Sunday 5 June 2016

DAPHNE'S DIVE by Quiara Alegria Hudes at the Signature

     Well, they can't all be good. You can't fault the acting or Thomas Kail's direction of DAPHNE'S DIVE. There's just not much of a play there, so little that one wonders why the Signature decided to produce this.
      DAPHNE'S DIVE is one of those barroom plays, though with all the free liquor that is consumed and no customers except the five who seem to drink for free, one wonders how the saloon has survived for the nineteen years of the play's action. Over those nineteen years, the characters don't change except to drink more. The most obnoxious of the characters, one of those life worshipping "free spirits" without a coherent idea in her head, immolates herself between scene two and three. It would be a relief if the other characters didn't insist on talking about her for the rest of the play. Daphne and her friends allow her adopted daughter to become a self-righteous drunk and a scold. A politician is, of course, an adulterer.
      The cast is so good that at some moments they almost convince the audience that there's a play there.
DAPHNE'S DIVE. Signature Theatre. June 5, 2016.

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