goestoshow

I feel like this play was exploring really interesting things, going interesting places, but I really didn’t feel like I got what I was supposed to out of it. The discussion of how we portray and deal with violence when communicating it to children is fascinating, and the character seems perfectly suited to do it, but half the time I’m not sure what’s going on.

Monsieur Lazhar has been hired as a substitute for a teacher who committed suicide in her classroom while the class was out for recess. Understandably, the class is having trouble dealing with it, and Lazhar’s own past makes it difficult for him to confront it as well, but also probably makes him the perfect person to help the students do so.

Unfortunately, he’s lying about some very important things. And this is the problem with this play. It’s actually really hard to tell what he’s lying about and what exactly drives the events of the climax. They come upon the viewer suddenly and with insufficient exposition.

I feel like this play could have benefited from being edited down to an hour from an hour and a half. For example, a good 5 minutes or so right at the beginning is spent with the eponymous main character ranting about the fact he is Monsieur Lazhar who is substituting for Madame LaChance. He says this over and over again, at one point falling on the floor and doing a Homer Simpson style floorspin. The play is full of these zany little performance pieces that just don’t work for me at all.

I see a lot of potential in this play, but can’t quite figure out how to make it work out in my mind.