beyond the dead essays

beyond the dead essays This play was the resounding voice of the dead. The direction of the play closely followed the original direction of the script. By that I mean that the unity of the play was contingent on the premise of the original writer. I believe that the director of this play was trying to uphold the message that Irwin Shaw first presented with this play. The play was directed very well. It seemed that it drove the intended message home well, which in this case I would consider an appreciative success. The view that I carried while watching this performance changed dramatically. Before the viewing, and during the first scenes, I was convinced that the plot was too dramatic. There has always been an enormous amount of sacrifice by soldiers during times of war. I thought this to be more of a degrading look at war, and it's atrocities. I believe in the sacrifices of war, or at least I thought I did. The play convinced me that not always is sacrifice necessary, and often times the sac rifice goes unnoticed, or without proper revere for those giving up their lives. I would call the performance a sensitive, yet very real portrayal of the very large, yet mostly unseen, and unappreciated, losses of life. The actors did a pretty good job. On simple terms, they all remembered their lines, and the specific movements required of them. I guess that I don't know that for fact. If there was a mistake though, it was covered very well, which would indicate even better acting to me. The group of men that played the soldiers worked well together. They all seemed to be plagued by exactly the same symptoms. Of course they were all dead, but no one knows how to act dead-alive. Their individual acting of the symptoms was great, because in each we could see the same traits. They all swayed from side to side, or all kept a very somber, quiet look on their faces. Then they six were all further challenged by having to maintain these similarities ...