There are several reasons for why I reacted as I did above. The first, and most glaringly obvious flaw in all three actors' performances, was simply the pacing of the dialogue. It was so fast that I almost had trouble keeping up. I can see how keeping the dialogue fast made the scenes funnier, wittier, etc., but no one was listening to each other or responding to what the other person was saying. There were a few times when the characters' reactions would actually jump the previous character's line by a few seconds! What would have made more sense, if the director was really intent on keeping a quick pace to the play, would have been to keep the daughter's lines fast and, in contrast, slow down the father's and the stranger's lines. But the way it was, there was no contrast, and no believability to the rapidity of their speech.
Stemming off of this, I really didn't see the characters going anywhere, or taking blows, or trying different tactics. I could see them going for the objective - I could see the stranger convincing, to his best, that the farm should be sold, and the old man, to his best, convincing the stranger that his connection to the farm was more important than the world's need for green energy. The issue was that "the stranger convincing the old man that the farm should be sold" was really just the stranger yelling at the old man for 10-minute long scenes, and the old man yelling back. What would have been stronger, if the old man was really this intent on keeping the farm, would have been if the old man, at the start at least, ignored the stranger completely, and didn't let him inside the house so easily. Then the stranger would have had to work to get inside the house, and even getting into a conversation with the old man would have been an achievement. As it was, nobody achieved anything.
The yelling I mentioned above was repetitive and, accompanied by the pace of the dialogue, the reason I felt like the scenes weren't going anywhere. During the play, I kept thinking about the opening scene to Inglourious Basterds, one of my favorite Tarantino films. In that opening scene, the villain of the movie, Hans Landa, comes to the Frenchman's house to make sure he is not hiding Jews. Landa's men are waiting outside to kill the Frenchman and anyone inside the house if there are any Jews inside, and we learn halfway through the scene that there are Jews hiding under the floorboards. Now, the stakes here are obviously incredibly high - but the two actors (Christoph Waltz and Denis Menochet), in ironic contrast, engage in quiet, cordial conversation that in fact increases the tension because they are not yelling at each other! Hans Landa does not need to yell at the Frenchman, because he has the force of a Nazi regiment behind him; and the Frenchman, because the stakes are so high, doesn't dare yell at the Nazi officer. Now, imagine if the scenes in The Wind Farmer had been treated this way? If, instead of yelling, they quietly battled, leaving most under the surface, making the yelling a climax instead of the norm? I assert that the scenes would have been stronger and more engaging to watch.
Finally, as a result of the quick-paced dialogue, the lack of listening and really giving and receiving blows, and the repetitive tactics in pursuit of the objective (i.e., yelling), the play simply did not have very high stakes and I didn't care what happened at the end - I didn't care whether the farmer signed it or not, and I wasn't fully engaged by the question of whether his land was worth more to him than to the clean energy company. The debates in the script were quite interesting, and if paced correctly would be very engaging to interact with - but as it was, I felt like I was watching more of a political debate than a piece of theatre.
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