Blasted instead of Paramore. Yay?

Ever since I had heard about Sarah Kane and her brilliance in class, I had been looking forward to seeing Blasted. I've always been a fan of "in your face" anything. Whether it is theatre, movies, or music, I've always been interested in pushing limits of art in drastic ways. I expected Blasted to blow my mind in a great way, but it did the complete opposite. And to top it all off, I skipped a Paramore concert on the same night because I did not want to miss this show. Quite the disappointment.
First of all, as weird as it may sound, half the time I was focusing on how much the leading lady reminded me of Sorrel. With that image in my head, focusing on the play became a little more difficult. One problem that I've constantly had with performances that we've been to is the speed. I find the length of all these plays could easily be shortened if they were not so slow. So many scenes in so many of the plays seem to be dragged out more than they should be. I'm not much of a theatre person or anything like that, so I don't know if those are techniques in theatre, but to me, it slows down the performance way too much. The conversations in Blasted might have been fast and to the point, but the silences were suffocating.
Another thing that bothered me about the performance was the acting of the soldier. It was really difficult for me to believe anything he was saying because I was just not buying it. The stories that he told about what war life was like did not sound believable. I found it hard to believe that a soldier would eat another persons eyes out, but that just made me realize how “in your face” Sarah Kane really was. I was not really offended or bothered by any of the scenes, but I really thought that the acting could have been a lot better. I couldn’t help but laugh at the soldier because none of what he was saying was believable.
I might have been complaining and whining the whole time because I was thinking about the Paramore concert that was going on at the same time, but for the moments that I really paid attention to the show, I was not convinced at all. (And constantly thinking Sorrel was in it was not making the situation any better).

-Lilia Gharibian
UC Riverside