The Pitch
This entertaining show explores the relationship between artistic vision and marketability to great comic effect
| 11 Aug 2007
Orange Cinema ads are a transatlantic obsession for a very good reason. Watching Patrick Swayze effuse over his film proposal, only to have his vision quashed by a group of philistine executives, excites our perverse sense of humour. Pitch works on a very similar premise, exploring the relationship between artistic vision and marketability to great comic effect.
Preparing to pitch his film to a boardroom of producers, a struggling scriptwriter plays hero, heroine, villain and sidekick as he performs a one-man action Blockbuster. A host of Hollywood icons are cast into the clichés they were born to play. Clint Eastwood is a gumshoe hero who refuses to toe the line. Catherine Zeta Jones is the smouldering temptress with the Mensa IQ. Chris Rock is the mouthy sidekick with the sharp one-liners. Every mountain tableaux, every background track, every rousing speech could have been lifted straight out of any Spielberg/Ridley Scott epic. It is a gratuitous, comic and delicious celebration of the genre.
The parody alone is enough to make this good, entertaining theatre. What propels it into the stratospheres of great theatre is the addition of a concise and charming subplot. Escaping from the melodrama of La La Land, we witness brief sketches of the writer’s life and are privy to his professional and personal misfortunes. Whilst the film proposal is all about overstatement, the subplot is all about subtlety and intrigue. It provides a necessary interlude that prevents the humour from becoming monotonous. In its glorious entirety, this play is an absolute treat.
Preparing to pitch his film to a boardroom of producers, a struggling scriptwriter plays hero, heroine, villain and sidekick as he performs a one-man action Blockbuster. A host of Hollywood icons are cast into the clichés they were born to play. Clint Eastwood is a gumshoe hero who refuses to toe the line. Catherine Zeta Jones is the smouldering temptress with the Mensa IQ. Chris Rock is the mouthy sidekick with the sharp one-liners. Every mountain tableaux, every background track, every rousing speech could have been lifted straight out of any Spielberg/Ridley Scott epic. It is a gratuitous, comic and delicious celebration of the genre.
The parody alone is enough to make this good, entertaining theatre. What propels it into the stratospheres of great theatre is the addition of a concise and charming subplot. Escaping from the melodrama of La La Land, we witness brief sketches of the writer’s life and are privy to his professional and personal misfortunes. Whilst the film proposal is all about overstatement, the subplot is all about subtlety and intrigue. It provides a necessary interlude that prevents the humour from becoming monotonous. In its glorious entirety, this play is an absolute treat.