items tagged with New Ground Theatre

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.

New Ground Theatre’s God of Carnage is one of the funniest shows, if not the funniest, I’ve seen on a Quad Cities stage so far this year. Not only is the script by playwright Yasmina Reza sharp, surprising, and witty, but director Derek Bertelsen’s handling of the pacing and his cast’s character choices had me laughing embarrassingly loudly at Thursday’s performance. Even two days later, I find myself mentally inserting quotable dialogue from the play into conversations (though I’d rather not quote any of it here, as most of the best lines involve the “F” word).

“I think it came from going to church,” says area actor Pat Flaherty of his childhood interest in theatre. “Because I’d go to church, and I’d see this guy who was holding everybody’s interest through the whole service. It was very dramatic – they’d light the candles and ring the bells and everything – and for a while I thought I wanted to be a priest because of that.

“It turned out I just wanted to be on stage.”

I make a conscious effort to suppress expectations prior to seeing a production, for fear they’ll rise to the unattainable. With Genesius Guild’s Ajax, however, I couldn’t help it. I was so taken with last year’s Andromache, performed in traditional period masks, that I was giddy with anticipation to see this summer’s Greek-tragedy offering. And despite a few apparent stumbles over lines and one glaringly missed cue, director Don Wooten’s effort did not disappoint. Saturday night’s performance of Sophocles’ piece captivated me with its creative execution.

Allow me, if you will, to get the unpleasantries out of the way right away, so that I can expound upon the virtues of New Ground Theatre’s debuting drama Under the Radar. The play, inspired by the local gay scene in the late 1970s, isn’t eloquent in its verbiage or impressively acted; the dialogue is amateurishly written; and for the most part, the individual performances are adequate, at best.

Fortunately, though, the employment of news, game-show, and other TV-programming clips from 1978 provides context for the social environment of the time, and elevates the piece to a place of educational significance.