Press "Enter" to skip to content

Superb acting yet poor writing

Lasso staffer reviews TWU Drama’s production of ‘In Love and Warcraft’

Amanda Hall, Reporter

Britnee Schoville and Alle Mims rehearse a scene from "In Love and Warcraft" during an afternoon play practice.
Britnee Schoville and Alle Mims rehearse a scene from “In Love and Warcraft” during an afternoon play practice.

The audience was challenged on their views of sexuality and gamers in last month’s romantic comedy “In Love and Warcraft,” produced by TWU’s Drama Department, directed by Dr. Noah Lelek and written by Madhuri Shekar.

The lead, Evie, played by Britnee Schoville, is a shy, geeky, abstinent college student who gets teased and ridiculed because she does not have interest in sex while she lives in a gaming fantasy world, Warcraft Universe. After meeting  a boy in real life, Evie has to decide if a real life relationship with all its messiness is worth it.

I was thoroughly impressed with the caliber of acting. Schoville was able to capture the geeky awkwardness of Evie in a way that did not seem like she was trying too hard. The best acting was done by an ensemble character, Alle Mims. Mims portrayed the professional, calm doctor so well that it seemed like she had previous medical experience.

An interesting part of the show was a scene in the Warcraft Universe game. The movements were choreographed to appear as if the actors were characters in the video game, chunky programed moves included. The idle animations were done well for the female characters. However I would have liked to see more variety in animation moves, especially for the male video game character played by Colton Jones.

I was most disappointed in the story line. The plot is relatively uninteresting and flows like the basic romantic comedy that has been over used like an old dishrag. With the exception of Evie, the characters remained static and played generic, stereotypical roles: the college slut, the basement-dwelling gamer, the sex crazed boyfriend and the gay hairstylist. The biggest flaw was in Raul’s lines towards the beginning of the show. The lines and word choices were so unrealistic that I could never see a normal guy actually saying them. The only thing that separated this story from any other rom-com was the over sexualization of college students and the use of video games.    

With this said, “In Love and Warcraft” is an enjoyable, if simple, rom-com. The actors did well, despite the poor script writing, and the use of projectors in the show, which added positivity to the onstage atmosphere.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *