Shadow box play review Essay Example for Free

buttocks box play review EssayOn the night of the 28th of November 2013, I had the chance of watch some of the third year Lasalle theatre students produce and perform Michael Christofers The Shadow Box. Despite having very little knowledge of the play itself, I thoroughly enjoyed the play and was unplowed engaged through and throughout. The Shadow Box revolves around three main terminally ill characters, Joe, Felicity and Agnes, who had to train with the fact of not be able to live much longer. It also involves their family and friends facing the inevitable expiration of their loved one. The play addresses the theme of death and the idea of seizing the day and surviving life to its fullest, differently known as Carpe Diem. Keeping within the genre of realism, the play uses dark comedy to emphasize and upraise the message of the play to grab onto life and live it with all your might. The play was held in the original Cube and the space was set up with blocks of different heights, distinguishing the three individual spaces, as well as a void-like segment placed center up- set up. The space showed the cottages of Joes, Brians and Felicitys, from stage left to stage right respectively.The void-like space had a swivel chair with a spotlight on it. During the play, the different characters had a chance to sit on the chair and discuss their current situations with numerous voices that encouraged each of them to educe their emotions. This gave the auditory modality an insight into their personal feelings and thoughts of their condition. Even though the set was not exactly the most extravagant, it had prefatory set pieces such as a couch and a table that do it unambiguous to the earreach that the play was set in their cottages.I felt that the set was enough to inform he audience of where the play was set in and what really mattered was the content and acting of the play. What had kept me engaged was how strong the relationships amidst the characters were and how I as an audience member could so clearly see each characters development throughout the play. I could actually see how each character grew from being almost idle and confused of their inevitable death, to growing to accept it.The show began with Jordan Prainito, who contend Joe, walking into a void and being questioned by several voices about his family and his everyday routine ever since he began living at the cottage. It wasnt do clear to the audience who exactly the voices belonged to, however I got an impression that they were doctors and it seemed as if it was a daily or weekly routine to talk to these voices. The other characters underwent the same thing and as I give mentioned before, it gave us an insight into their personal emotions and their opinions of the whole situation.The relationships between the different characters were so well established that made the play extremely captivating to watch as you could also see the personal struggle of each charac ter slowly losing a loved one. My favourite relationship established within the play would befool to be between Felicity and Agnes, played by Rachel Tay and Samantha Jean Kwok respectively. They played a mother-daughter relationship where the daughter, Agnes, had to understand care of her terminally ill mother who seemed to have a side condition of dementia.You could see how long-suffering Agnes had to be with Felicity, and how she had to remind her mother of basic things, such as the date and time, to slightly more real things, such as who Agnes was, as Felicity had a mindset that her other daughter, Claire, was still alive and was victorious care of Felicity instead and not Agnes. My favourite character would be Beverly, who was played by Chinie Concepcion. She was acting as Marks ex girlfriend, who was the terminally ill patient in cottage 2. Mark, played by Renfred Ng also had a gay partner, Brian, played by Brett Khao.Together, Beverly and Brian fought and worked together to overcome their business concern of losing a loved one so soon. As they had contrasting personalities, Beverlys being loose and carefree, whereas Brian was fixed and uptight, this created an interesting segment to watch on how the two had to work together for Marks sake. Chinie Concepcion brought so much life to her character and did a really good job of portraying her character as the life of the party, or rather life in general (She also rocked her sparkly 6 inch heels throughout the whole show).Each relationship played throughout the show was kept real, clear and extremely powerful. It made me feel almost connected to the characters who had to face the expected death of their loved ones. I especially felt this from the relationship between Stevie, played by Kimberly Chan and her father Joe. As we saw the firstly meeting between Stevie and her father, you could almost feel her excitement and joy bouncing around the whole space. This was seen through her facial expressions an d eagerness to make him proud through her songs played on the guitar.However, she had not known of his advance death and it was the biggest bomb dropped throughout the whole show. As each relationship and character had their good points, it made the show enjoyable and engaging. Thus, I felt that the third year Lasalle students did Michael Christofer proud as making this the capital of Singapore premier of The Shadow Box. Everyone should definitely take some time off to catch the play, it was extremely moving and thought-provoking as well as it made me think about really living life to its fullest and how true the expression Carpe Diem was.