Flashback Friday: Continuity
Spoiler warning: The following review contains mild spoilers for Continuity, which closed Off-Broadway June 9th.
A comedy, even a side splittingly funny comedy, can convey a serious message, but it isn’t easy to do. Similarly, you can make a play, movie, or any piece of media about something serious and grave and still have it be funny, but it isn’t easy. Continuity, which recently ran Off-Broadway put on by the Manhattan Theatre Club, tries to do this very thing. Continuity is a play with a fun conceit and witty dialogue, and it packs a serious message people should heed. Unfortunately, these don’t mesh particularly well together making the play feel less than the sum of its parts.
Continuity takes place over just a few hours as a movie crew is trying to get in one final shot as the sun is setting on the day. The cast is making an epic disaster movie that was born out of the more scientifically literate climate change film after the “studio” got involved. It’s actually a lot of fun to see the scene being acted time and time again over the play and see how the events between each take has changed the actual scene. Most of the characters fall broadly into stereotypes—the coked out lead actress, the philandering writer/studio guy, the meat head male lead who is more brawn than brains, and the overlooked classically trained actress being underappreciated despite her skill—but the dialogue is witty and quick enough that this really didn’t bother me.
The one character who foreshadows his own importance, and abrupt departure from the rest of the play, is the science advisor. He shows up early and abruptly when other characters are talking on stage to explain how ice melting actually works to warm up the earth. Later he gives a more abrupt speech about how disaster movies are more problematic because they can be used to discredit actual climate change because the real disaster won’t look like this. Up until this point, it feels like he is just a normal character who fits the play. In the following scene, the science advisor gives a speech that changed my opinion of the show. He says that even making movies or any media about climate change is the problem because people will watch those and not do any actual work to combat the actual issues.
Climate change is a serious, real issue, but the importance of it in this play and the speech feel entirely different than the first 80% of the play—it doesn’t make the speech unimportant, but it does lessen the cohesiveness of the play. The conveyed idea that watching movies about climate change being a waste of time during a play about climate change took me out of the play itself even though I agree with the underlying message of importance.
Continuity is right in the severity of its message, and it has a lot of funny moments. It’s an ambitious effort, but it just doesn’t have these mesh well enough for it to feel like as successful experience as I wanted it to be.