INKSLINGER PLAYWRITING FULL
The narration is cleverly distributed not by the playwright, but the company and its leader – in this case, Associate Artistic Director Stuart Carden, who uses the tiny Books on Vernon space to full effect. While this can usually feel like a tricky shortcut as a way to avoid the more difficult task of character development through dialogue, the action is told through poetic, innovative and powerful language. Greig employs actors as narrators and annotators to move the plot along. The structure is akin to David Edgar’s eight-and-a-half hour adaptation of The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1980), in that Mr. Yellow Moon, about two youths running from the law in present day Scotland, has a Dickensian adventure feel to it, as fascinating characters pop in and out to feed the story. As with his The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (see S&C’s review of Chicago Shakespeare’s 2012 production here), the prolific Scottish playwright proves that he is both an original storyteller and a crafty wordsmith (he also did an astounding job adapting Strindberg’s Creditors (2008) see S&C’s review of Remy Bumppo’s current production here). This is why it’s easy to sit up and take notice of David Greig, whose Yellow Moon: The Ballad of Leila and Lee (2006) opened at Writers’ Theatre last night. Modern playwrights must be so caught up in instant missives and self-promotion on Facebook (or some such nonsense) that even when a modern play has an interesting story, it is usually rife with a sterile and unimaginative use of language. Since the advent of the internet, at least, the cumbersome amount of news bits and twittering has infected storytelling like a cancer.
The theater has been sorely affected by electronic communication.
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