items tagged with Tom Morrow

Judging by Friday’s performance of The 39 Steps at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, it’s apparent that director Tom Morrow likes sight gags and British humor. He handles playwright Patrick Barlow's comically melodramatic take on the 1915 spy thriller – and Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film – with care, avoiding over-the-top staging but highlighting the humor in ways that elicit a lot of laughs. (Whereas overselling the gags would likely elicit groans.)

It doesn’t happen often, especially if you attend a lot of local theatre – where the on-stage faces tend to become familiar ones. But every once in a while, you’ll be at a production that you’re really enjoying, and gradually realize that you’re routinely focusing on one performer above the others – and asking yourself, with a grin, “Who is that?”

Described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “simultaneously hilarious and touching,” the road-trip comedy Leaving Iowa is the final presentation in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s 2011 season. Leaving Iowa is also the first presentation in Black Hawk College’s 2011-12 theatre season, but don’t chalk that up to either coincidence or some sort of Moline-based rivalry; the productions are actually one and the same.

I have little doubt that many patrons of the Playcrafters Barn Theatre will enjoy its current production of Hard to Believe, as there’s consistently an audience appetite for shows on themes of faith and God. The opening-night premiere of this locally written musical, however, reminded me too much of church performances of which I’ve seen or been a part. I’m not sure Hard to Believe will find a place in community theatres alongside other musicals, but it could very well find its place within many a church’s walls.

"I think Playcrafters has traditionally had the reputation of being a stodgy old theatre that only does six comedies a year," says Tom Morrow, a frequent actor and director for Moline's venerable Barn Theatre. "And admittedly, we do a lot of comedies. But every once in a while, we try to stick our necks out and do something else."

That they do. In addition to the titles produced in conjunction with Playcrafters' 2009 "Diversity Initiative" - Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and August Wilson's Fences - other recent "something else"s have included 2005's Altar Call, a debuting, religiously themed drama written by local playwright Melissa McBain, and 2008's Promises, Promises, one of only a handful of musicals the theatre has produced during its 81-year history.

And on September 10, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre will actually present something of a blend of these latter two works - a debuting, religiously themed musical - when it premieres Hard to Believe, a song-filled re-telling of the Biblical story of Job, directed by Morrow, and written and composed by Tim Stoller and Jonathan Turner. Previously staged, in workshop form, at Rock Island's defunct Green Room Theatre in 2008 and Davenport's Zion Lutheran Church in 2009, Turner says that "the whole theme of the show is about the challenges of faith, and maintaining your faith in the face of all this tragedy."
Read More About Leap Of Faith: Playcrafters Presents The Biblical Musical "Hard To Believe," Opening September 10...