Basic Facts:
Neil Labute, english. Premiered May 17th 2006
Broken down into same set, different girl scenes
Male: Guy / Females: Sam, Tyler, Lindsay, Bobbi
Running time : 100 minutes http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/theater/reviews/09girl.html
Exegesis:
Evian – a french mineral water from the french alps
Vices – a moral imperfection, or default one has in their actions
guffaw – a crude and boiestrious laugh
Albeit – although
corsage – bouquet of flowers that is worn by a woman around her wrist or on her dress
type – reason this is a word, is because it is used on page 19 two different ways in the same conversation and both need to be clear.
Type- to use a keyboard on a computer to send an email. B) a way of describing someone as a “type”
“calculus of desire”: the act of deciphering what is meant out of a situation.
“boyish wake”: in this script, she refers to this as him whoring around like a boy, not a man, and not knowing what he wants.
Haphazardly: lack of direction, motive, order or direction
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/haphazardly
Characters:
Guy: a man that is pushing 40 and finally gettting married, he who visits all his ex’s before the marriage to settle things and be on a even keel.
Sam: Guy’s first love that he dumped right before prom, has a family of her own now.
Tyler: A sexual girl who showed guy the way to use passion in love making, she is still single and can not believe the guy sitting in front of her is going to get married.
Lindsay: The college professor that ruled his world and showed him that a cougar could stilll love and teach all in a relationship.
Bobbi: the one that got away, that closest one to date before marriage.
Statement:
This show has been done many different ways, with different kind of comedians leadaing the way with their own personal styles, and they have all worked. So in casting this show, I would want to have someone that is dominant enough to carry this show on their own, because really, the show consists of one man, and his encounters with his ex-girlfriends before his marriage, so it has to bee fuhnny, witty, and powerful enough to keep the scenes alive, due to the fact that they are just in a different hotel room every scene. The women all need to have their own swagger about them, but all have to have something in common aswell, you do not date completely different people, most people have a type, and usually stick to or around that. So to make this believeable it must have both qualities, maybe something like the way they all babied him, or treated him the same and he liked that about them, but at the same time, brought new life to his world and showed him how to do old things a new way. So when it comes to non traditional casting, I think that since this play has had an elapse amount of time between the first time they saw each other and then present, something could have possibly happened to him. For example, he could have been in a wreck and had been put in a wheel chair. Now if that were to have happened I believe the script would have said so and alluded to it in the dialogue, because this show is very forward and up front with how they handle their issues, so for instance, if he had been put in a wheel chair, one of the girls would call him out for being in one. So the idea of non traditional casting is difficult to deal with for this script. Now, that being said, I do not see why you could not use different races, gender, or age because each character is going to be a little different from the last. Out of all the productions that have been done, have used white males and females for the roles, but being that it is 2011, I could not see why we couldn’t have a african american male, or even female with a white male. Then, to hit on the topic of gender, the names given in the script are unisex names, for example “sam”, “tyler” and “bobbi”, the only girls name is lindsay, so the interuptation of the cast could be open for discussion as to if they might want to throw in a guy in there somewhere and him have had a gay experience in the past. To me that might be something worth exploring the thought of having that done, being that it is a comedy anyway. So, overall I believe that handicaps would be an issue pertaining to this script, but as far as race and gender go I think this could be cast in any direction of ways, and it could all work as long as the characters have to control, and power that is needed from the scenes. (531)
Fable:
The show starts with a man that is sitting in a hotel room in seattle, a woman comes in and they start to have awkard moments. When they start to talk about the past we realize that they were ex lovers in high school and the Guy dated and dumped her before the prom. The question is raised… why am I here? And then the guy does not know how to answer that question other than to say that he is wanting to make peace with the situation that took place 15 years ago because he is soon to get married and he wants to feel at peace with himself before he gets married because it is such a huge step. They go on to talk about how she is married with kids, and it is just opening up more old wounds than doing good so, she leaves. They have another awkard moment at the door and then she is gone for good and he moves to the next girl.
The next scene is again in a hotel room with a girl named tyler, the lights come up on the girl talking in the middle of a conversation. She is a sexual being that really opened Guy up into the world of sexuality and dated for a couple months. The girl claims to have missed him and tries to get him to have sex with her for old time sake since he is getting married, she kind of like the previous is wondering why he is here, if he is not going to have sex with her. He claims he just wants to talk and then she gets frustrated with the situation and leaves.
Again, in a hotel room with now an older woman, looks to be 10 to 15 years older than he, a smart eligate woman who teachs at a university as a proffessor. She was his cougar that taught him the ways of the world and how a real relationship should be handled. The question comes up to why he is here, and before he can answer the question, she tells him why she is there and that it is wasting her time because her husband is in the car outside waiting for her,l but she came on her own free will, not because he asked her to come. They talk about the good times, and how it was never meant to be, but he realizes that she has moved on and is kinda of hurt for the first time by this, that someone could actually get over him because the two previous girls, he got them to question why they ever left each other.
Then, the final woman is his first real, true, adult love that had gotten serious and did not make it, they talk about how they talked about getting married but then never really knew what happened. Then Guy tells her that he got scared and ran away from a great thing and that it was not her fault. She is puzzled by this because she is now married and does not know what he wants from this. Since this was his last relationship before he got engaged, this takes a toll on him the hardest and it does to her too. She ends up leaving hopeless and wondering why they meet up, but wishes each other the best of luck in the end. The man claims he will live happily although he wonders what it would be like if they had gotten married, and that upsets her as she walks through the door.
