First, let me tell you how much I admire Lynn Nottage. I saw her Pulitzer-Prize-wnning (2009) play Ruined at Nightwood Theatre in Toronto in 2011. Good play and with a weatlh of credits and awards:
Awards and nominations
Pulitzer Prize for Drama - Winner
Outstanding Play – Winner
Outstanding Actress in a Play, Saidah Arrika Ekulona – (nomination)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, Condola Rashad – (nomination)
Outstanding Director of a Play, Kate Whoriskey – (nomination)
Outstanding Music in a Play, Dominic Kanza - Winner
Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play – Winner
Outstanding Lighting Design (Play or Musical) – Peter Kaczorowski (nomination)
Outstanding Actress in a Play – Saidah Arrika Ekulona (nomination)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play – Condola Rashad (nomination)
Distinguished Production of a Play (nomination)
Distinguished Performance Award, Saidah Arrika Ekulona (nomination)
Outstanding Play (Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman Theatre, Producer; Lynn Nottage, Playwright) – Winner
Outstanding Director (nomination)
Outstanding Lead Actress – Saidah Arrika Ekulona Winner
Best New American Play Winner
Performance
Quincy Tyler Bernstine Winner
Saidah Arrika Ekulona Winner
Russell Gebert Jones Winner
Wow!
But
That doesn’t mean I have to like everything.
I went to the Canadian Stage yesterday with high hopes and great expectations. Nottage’s new play, Sweat, is on now. at the Bailiie Theatre. I’ve been getting flex tickets from Cdn.Stage for several years now and have never been disappointed—till now. I walked out at intermission.
The actors were good. The set was iffy — too well-stocked a bar for the neighbourhood and the tastes of its customers. The direction was questionable: the entire ensemble started too high and had nowhere to go but sideways. But—sorry—I’m saying this about a successful playwright, far more successful than I will ever ever be, and one who teaches playwriting at Columbia University in New York— but, it’s not a good play. It’s very political; it has good cause for its focus; it’s still current and vital, BUT it’s still not a good play.
I know I know — here are the awards it has won, including the Pulitzer Prize (2017):
Awards and nominations
Awards
2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Sweat
2017 Obie Award, Best New American Play – Sweat
2016 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize – Sweat
Other awards to Nottage:
2018 Induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
2017 Induction into The American Academy of Arts and Science
2017 Award of Merit, American Academy of Arts and Letters to "an outstanding playwright for her body of work"
2017 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Achievement
2017 Lucille Lortel Sidewalk Star
2016 PEN/Laura Pels "Master American Dramatist" Award
2016 Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters
2016 Columbia University Provost Grant
2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2016
2013 Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award
2012 Nelson A. Rockefeller Award For Creativity
2010 Steinberg "Distinguished Playwright" Award
2010 Horton Foote Award
2007 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship
2005 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for Drama and Performance Art
2004 PEN/Laura Pels "Mid-Career Playwright" Award
2000 & 1994 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
1994 Van Lier Playwright Fellowship
National Black Theatre Festival August Wilson Playwriting Award
Fellowships, commissions, and residencies
Signature Theatre Company, 2018–2019 Residency One
Park Avenue Armory (2017–2018)
And on and on and on
Go ahead, give me an argument. But I think Sweat breaks all the rules of Playwriting 101. So I walked out. That’s what makes horse races. Too bad.