items tagged with Michael Kennedy

David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is arguably, though not that arguably, the author's best-known, best-loved, and all-around best play. (Thanks to 1992's celebrated film version, I have friends - including friends who don't really like plays - who can quote entire scenes verbatim.) And it's no overstatement to say that the cast recruited for the Curtainbox Theatre Company's presentation of this exhilaratingly profane comedy is ridiculously gifted. At one point here, you'll find Michael Kennedy, Pat Flaherty, Eddie Staver III, Louis Hare, and Daniel D.P. Sheridan all sharing the Village Theatre stage, and that's before David Furness and Tristan Tapscott show up.

St. Ambrose University instructor Michael Kennedy, who has directed more than 75 collegiate theatre productions over the past 40 years, remembers the first - and, to his recollection, only - public complaint lodged against one of his shows, which appeared in the Diocese of Davenport's weekly newspaper The Catholic Messenger.

As its storyline was inspired by 1925's notorious Scopes "Monkey Trial," and its original 1955 presentation a response to McCarthyism, Inherit the Wind is one of those theatrical titles that wears its badges of Importance and Social Relevance on its sleeve. And so it isn't until you see the play (or see it again) that you realize (or remember) just how entertaining it is; Jerome Lawrence's and Robert E. Lee's courtroom drama is less a lecture or a harangue than a juicy, if sentimentalized, episode of Law & Order.

Before attending St. Ambrose University's production of God's Favorite, I had neither seen nor read Neil Simon's 1974 comedy - based on the Biblical book of Job - in which a wealthy, devout husband and father is tempted into renouncing God, refuses to do so, and subsequently suffers the loss of home, health, and family. I now consider the 34 years between the play's debut and Saturday's presentation the happiest years of my life, as I never had to endure what might be the single most irritating and unfunny comedy I've ever sat through.

As the first act of Arthur Miller's All My Sons nears its climax, the atmosphere is thick with tension and discomfort. A young man has proposed to the former girlfriend of his older brother, presumed dead three years after World War II. The boys' mother, convinced that her child is still alive, is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The boys' father, obviously hiding some dark secret, appears deeply nervous about an incoming phone call. And in St. Ambrose University's Saturday-night production of this American tragedy, you could tell that its Act I closer was really working, because for a few brief minutes, the audience collectively stopped coughing.

St. Ambrose University's Fortinbras was the most thoroughly entertaining theatrical production I've yet seen in 2007. And while, if you missed the show during its one-weekend, three-performance run, I have no interest in rubbing your noses in that fact, I feel the need to write about the experience because I hope that soon (a) you see Fortinbras and (b) you see this production's actors.

I got pretty choked up at Quad City Music Guild's production of It's a Wonderful Life: The Musical, especially when George started yelling at his kids. (They were so cute!) I was truly affected by the anguished performance of John VanDeWoestyne in the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

But, in 2006, do you know what area production made me cry like a little girl?

Freakin' Grease.

This past Saturday, I had the unique opportunity to catch two local theatrical productions: St. Ambrose University's Narnia (an hour-long stage version of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe) and the Quad City Music Guild's presentation of It's a Wonderful Life: The Musical. (Both closed on Sunday, December 3.)

Despite obvious differences in subject matter and audience demographic - Narnia was geared toward the 10-and-under set, while Wonderful Life was designed for ... well, pretty much everyone else - the shows did bear a striking similarity, in that both were musical adaptations of decidedly un-musical works with enormous fan bases; St. Ambrose and Music Guild could probably have secured full houses based on the titles alone.

A half-hour before Friday's performance of On Golden Pond at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, the theatre's producer (and Pond director) Dennis Hitchcock took the stage, and after making the traditional opening-night welcomes, warned that the show's first act alone ran nearly 80 minutes - a long haul, he explained, for elder audiences. Yet I'm thinking that Hitchcock's announcement was made less out of concern for the crowd's bladders than out of justifiable pride - a trek to the restroom would force people to miss parts of the show, and with the stunningly fine performance Michael Kennedy is giving here, who would want to miss even one?