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Vice Blog

LITERARY - THEATRE REVIVAL

We may not be qualified drama critics, but we knows what we likes when we sees it. Actually, our theatrical preferences are probably the exact opposite of most "qualified drama critics'." We'll gladly forego things like subtlety and pacing and well-written dialogue for all the pizzazzle play-makers like to throw in these days such as crazy future costumes or a hydraulic stage or a funny song about retards or an entire play done on bicycles set to the music of the Bangles—a little bang for our buck, you know?

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Anyways, where we're going with this is when the first two glimpses at Cho Seung-Hui's dramatic oeuvre came out, we realized right away Richard McBeef was going to be the intellectual favorite.

It's a more sparing play than Mr. Brownstone, it's easier to stage, and it tackles one of the classic subjects of great theater—the filial-paternal struggle for domination/identity. It's basically Hamlet as adapted by a grounded eight-year-old. But, for our money, Brownstone is the winning entry—it's an ensemble drama, it deals with yet another timeless struggle (teens vs. dick teacher), it opens with one of the best two-line exchanges in the past 20 year of theater, and it's a musical—to our knowledge one of the only one-act musicals in current production. We knew it wasn't going to get the same amount attention as its headier, more memorably named cousin, but we didn't expect the neglect to run quite this deep. There are already a good dozen productions of McBeef on YouTube, running the gamut from well-cast low-budget line readings to well-produced cinematic treatments to passable Muppet-based entries to artsy Beckett rip-offs (with a giant Beckett head no less) to genuinely high-concept meditations on the play's sexual undertones. Meanwhile all Brownstone gets is one measley, shrugged-off Muppet version with half the original characters and some high school junkie version we think misses the point entirely. What a fucking gyp.

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