I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how important relationships and interactions are in a show. I think I used to think that an actor independently decides how she (or he) is going to portray her character while saying her lines as written and remembering her blocking, and that’s it. But that is really only the beginning of an actor’s job, isn’t it.

And how much does an actor even get to decide for herself? The buck stops with the director, I think, so of course she (or he) will have strong opinions about how each actor should behave as individual characters and how they should behave in interaction with each other.

It boggles my mind, sometimes, how complex a feat it is to put together a live theatre show, and how much trust is involved.

Well, anyway, thanks for your comments. I wish I had time to see “The Elephant Man” at Indy Civic again. Even with its flatness, I’m sticking with “fascinating and beautiful” as my ultimate assessment.

I thought the set was magnificent and the staging worked very, very well. The actors all did a great job, too – especially Chris Goldfarb. Additionally – his scenes with Carrie Fedor were well done and even moving at times. And Dan Scharbrough is always great.

But I too was left flat and it was not until the following morning that I realized why. I believe the reason was that there was very little emotional connection between Goldfarb’s Merrick and Josh Ramsey’s Treves. Treves has quite a few scenes with Merrick that are supposed to build their relationship (in my opinion) but Ramsey seems to have been directed (or has chosen) to play the English doctor with typical Brit restraint. I understand the choice – I do not believe it works.

A good part of the show deals with how Merrick effected so many people in such a surprising way. This is true of how he effected Treves as well. By not creating some emotional tension between the two characters, the show leaves a flat feeling, even through Merrick’s death. Treve’s long monologue – “Corsets, what about corsets?” has no background of emotional to fall against and therefore lies flat. It is a major oversight.

This is not to say the Josh Ramsey doesn’t do a good job with the character – I just cannot help but think that the audience was not given a full measure of emotional content and it had it’s flattening effect.

I know this play well, I played Treves in a production in 2003.