Pure Entertainment!

The Little Flower of East Orange successfully emulated showing thoughts and flashbacks, that up until now, I only felt movies had mastered. Screens were use to exhibit pasted occurrences, the murkiness of the figure behind the screen really gave the same effect as dream clouds do in movies.

Michael Shannon's character was the story's narrator. The play began with such subtly and Michael Shannon entered the stage so nonchalantly that initially I wasn't even aware the play had begun. Yet the way he spoke, I honestly brought the idea that he was indeed the writer of the play and not an actor. The subtle use of lighting in the beginning of play, and the low tired voice of Michael Shannon had me engaged from the start. The Little Flower of East Orange begins and ends with the same scene, and Michael Shannon’s character brought us through the events that lead him to the scene he began with. The use of lighting and sound is essential to this play because it has a narrator and others scenes are going on behind where the narrator stands at the beginning of the stage. Without darkening and lighting certain areas of the stage, it would be harder to drive my attention from Michael Shannon to Ellen Burstyn scene or from the phenomenal Ellen Burstyn back to Michael Shannon's scene.

Though the play is named after Ellen Burstyn's character, I really feel that Michael Shannon’s character's blunt, raw, subtle vulnerability stole the show. Michael Shannon's character is this recovering alcoholic, with this young pretty girlfriend Gillian Jacobs, whose mother intentional disappearance has him deeply torn. The way that he lashes out at his mother, time, and time again, and the way he apologizes even though you don't really get the feeling he is sorry for what he says, but sorry he has upset the one woman he endlessly loves, is really what captured my attention. There is something ironically noble about Michael Shannon's character because he fights to keep his mother out of a nursing home and is deeply upset by this idea of his mother loving her father even when he abused her. Yet Michael Shannon's character emotionally hurts his mother by the way he speaks to her and refuses to allow her to hold on to this facade she has created of her father’s greatness even though it comforts her.

All in all, this was a great show. This wasn't one of those plays where I left thinking differently, or left touched, and I didn’t get the impression that the playwright was trying to accomplish that or was trying to leave me with such feelings. However, while I sat in my seat I was highly entertained. Will I be thinking about this play and still talking about it 5 years from now? I really doubt it, but for the moment it kept me content.