Kristin took me to see When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincoln Center Theatre last night. I went into the show not knowing much about it, except that it was supposed to be somber, and that it plays with time (jumping between present, past and future). Often times I like going into shows unawares — it leaves me open to surprise and lets the play (and not the hype) speak for itself.
I was not disappointed. From the opening scene it’s clear that the play is both unorthodox and gripping. It’s tough to explain the mechanisms of how the play uses temporality to show a family’s genealogy of tragedy without giving away too much. Suffice it say, the show was one of the more structurally interesting and complete works I’ve seen on stage in quite awhile. For example, it’s incredibly artful how the young manifestation of a character is a specter to his or her own future self - almost ghost-like the same character from a different time will remain on stage while a future scene unfolds. The same goes for objects, and the repetition of characters and objects reveals how things change, yet always stay the same. How to escape the cycle? That’s the central conceit of the show.
Highly recommended - go see it!
(Photo courtesy of the Lincoln Center Theater Website)
3 years ago