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The last two plays of our Florida season are this week. Tonight's play Sotto Voce caused a fairly strong disagreement between the two of us from our "reviewers" standpoint.

So here is where we parted reviews completely- I thought the characters all had huge flaws when it came to their accents- I was willing to give a pass to the German vignettes played by the two younger "Hispanic" (Cuban and Colombian) characters but I really found the actor (who was substitute for the one on the program) for the Cuban writer had virtually no Hispanic accent at all.  And I found this a huge flaw- I went to Cuba in 2012 and this guy's accent was some place I never heard before- not Cuban American - not Cuban - not even really Hispanic.  The young woman character did fine with the Colombian role (and as I said her German accent was atrocious but I give her a pass for the few lines she had as the Nina character)

But where Phil and I really disagreed was on the main character's accent.  All of these characters are immigrants and or foreign (the guy hadn't actually immigrated) and should sound like it... The old lady had some weird almost Polish kind of accent. Phil argued that it was accurate and I pointed out to him that not ONE of our German friends' English sounded remotely like that... he argued that it was because she was so old... but I found all of this very distracting of the story which was touted as "whimsical" and "poetic" but I found just generally annoying.  I found the male character hugely manipulative of both women. I found both women lacking- wanting their dreams so much they were willing to forgo any sort of reality check about this guy's motivation and actions...

wonder how the dialect coach felt about these actors- or whether she was the one to "blame" can a Cuban character be believable as a Cuban with no real Hispanic accent?

so overall- this one came out the opposite of our usual reviews where I like the play much more than Phil does.  This time he liked it much more than I did.  I felt there was so much more the subject of the St Louis could bring us than we got tonight... so split on the thumbs up/thumbs down.

tomorrow we are out again for the FSU Conservatory production of The Cherry Orchard- which I will give more details on later but here is the pre-play material...

since nothing that FSU Conservatory does is straightforward I am looking forward to seeing their take on Chekhov tomorrow night... will be back to you with more later....

and if you don't have time to read the full review of this one- here is my thumbnail summary "everyone got what they deserved." LOL