items tagged with James Bleecker

As I never tire of telling people, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night ranks first on my list of all-time favorite plays, which puts me in league with, I'd imagine, several thousand others over the years. Widely considered the greatest work ever written by the author widely considered the greatest playwright our country has yet produced, O'Neill's autobiographical epic is nothing less than America's answer to King Lear - an incisive, harrowing, and altogether exhilarating study of family conducted with a microscope and a scalpel.

This past Thursday, the Harrison Hilltop Theatre celebrated not only the debut of its latest stage offering - the Jonathan Larson musical tick ... tick ... BOOM! - but the first anniversary of the venue's opening. And both were celebrated in style, with pre-performance hors d'oeuvres, beer samples from the Great River Brewery, an unveiling of the new Harrison Hilltop logo, and the announcement of the company's 2009-10 season.

The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's current family musical, Pinkalicious, is as lightweight and sweet as cotton candy, and about as nourishing; it gives you a friendly sugar rush and all but evaporates on contact. Yet hidden within the show's pleasant, amiable presentation are moments of delightfully loopy comic invention, and throwaway bits so surprising and bubbly and odd that the production lingers in your head far longer than you'd expect it to. It's cotton candy, all right, but it's cotton candy filled with Pop Rocks.

Sure, it's the Greek tragedy to end all Greek tragedies. But is any stage tragedy, Greek or otherwise, as unashamedly, wickedly enjoyable as that of the fall of Oedipus?

The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's The Graduate provides a respectable amount of fun, considering that almost nothing in it makes the least bit of sense. Adapted from Charles Webb's 1963 novel and/or Mike Nichols' seminal 1967 comedy, Terry Johnson's script frequently feels like the movie version on fast-forward - the playwright clumsily barrels through both the narrative and its complex emotional transitions - and the show's tone and performance styles are all over the map. Yet considering its frequently awkward and unconvincing elements, director Wayne Hess' comedy does at least offer one truly magical ingredient in Erin Lounsberry, whose performance here is insinuating, disturbing, sexy, and richly, deeply funny.

The Harrison Hilltop Theatre's latest offering is the 65-minute solo presentation Thom Pain (based on nothing). Yet its title seems more than a little inaccurate, because by the time this rather astounding monologue reaches its climax, it seems to have been based on everything: truths and fabrications and suppositions and dreams, and on the audience's expectations and perceptions not only of theatre, but of life itself.

For the third year in a row, I've composed a list of 12 area-theatre participants who devoted their time, energy, and skills to numerous theatrical organizations and venues during the past year. And once again - happily and inspiringly - it hasn't been necessary to repeat names from one year to the next; local theatre, to the great good fortune of local audiences, never seems to run out of talent.

Five Extraordinary Ensembles

An actor friend of mine says he always wants to be the worst performer in everything he's in, because if the rest of the cast is doing stronger work than he is, that means the show is in really, really good shape. With that in mind, any actor worth his or her salt would be thrilled to be the worst performer among these five ensembles.

If you attend The Green Room's current production of Angels in America: Perestroika, I assume you know that you'll be entering playwright Tony Kushner's work halfway through, as part one of this two-part saga, Millennium Approaches, debuted at the Rock Island venue on Halloween. The back page of Perestroika's program provides a very bare-bones summary (or refresher) on what previously occurred in Kushner's epic exploration of the 1980s, but, I'll venture, your enjoyment of this second outing will be significantly enhanced by familiarity with the show - and not just familiarity with the Green Room's first installment.

Tony Kushner's Angels in America has an intimidating reputation: It's a work in two parts - Millennium Approaches and Perestroika - that earned its playwright a Pulitzer Prize; it boldly explores religion, politics, and homosexuality in Reagan's America; and its two leading figures are men recently diagnosed with AIDS. So where, in regard to The Green Room's current presentation of Millennium Approaches, do I begin in describing just how much freaking fun this show is?