11
Apr
2016
One of the great things about living in the Quad Cities area is that there is a variety of theatre to suit almost everyone’s taste. At one end of the spectrum are theatre companies that mostly offer edgy, thought-provoking material, and at the other are venues that generally deliver more lighthearted, uncomplicated fare – plays such as the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's romantic comedy Amy’s Wish, whose opening-night performance on April 7 was a true crowd-pleaser.
The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's performance of Bingo at times feels like playing bingo - hoping for a letter and number combination that you don't quite get, but finding yourself pleasantly surprised when you make a full card by the end.
A poorly written script isn't enough to derail the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Down to Earth. While I've never before thought "Too much exposition!" as much as I did during Thursday's performance, I still enjoyed director Joe DePauw's presentation of playwright Bettye Knapp's weak "comedy fantasy" about angels coming to Earth.
To be frank, I didn't find the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's comedy I Take This Man all that funny, at least not consistently. However, playwright Jack Sharkey's plot - about a single woman who brings home an unconscious Boston Marathon runner in order to finally have the romance she's long wanted - is incredibly interesting, particularly considering the gradual pace at which Sharkey's story unfolds, leaving you constantly wondering what will happen next. I may not have laughed as much as Sharkey would have liked, but I was certainly entertained during Thursday's performance.
Three days after seeing A Nice Family Gathering at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, I was still trying to understand the inclusion of the word "nice" in playwright Phil Olson's title. This isn't a feel-good, fuzzy-holiday-feelings sort of Thanksgiving play that would render the title appropriate, if clichéd. Nor is it an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy that makes the use of the word ironic. (Nor, for the record, is it a play about a family with the last name Nice.) I'm guessing, however, that an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy was Olson's intent, given that the content of his play kind of approaches shocking, though barely.
Director Emmalee Moffitt's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre production of Independence may be the first work I've seen in which the pacing is a problem because it's too fast. It struck me, while watching Thursday night's performance, that a lot of tension was lost due to the lack of awkward silences during verbal spats; Moffitt doesn't allow several scenes to breathe, particularly whenever the play's matriarch and her eldest daughter argue, and so they wind up playing like ordinary family squabbles, rather than the uncomfortable, dysfunctional altercations playwright Lee Blessing intended.
