Eccentricities of a Nightingale. It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles on stage in this production, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. Brian Landis Folkins subsumes his personality to the role he’s playing. Minute by minute, the outlines of the character…
Morisot Reclining tells two love stories — both involving great artists of the impressionist period, neither of them consummated. Edouard Manet had a decades-long friendship with Berthe Morisot, who eventually married his brother, and there is great warmth and intensity in the paintings he did of her. Edgar Degas, arrogant…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
It’s fascinating to observe the different acting styles in the Germinal Stage production of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, and to think about the ways they work with Tennessee Williams’s characters and dialogue. When Brian Landis Folkins, who plays John Buchanan, walks on stage, you’re momentarily disappointed, so nondescript and…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
It isn’t strange that in 1942 a major American playwright would be concerned with the possible extinction of humanity and pondering what it would take to save the human race, but it is odd that Thornton Wilder chose to do all of this in a comedy. Luckily, The Skin of…
Sunsets and Margaritas is so energetic, jolly and good-natured, and presents such an appealing political and familial viewpoint, that it seems coldhearted not to like it, like kicking away a friendly puppy as it darts at your feet. But there are too many unfunny jokes and plot turns in this…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
A Prayer for Owen Meany begins with John Wheelwright alone on stage remembering Owen Meany, the friend whose life and actions caused him to become a Christian. As a child, John lived with his charming, flirtatious mother, Tabitha, and his grandmother; all he knew of his father was that Tabitha…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
Radio Golf is the last of August Wilson’s ten plays about the black experience in the twentieth century, most of them seen through the prism of Pittsburgh’s Hill District; he died the year he completed it. With this production, the Denver Center Theatre Company will have done the entire series,…
Eurydice. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has created her own magical, eccentric, gutsy and entirely original interpretation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, one in which the Lord of the Underworld is a comic-fearful shape-changer, ruling over a place populated by people of stone; Eurydice’s father, already dead, longs for her from the Underworld…
Susan, a mailwoman played by Erin Rollman, finds little meaning in her profession — but a lot of significance in the splat of birdshit on her windshield. Lovingly framing it with her fingers, she declares the thing “a bird poop angel” and bursts into a rapturous, American Idol-style song of…
She was in herself, like a woman near term, and did not think of the man, going on ahead, or the path, climbing upwards towards life. She was in herself. And her being-dead filled her with abundance. As a fruit with sweetness and darkness, so she was full with her…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
As You Like It. It doesn’t get more minimal than this: As You Like It performed by six people on a stage where the set consists of little besides a large rock, swaths of fabric and a wooden swing; echoing footsteps announce an actor’s entry minutes before he actually appears;…
Paragon Theatre’s production of Love Song represents the best kind of marriage between a script and a theater company: The play provides fascinating, quirky roles that make actors look good, and where it has flaws, the production counters them. This is the story of Beane, a sad, lonely, crazy man…
As You Like It. It doesn’t get more minimal than this: As You Like It performed by six people on a stage where the set consists of little besides a large rock, swaths of fabric and a wooden swing; echoing footsteps announce an actor’s entry minutes before he actually appears;…
For most modern theater-goers, Martin McDonagh has become the voice of Irish drama, and I’ve tended to consider the grotesquery and violence of his plays — The Lieutenant of Inishmore, A Skull in Connemara, Pillowman — as a departure from a misty, lyrical tradition. For example, I’d always thought of…
It doesn’t get more minimal than this: As You Like It performed by six people on a stage where the set consists of little besides a large rock, swaths of fabric and a wooden swing; echoing footsteps announce an actor’s entry minutes before he or she actually appears; and everyone…
Shakespeare’s Richard III is the quintessential story of power-lust, of a man willing to murder his relatives, betray his supporters and shed any amount of blood to acquire the crown of England. While Macbeth took us inside the villain’s psyche and made us understand both his craziness and his grief,…
