In a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns, a baby lies in a wastebasket. She has lived for less than an hour, before being strangled with her own umbilical cord. In another part of the room, her mother, a holy nun, lies unconscious and bleeding, mind and memory in ruins. The pathologists and psychologists and police […]
Rick Hammerly’s back in heels, fab gowns and boas for Georgia McBride but directing brings out his serious side
When two-time Helen Hayes winner Rick Hammerly woke up recently, a “morning” after taking the stage as fiercely funny drag queen Miss Tracy Mills in Round House Theatre’s The Legend of Georgia McBride, his left shoulder was pulled, he had a bruise on his left hip, he had blood on his sheets from a knee that […]
Felicia Curry stars in Lela & Co from Factory 449 (review)
Harrowing, chilling and profound, Lela and Co. is a story about the stories we tell ourselves in order to keep sane, or in order to protect the status quo, or in order to be polite — all of which is the same thing, more or less. It is the story of Lela (Felecia Curry), the storyteller, […]
Jayne Blanchard’s Top 10 shows of 2015
10. Macbeth Not a stage production per se but a movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s brutal tragedy directed by Justin Kurzel whose extraordinary clarity of vision brings this tale of cruelty and revenge to savage life. Intensely atmospheric, the film is almost entirely shot in the Scottish countryside—full of mist and fog and fen—and shows us […]
Like your theatre intense? Rick Hammerly has your ticket to Closet Land
It was an unusual invitation that I received from a colleague and friend about the final four chances to see her current performance: “Please read the description and warnings about the show. It is rather brutal. That said, I am very proud of the production and believe it is an experience in the theatre unlike […]
Review: Closet Land from Factory 449, terror and human resilience
When was the last time theater was a white-knuckle experience? Seventy-five minutes of heart-pounding, cold sweat, and conscience-prickling tension are yours for the taking at Factory 449’s visceral staging of Rahda Bharadwaj’s Closet Land, the stage version of the 1991 movie starring Madeline Stowe and Alan Richman.
Mercy after the shootings: The Amish Project
The X-Men and other morphers have nothing on Nanna Ingvarsson, the local actress fluidly shape-shifting into seven characters that form a community united by tragedy in the one-woman show The Amish Project.
Producers of The Ice Child respond to plagiarism complaints
Factory 449’s production of The Ice Child was in its last weekend of performances at the Mead Theatre Lab when comments first appeared on our Web site from New York sources who had not seen the play, suggesting that The Ice Child, written by Rick Hammerly, Lisa Hodsoll and Hunter Styles, was, in part, plagiarized […]
The Ice Child
Whatever there is to say about The Ice Child (and there’s a fair amount to say), no one can claim the play is spinning its wheels. To realize the tale of a girl captured and imprisoned in a basement freezer by her psychopath professor, the creative team has brought out as many bells and whistles […]
Magnificent Waste
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. While those ominous words may not hang above Flashpoint’s door, Dante would recognize this place. Cautiously making our way around the darkened room — the seats are roped off with black ribbon — accompanied by a jazzy score with otherworldly tones, we are both beckoned and repelled by […]
The Saint Plays
If Mother Teresa could see us all now, wondering how to play our parts, she might remind us that we can do no great things, only small things with great love. But more often than not in The Saint Plays, that great love gets channeled into the small things themselves.
4.48 Psychosis – TOP PICK!
Scott Fitzgerald located the dark night of the soul at three o’clock in the morning, but Sarah Kane was more precise: it is a seventy-two minute window of lucidity that begins at 4:48 a.m. and ends at six – the darkest hour before a dawn that never comes.