items tagged with Treasure Island

The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Death of a Salesman marks one of James Driscoll’s most powerful, effective, fully realized performances to date, which is saying a lot given the actor’s résumé, which includes roles such as Long John Silver in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s Treasure Island and his multiple characters in last year’s Anton in Show Business for New Ground Theatre. During Friday’s presentation, I was awed by Driscoll’s ability to shift from sanity to a mental confusion bordering on insanity as his Willy Loman transitioned from his vision of his past to a moment in the present. Driscoll accomplishes this both through physical gestures, such as rubbing his head as if sweating, and vocal inflection, as his voice becomes more frantic and emotional during his state of confusion.

The plot of playwright Jeff Baron’s Visiting Mr. Green is quite simple and predictable. And Baron’s script is not as poignant as it seems to have been meant to be, especially since its message of accepting people’s differences – particularly the differences presented in this play – has been heard before, and in far more effective ways. That being said, the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s production of Baron’s work is truly touching, with its strong sentimentality helping to disguise the play’s weaknesses.

The Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s take on the classic Robert Louis Stevenson adventure novel Treasure Island – adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig – certainly kicks off with a dynamic start. Director, lighting director, and set designer Jennifer Kingry’s impressive recreation of a lightning storm is ominous and tense, as is the first scene aboard a pirate ship, and if the play’s pirates portray any sense of threat, it is in these opening minutes, as they snarl at and descend upon a perceived traitor and treasure-map thief. The storm ends, however, as does the scene, and the rest of the play lacks the excitement set up at the start.