Sincerity and Irony

Are the salt and pepper of theater-making.

Sincerity alone will kill an evening pretty quick, I think. There is little "lightness" (see Sarah Ruhl's discussion in this spring's New Yorker article, but really see Italo Calvino, from whom she borrows) in Sincerity, especially with a capital "S." Earnest characters earnestly pursuing their earnest goals...is that a show you're gonna see? We go to the theater to be entertained, and sincerity has a way of rolling that flat.

Irony, though...we live in the "age of Irony," no? The Hipster, the culture of internet, the 'zine...I'm using lazy, lazy shorthand here, but there's the sense that we're awash in irony, that it's the distanced, distancing position from which one regards the present world climate, in order to SURVIVE that climate. Still, at some point, Irony (capital I) is SO light, SO biting that you can walk away from it feeling...bitten. We go to the theater to be moved, and irony may not be up for the job.

So the question is how to balance them, how to be versed in, but never entirely seduced by, both of them.

All this because I'm trying to decide, tonight, between seeing "W;t" or "Avenue Q."