Long Christmas Ride Home Analysis
The Long Christmas Ride Home
On Wednesday May 27thth, I attended a play produced by The Ohio State University Department of Theatre, written by Paula Vogel, and titled The Long Christmas Ride Home. I really enjoyed this play for it was creative, and easy to follow. The characters, the setting, and the music all came together to create a memorable play. This production was about a moment that changed one family’s life forever. It is a play with puppets, in which one could say its themes are revolved around sexuality, violence, along with abuse. There are three children named Stephen, Rebecca the eldest, and Claire the youngest. After a dispute that went on between Claire and Stephen, they broke the very expensive chain their father had bought for Claire. This amplifies the heated arguments that took place, and commenced the long Christmas ride home where their father proceeds to worsen the car ride by hitting their mother across the face. After this moment, the story freezes, and we are fast forwarded in time, in order to see the lives of these children on another Christmas night at a much older age. We see that the moment in the car ride home changed their lives forever, and because of that, they all found then similar situations on a cold Christmas night locked out of the house of their significant other watching or hearing them with another person, and ignoring them. We are introduced to each of their sexualities; Claire, and Stephen being homosexual, and Rebecca heterosexual. We see that Stephen dies from a sexually transmitted disease, and how Claire and Rebecca struggle with staying alive or happy.
I found the timing of this production was just right; however I thought the end of the play was somewhat dragged on, and could have ended earlier than it did. Although the homosexual scenes were rather disturbing, I would have to say they were my favourite scenes, because it was humorous, and extremely clever. The use of shadow puppets was extraordinary, and
On Wednesday May 27thth, I attended a play produced by The Ohio State University Department of Theatre, written by Paula Vogel, and titled The Long Christmas Ride Home. I really enjoyed this play for it was creative, and easy to follow. The characters, the setting, and the music all came together to create a memorable play. This production was about a moment that changed one family’s life forever. It is a play with puppets, in which one could say its themes are revolved around sexuality, violence, along with abuse. There are three children named Stephen, Rebecca the eldest, and Claire the youngest. After a dispute that went on between Claire and Stephen, they broke the very expensive chain their father had bought for Claire. This amplifies the heated arguments that took place, and commenced the long Christmas ride home where their father proceeds to worsen the car ride by hitting their mother across the face. After this moment, the story freezes, and we are fast forwarded in time, in order to see the lives of these children on another Christmas night at a much older age. We see that the moment in the car ride home changed their lives forever, and because of that, they all found then similar situations on a cold Christmas night locked out of the house of their significant other watching or hearing them with another person, and ignoring them. We are introduced to each of their sexualities; Claire, and Stephen being homosexual, and Rebecca heterosexual. We see that Stephen dies from a sexually transmitted disease, and how Claire and Rebecca struggle with staying alive or happy.
I found the timing of this production was just right; however I thought the end of the play was somewhat dragged on, and could have ended earlier than it did. Although the homosexual scenes were rather disturbing, I would have to say they were my favourite scenes, because it was humorous, and extremely clever. The use of shadow puppets was extraordinary, and