items tagged with Jessica Denney

While playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s boom is slyly hilarious, and the QC Theatre Workshop’s production of it laudable for so many reasons, there is one aspect of the performance that stands out in particular: Angela Elliott’s laugh.

What starts as a theatre audition quickly becomes something entirely different in the QC Theatre Workshop’s second production, Private Eyes. And this change from what’s real to what’s … well … something else is something I don’t want to fully describe, because such a shift happened several times – and at very unexpected moments – during Friday's performance, making the evening a bit of an intriguing thrill that repeatedly piqued my curiosity.

For our third-annual conversation on the Year in Theatre, Thom White – the Reader’s chief theatre reviewer – and I thought we’d shake things up a bit. So instead of meeting for an hours-long breakfast to discuss the area stage scene, we met for an hours-long dinner to discuss the area stage scene.

And while I managed to keep things lively by spilling a completely full glass of water not 10 minutes after sitting down, we also managed to touch on many of the varied experiences that Thom (occasionally accompanied by his partner’s daughter Madison) and/or I had during another eventful year for fans of the theatre. Pack a lunch, sit back, and dive in ... .

New Ground Theatre’s current offering, Mr. Marmalade, is about four-year-old Lucy and her imaginary friends. Suicidal, coke-snorting, physically and mentally abusive imaginary friends. And it’s incredibly funny. One particularly dark scene during Thursday's performance, in fact, had me laughing so hard, for so long, that I was wiping away tears by the end of it.

The Reader's chief theatre reviewer, Thom White, saw and wrote about 52 area stage productions in 2011. I saw 39 and reviewed 12. Obviously, during our second-annual breakfast chat on the Year in Theatre, there was a bit to talk about.