Books + theater = good, right?

This afternoon I saw the final performance of the Book Club Play. I like books, and I like theater, I'm in a book club, and I'd heard it was humorous, so I was looking forward to it. And I wound up being pretty underwhelmed.

The play is framed as a documentary about book clubs, following a particular book club over the course of the year, and interspersed with vignettes (read: monologues) from people commenting on the book club phenomenon or how books in general affected their lives. All of these monologues were performed by one woman in various get-ups and accents, pretty much all of which were somewhat annoying stereotypes. Of the half dozen or so, I think I enjoyed one. The woman reminded me of Rachel Dratch, in a bad way.

The problem with the vignettes was the problem with the play, in general--it was heavy-handed. Very little of what happened was a surprise (let's just say that anyone familiar with The Age of Innocence easily predicted one of the Act Two revelations), and I didn't feel there was much depth in any of the characters. The plot of the book club itself revolves around tensions arising when a new member joins. And dude, if that's actually an issue with other book club, it makes me love mine more.

(Side note: I wonder if this would be more relatable if I were older and/or if my book club was comprised of people who started as friends who then formed a book club. My book club started from Fametracker; we were pretty much all strangers at the beginning.)

Anyway. Maybe the show would be benefit if the play dropped the documentary conceit and focused on fleshing the characters out a bit. I will say that the performances were pretty good--particularly the guy who played Rob, the slacker husband of the main character's queen be, and the woman who played Lilly, a recent addition to the club who had to deal with being the youngest and only black person in the group.

It wasn't bad, and had some funny moments, and the majority of the audience seemed to laugh a lot more than I did (for the record, I seemed to be probably a good 10-15 years younger than the average audience member). It wasn't a waste of money or time, but I don't think I'd enthusiastically recommend it. It was a world premiere, and I hope the playwright goes and tweaks it a bit.

Washington Post review