Review of "Detectives" by Vicky

This weekend, I saw the matching play to the play I saw last week, "Victims", with Hannah and Oliver. I definitely think "Victims" was better. Maybe I would have felt differently if I saw "Detectives" first, since while I watched "Detectives" I was trying to fit the two plays together into a concise story. For the most part, this could not be done. At the end of "Victims" I was given the impression that the three sisters were the ones pulling the strings, but "Detectives" seemed to imply that the Mayor, who turned out the be half demon, was running the show. However, we did mistakenly go to the "surprise ending" day for Detectives, so maybe things would have made more sense if we had gone to another showing. Although it wasn't just the ending that was bad; in "Detectives", almost every scene at the beginning began with a voice-over, usually a phone conversation. Which makes some sense to me, but one scene, when the detectives go to examine the mutilated body of a man who had died in his sleep, was done entirely in voice-over. I can't think of a reason why this choice was made other than they couldn't afford to make the props for a hospital scene. The scene wasn't even necessary to the plot, and wasn't mentioned at all in "Victims." There were also two musical numbers with the three sisters about pastries. From the way these characters were portrayed in "Victims," it didn't seem logical to me for them to be dancing for us about pastries. I can't see the motivation. I also have trouble seeing the significance of pastries to the play. "Detectives" did offer up an interesting new insight into the purpose of pastries though. One of the detectives makes note of the fact that cave paintings of nudes with pastries had recently been found in the town. So, maybe there's some form of curse on the town that causes people to make art with nudes and pastries and people to die soon after. I was really hoping for an explanation, or at least enough evidence to figure it out for myself from "Detectives." Over all, I'd guess I think of the play "Detectives" as a shitty first draft. There were a lot of parts where it could have been cut down and improved on. I think part of the reason it was bad was because there were all of these weird little gems the writer wanted to keep (like three undead demonic women singing about pastries) that meaning and conclusion was thrown to the side.