. It is common in a lot of other shows to have multiple light displays and set changes. This gives the performance a very simplistic feel and allows the audience to focus on the dialogue. The lighting was very minimal; it was one bright light that lit up the whole stage. The costuming the actors wore were everyday clothes one would wear either to a job or out on the town. The colors were simple earth tones. All of these components were meant to be plain in order to heighten the acting. The story was set in the mid 1960s to the early 1970s so it was important not to make anything too extravagant. Blocking was utilized well throughout the course of the performance. I was at first skeptical of how the characters would be able to move around with just one set, but they made good use of the stage space. This show was full of dialogue but the actors utilized movement whenever they could. Neither actor stood in front of each other or blocked one another’s view; they were both clearly seen and heard. That being said, there were moments in the play where the actors were just talking heads. They talked about their actions instead of actually doing the it which made for stiff scenes at times.

The theme of this play was a man’s discovery of his mid-life crisis and throughout his crisis comes to reconsider his morality through the meetings of the three women. There was a large amount of dialogue in the performance which I believe took away from the acting components, however, the play is very relatable to the everyday person. The ideas of cheating, adultery, sexual exploration and enlightenment are all very common themes that run through the minds of our society. In the first act of the play, Barney encounters Elaine, who is a loud and outspoken smoker. Barney shows that he wants an affair but is too shy and nervous to actually get it going. By the end of the play when Barney has Jeanette over, you see a different side of him. He went through quite a bit of character development. At first he was an anxious ad unsure guy but by the end he was confident and sure of what he wanted until Jeanette made him realize that they were the ones with bad and unfaithful intentions. This realization acted as a late turning point in the performance. This performance allows the audience to see all of Barney’s character; it reveals that he has many sides to him which makes the play more intriguing. The actors did a great job of conveying the characters in a life like way. The comedy was integrated throughout the performance quite skillfully and made for more interesting scenes. The character of Bobbi was portrayed as mentally insane; she acted absurd which added to the comical components of the performance. The actors had a decent amount of chemistry; they did a great job complementing each other; neither one of them were in danger of upstaging the other. Overall, this performance was well directed and the acting was well executed. Although riddled with a few flaws, this performance was very entertaining and comical. It was a bit

ridiculous at times at which they could probably afford to take it down a notch. Regardless, I would recommend this show to anyone due to its clever structure and its accomplished goal to amuse the audience; It left the crowd hanging on every word....