Tonight, on Akh’s suggestion, Akh, Jenny, James, Catherine and I visited the Young Vic to check out the latest showing, Vernon God Little. I hadn’t actually heard about Vernon God Little before though I’d received plenty of emails and seen plenty of press about the play. Its based on a book by DBC Pierre and tells the story of Vernon Gregory Little, a teenager living in a small Texan town who is suspected of helping his friend, Jesus, kill his schoolmates in a school yard massacre.
I thought before seeing the play that it would be a good idea to take a gander at the book. I haven’t had much time to read it but managed to get about 2/3 of the way through (and I’m loving it by the way) before tonight. This turned out to be a blinder of a move because without reading the book I doubt I would have understood much of what was happening in, or enjoyed, tonight’s play.
From a story-telling perspective what the play lacks is the running inner dialogue of Vernon’s character which to me was the funniest part of the book and also helped explain the background to a number of the characters. As a result what I felt we were left with were over-acted roles and randomness in terms of character plots. From a performance perspective I thought the cast did welll considering the cast of nine had to effectively play over 50 characters (though at times their attempt at the Texan accent was OTT) with Colin Morgan as Vernon and Lorraine Bruce who played Pam the stand outs. The set was totally ingenious and music was a surprise and interestingly woven into the storyline.
Overall I was quite disappointed with how the book has been translated on to stage especially by the fact it was nowhere near as funny as the book has so far proven to be. Further certain scenes seemed to drag on and on which made me feel a bit restless. Still I guess the insanity and high energy of the book was still there mostly due to the cast and the smart set. This one is a go judge for yourself play because though the critics seem to absolutely love it I for one wasn’t impressed.
For much of our show the audience laughed and laughed and laughed. You would expect this to be a good thing, but they laughed at every sentence of each character- it didnt make any sense! What the hell were they watching?!!
I expected more of a story line as well. Being a “non reader”, I suppose I will never truely understand the inner most thoughts of Young Vernon.
Yea I thought it was wierd that the rest of the audience kept laughing. Maybe it had something to do with the alcohol they were indulging in.