items tagged with Lincoln Park

Back in 2006, when I composed my first list of a dozen theatre "Essentials" - theatrical talents whose gifts were employed in a number of area productions - I couldn't have imagined that I'd find a dozen new names to add year after year. Well, as 2009 draws to a close, we can officially add another " ... after year" to that sentence.

Following Saturday's presentation of Thesmophoriazusae - this summer's annual Genesius Guild send-up of an ancient-Greek comedy - I had the chance to say hi to its adaptor/director, Don Wooten. I congratulated the Guild founder on the sensationally silly 75 minutes that he and his cast had just delivered, and during our conversation, another patron came up to Wooten and told him that this Aristophanes goof was the most enjoyable season-ender she'd seen in decades.

Well, damn ... that trumps my praise.

Michael King has appeared in so many Genesius Guild productions, and has delivered such consistently outstanding performances, that it's easy to take the actor/director's copious talents for granted. Yet the experience of watching him as the scheming Richard III in the Guild's Henry the Sixth: Richard, Duke of York - the concluding half of director Don Wooten's two-part presentation of Henry plays - is so startling, exhilarating, and fresh that it's almost as though you're seeing the actor for the very first time. Stage work as profoundly inspired as King's is a night of unforgettable theatre unto itself. Then again, very little about this production isn't a thrill.

Even if you didn't know that Genesius Guild's Henry the Sixth: The Contention was an amalgamation of Shakespeare's Henry VI: Parts I and II - with Part III opening on July 17 - and didn't know that the production was directed and adapted by Guild founder Don Wooten, it's likely that your first glimpse at the program would be enough to intimidate you.