Current mood:	artistic
Current music:	The Wanderer - U2
Entry tags:	psychology, review

Don Juan & human nature
Stanford Theatre is trying something new this summer: pay-what-want productions. Last week ayanosuke and I tried to attend one. All seats had been reserved by the time we called them (an hour before the performance began) but they start handing out unclaimed tickets to people on the wait-list a few minutes before the play starts. We added ourselves to the wait-list and hung around as tickets were dished out. Many people who were on the wait-list had not actually stuck around to claim their tickets so we were hoping that we would be able to get in. Most annoyingly, they ran out immediately before our turns came up.

Realizing that reservations were free and that they had a good system for dealing with unclaimed reservations, I decided it would be foolhardy not to make reservations for the next performance, even if I ended up being unable to attend it. So I reserved 4 seats and only ended up claiming 2 of them to watch last night's production of Don Juan. I can't understand why more people don't exploit the system this way!

The play itself, whose plot is roughly explained here, was entertaining for the most part and I quite enjoyed some of Don Juan's witty and eloquent speeches. I thought the costumes and set design were done well too. The acting was variable; while most of the main characters were played extremely well, a couple of the supporting roles stumbled now and then.The only major flaw was the ending, which was decidedly anticlimactic and left me feeling unsatisfied.