In the first act of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a cycle, now playing at Arena’s Kreeger Theatre, a roguish character offers to show villagers “the scaffolds that bring men up; the machinery that brings men down.” While this merchant may be offering only to demonstrate how his flying contraption hoists a poor fool into the […]
Archives for September 2005
Upshot from Forum Theatre, Take 2
Publisher’s note — This is our second review of this play. Spotlight center stage — a Man atop a stone, gun in hand, as music reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odessey plays about. It is a gloomy beginning, creating a mystique about the stage which does not rise; we are entranced, seduced by a […]
Review: Synetic Theater’s first Dracula, 2005
Synetic Theater’s unique performance style is a composite of the arts, blending drama, movement, dance, mime, and music — it is no wonder then that its production of Dracula is swarming with erotic imagery and sensual choreography. It is unfortunate though that this show never defines itself as either an erotic tale of terror or […]
Reiew: Kafka’s The Trial from Scena Theatre
A steady gloom settles casually to our shoulders, and suddenly twelve step upon the stage. As the white of the overhead artificial sun sets, we feel as though this dozen has stepped up to the gallows, awaiting their demise, as though before us played an annotated “Crucible”. It is The Trial, written by Franz Kafka, […]
Review: The Boys Next Door from Journeyman Theater
The Boys Next Door by Tom Griffin is the kind of play that makes you laugh in an uneasy way. One question this wonderfully acted production asks is pointed and direct — can a play about four mentally challenged men living together in a small apartment be humorous without the focus of the joke being […]
Alexa’s Necklace: the Trick is Context
Suffering can be humorous; this the Three Stooges understood. The trick is context. Generally, being involved in a car wreck is not funny. Curly, sprinting from a knife-wielding gorilla, is. Natural Theatrical’s latest presentation, Alexa’s Necklace, an original work by Paula Alprin (of Natural Theatricals) and directed by Susan Alison Keady, is a classical example […]
Review: It Had To Be You – American Century Theater
Do you ever just want to see a good comedy, one where the laughs come easy and the characters are like people you know or wish you did? I suggest you get on the phone and buy a pair of tickets to It Had To Be You currently being staged by American Century Theatre. Written […]
Fountainhead turns in top performances for Top Girls
Margaret Thatcher’s England of the 80s has a lot in common with George Bush’s America of 2005. It is those similarities that make Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls a play that is relevant today and quite possibly into the foreseeable future because, while times have changed, the basic human desire to be successful at all costs […]