Elehant's Graveyard Review

Lazy. Why bother getting a cast, sand, some versatile blocks and a budget banjo White Stripes if the main focus, the piece de resistance, the elephant in the room if you will, is totally absent from the proceedings? I could barely contain my total rage at the fact that the cast were going to TELL us about the hanging of an elephant instead of SHOWING us. In fact I didn’t contain my rage. I dripped blood from my ears on their precious rake as a result of the vastness of this slight to the supposed credulity of the audience.

Oh sure, everyone can visualise an elephant being lynched by a crane, it’s the clown character that people are going to have difficulty with… LAZY.

And don’t come at me with the argument that it would be impossible to stage. I’ve seen a film where a circus elephant learns to fly with its ears, so don’t tell me what can and can’t be achieved if your ambitions are high enough.

Time and time again I squinted my mind’s eye as tight as I could so as to truly get an impression of a five-ton elephant being asphyxiated but I was thwarted at every turn by the terminable knowledge that I was just looking at an empty patch of air. An empty patch of air that the actors occasionally patted and talked to, like that was going to make a difference.

No Wonder was wondrous, Vowel Play contained no vowels, Normal was anything but, Return to the Silence was loud, and Elephant’s Graveyard doesn’t have a real fucking elephant in it. I’m not even going to bother with the Last Yak. I’m fed up of being lied to, expected to do all the hard work of visualising the central concept because the cast are too LAZY to get off their arses and do some fundraising so that they can, say, buy an elephant and hang it from the rafters. But this… words can’t express how upset and angered I am. It’s their loss though, the American symbolism was entirely lost on me as a result of their continued refusal to surprise us at the last minute with a real life elephant crushing a man’s head like a melon. The elephant is the emblem of the Republican party. Is this significant? We may never know. Next time do it right by stringing up an elephant or at least stoning a rabbit.