Triumph of Love is an interesting play, to say the least. The performance occurred this week (February 26th-March 2nd) and was a mess overall. The key issue was that it was harder and harder to follow along with every waking moment. The language is already a hard enough barrier for most, but then creating a storyline that is almost impossible to follow along to is even more challenging.
Throughout the play, I found myself desiring more and more to leave and go home. I couldn’t wait to literally be doing anything else with my time. I thought for a second that watching paint dry could almost be more entertaining than this play seemed to be. Intermission came and I found myself torn between going back and wasting more of my time, or doing something productive with my time. John, a sophomore at UW-Whitewater, said, “this play is literally impossible to follow, and there’s no way you’ll find me going back after this intermission.”
The play was about a woman (Princess Leonide) who fell in love with a man that was trying to kill her (Prince Agis). Or at least I thought that was what was happening. The biggest issue was that throughout the performance, Princess Leonide was all over the place. At one moment she wanted Prince Agis, the next she wanted Hermocrates, and then, dressed as a man, she wanted Hesione. After about 30 minutes of it, I was lost and was just looking for some type of humor to distract me from it all. They did a good job of mixing in humor when I was falling tired of the play, which kept me wanting more humor every time. Jordan, a senior at UW-Whitewater, said, “thank god there was humor because otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it.”
The performance from the students was as great, perhaps incredible, given how poorly of a play they had to attempt to perform in. The students performed incredibly, and some of the vocals for the musical parts were astounding. It felt like each key was hit perfectly. The students clearly had great chemistry as well, which helped the performance a little bit. The music was also well done as well, though sometimes it drowned out the student’s voices.
Overall, though the performances of the actors were good, the play seemed to be a disaster. A confusing script seemed to keep most of the audience uninterested, and some of them even left before the play had an intermission. Hopefully, these students have a better chance to shine in future plays.
Tickets for the event or more information can be found at http://www.uww.edu/cac/theatre-dance/triumph-of-love.
Tickets to other performances can be found at http://tickets.uww.edu.
