Talley's Folly

Subject:
In making observations of the showing of Talley’s Folly at Austin College, I took note mainly of the work of the actors, looking particularly for the amount of thought that they put into creating their characters. There were only two characters that appeared for the entire play Matt Friedman, played by Michael Brahce and Sally Talley, played by Averie Bell. Michael used imagination to create a Russian accent, a technique that I have never seen before. Not only was it creative, but it was convincing; it sounded like a Russian was speaking. This feat is more made more impressive considering that Michael was playing one of only two actors during the entire two hour production. To maintain an accent with consistency with that many lines to speak presents tremendous challenge. In examining the interactions between the characters, I noticed that Avery’s use of emotion is very flat, in that her anger remains relatively constant throughout the play. Though we see Sally calm down some when Michael opens up to her, she only moves back to being angry with Matt Friedman. After he tells her about the atrocities that his family experienced before fleeing to America, Sally tally screams at him for lying. I found her constant anger to be over the top. Her behavior seemed to reflect that have of little girl griping about everything rather than a more sophisticated women who can exercise some self control. In fact, the whole play made the audience sympathize with Matt since we see him being stepped on by Sally every time he starts to begin a conversation and open up to her. Perhaps this was meant, since Matt has the central role of trying to win Sally over in 97 minutes, and in any conflict, it is usually the main character that the audience sides with. But the view that the audience should side with Matt is one sided considering that Matt is manipulating Sally in attempting to win her, and is therefore not good in his intentions. The play is not balanced, portraying Matt favorably over Sally, when this is not justified given his intentions. To correct this imbalance would require making Avery’s moment to moment interactions with Michael closer to that of a woman’s, she should exercise more restraint on her anger and perhaps add other emotions besides anger to make her appear more emotionally sophisticated than just gripping, little girl. After falling through the floor of the dock, Matt calls for help in an attempt to get Sally close to him; Sally could have smiled when countering this bid to manipulate her. She knows that Matt is bluffing being stuck and her way of forcing him out of the water by mentioning that there are snakes is actually amusing.