When I first heard the name The New Electric Ballroom, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with this play. It’s a bold name, a big name, and it could mean absolutely anything. There’s not a ton on the internet about the play, so I had very little to go off of. I think that’s okay, though at first, I felt like I would want a little more going into it all. After having actually seen it, I’m so glad I had so little. I don’t think I would have had the same experience with the play if I had more. And this is definitely one that the experience was everything.
From the start, The New Electric Ballroom was completely dynamic in the most quiet of ways. The three actors onstage didn’t need to be doing anything crazy for the play to start off with a bang. And they didn’t do anything crazy. The entire start to this show are beautiful monologues. We hear one about how talking is human nature. We hear one about being alone. We hear a story about one of the women on stage being a natural baker…how she sat on on her mother’s lap as a girl, being bounced up and down as she mixed ingredients together.
And that is where we’re introduced to one of the main parts of this play…storytelling. Throughout The New Electric Ballroom, we hear stories told by four characters. Breda and Clara, two older sisters, and Ada, a significantly younger sister. The three sisters are joined by Patsy, a fishmonger in their small village. It’s a small cast, but what these actors bring to the stage is mind blowing. I was completely blown away, watching this tale being spun. There were stories within stories within stories. There were different perceptions, different memories. There were so many stories.
I loved every second of this show. It was bizarre, it was strange. Every moment was meticulously thought out, meticulously planned. And although it was something I should have known…after all, I knew I was watching a play…it was all so superbly acted that I felt like I was just watching real life. I guess that’s the true mark of a play, but The New Electric Ballroom was so surreal that the balance between all of that seemed even more humongous. Some of it shouldn’t even have been real. And yet, it fit completely naturally into my perception of the world.
The actors in this show brought so much to the table. I’ve seen Marcia Saunders and Janis Dardaris a million times over the years, but never Stephen Patrick Smith, or Marcie Bramucci. And despite the fact that there were only four actors in the show, I felt like I was experiencing so many more. Saunders and Dardaris, as sisters Clara and Breda, told me different stories about The Roller Royle. Smith, as fishmonger Patsy, talks about his mother, who looked just like Doris Day. And so much more. There’s a whole cast that we only know through stories.
I can only imagine that these roles were extremely demanding. The emotion involved, the intensity involved…everything that these actors put out to the audience. I don’t think I blinked through the entire show. And it wasn’t just about the performances, though of course, those were so powerful that they carried the show from start to finish. But it was everything I knew the actors put into that powerful performance, like how expertly they mastered the Irish accent. The technicalities were just as hammered home as everything else.
There is a wonderful amount of things to guess at here. From the start, Clara claims that she made the cake that sits on the table throughout most of the show. Towards the end, Breda screams that she made the cake. We hear two different stories about the actual club, the New Electric Ballroom, from Clara and Breda. We see people made up, giving different accounts and not knowing which are correct…if any of them. It’s all about perspective, and memory, and the differences in people’s lives. The way The New Electric Ballroom flowed was beautiful. It wasn’t forced, it wasn’t stilted. As Marcia Saunders said to me after, it was like a poem. And it truly was.
Throughout The New Electric Ballroom, we got to live in the past, present, and future. Of course, we’re seeing everyone living in real time. But we’re also hearing stories about the New Electric Ballroom, about the history behind these characters. We even get some glimpses of a possible future, as Patsy talks about a life with Ada. It does take a bit to figure them all out, but they end up settling out quite nicely. I thought it was pretty brilliant to see all of that. It was woven together expertly. It really affected me.
This was a show that I couldn’t be more glad that I got to see…that I got to experience. It’s the type of show that I would love to see again. When asked what the show was about, I found I didn’t even have a proper answer. The New Electric Ballroom is the type of show that sort of transcends words. It’s a comedy, it’s a drama, it’s everything that could be and couldn’t be. It’s a surreal piece that you really have to see to understand what it’s about, and what it has to offer. And it has a lot to offer. It was one helluva ride…and I loved every second of it.
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