The Love of Three Oranges: Audience Reflection

The play “The Love of Three Oranges” was a middle school production, performed by the middle school kids. It was performed at the ISD Auditorium from 7pm-9pm. Ms Kimi produced it but it was originally a French Opera. I attended the play at 7:10pm on Thursday.  

In the play, a Prince has a sickness due to a curse caused by Fata Morgana and the only way to cure it is by making him laugh. In order to do so, the King hires a comedian/performer named Truffaldino. She tries her best to make him laugh by entertaining him but everything fails. Afterwards, she plans on having a party where everyone gathers around including Fata Morgana, who’s in disguise. During one of the games, Fata Morgana falls down and the Prince finally laughs. Due to this, Fata Morgana curses the Prince to fall in love with 3 oranges. Immediately the prince and truffaldino start to search for these oranges. On their journey, they face a lot of strange things such as the Witch comes forth and tells them how water should be near when they find the oranges. At the end, the oranges are found but two of them die due to Truffaldinos mistake. The prince falls in love with the last orange and they soon wish to be wed. Fata Moragana does not want this to happen therefore she curses the orange and substitutes her with Smereldina. Later on, the witch and Fata Morgana have a show down where the witch wins and unveils the curse from the orange. The prince and the orange, which is a princess, live happily ever after.

The acting was very good and it was better than I had expected. Their lines were fully memorized and even if a mistake was made, it wasn’t understandable since their expression did not give it away. The characterization was great and so was the character development. They had great energy and all of them were fully enthusiastic. The skills that were evident in the play were their voice. There were no microphones used and the voice could have been heard from the back of the auditorium. They had great movements and gestures with perfect body language. Even though it was not improvsional, none of the characters blocked the other and helped the scene grow as a whole.

The set was made very well since there was the platform on the stage, which gave it dimension. The performers could interchange and make it interesting rather than flat stage. The props and the set were very simple. During the scenes in the castle, the backdrop of the deck of cards was given. When they were in the forest, the helpers brought in the black trees and when the evil woman’s castle came there was a different backdrop. It was simple and it gave the idea of where they were. The costumes and makeup was brilliant. The evil characters had dark dresses with dark makeup and the good characters had light colored clothing and simple makeup. The costumes fit them well and they were comfortable in them. They used the space in the stage well and the lighting was great. The first thing, which could have been improved, was the background music. Since there were no microphones used, the music was too loud and the dialogues could not be heard. The lighting was great and it was on the right characters at the right time. The second thing, which could be changed, was when the stage directors and helpers were changing the props, the lights should have been much dimmer to make it less obvious.

Altogether, I enjoyed the play a lot. It had humor and it was cute. I loved how enthusiastic the characters were and their acting was great. The performance was much better than I had expected. The cast, crew, director and the technical crew did a great job in bringing the play together.