Sometimes I will read a great book, or see a great play, and wait in excited expectation for the author’s next work. That was my feeling when I attended the District Theatre’s May 13 production of A Behanding in Spokane.
During Friday's performance, the QC Theatre Workshop's The Pillowman had me in stitches. While I didn't laugh loudly often, I did chuckle repeatedly throughout the performance, only subduing my laughs out of concern that the subject of my delight was too dark to be funny. But playwright Martin McDonagh's dark comedy is both unquestionably dark and outrageously funny. I mean, it has a young girl (Laila Haley) who considers herself Christ-like proclaiming, "I don't think I'm Jesus. I [effing] am Jesus!" That is some dark comedy.
ARGO
The Irish accents are so good in New Ground Theatre's The Beauty Queen of Leenane that, during Friday night's performance, it actually took me a while to understand the actors - particularly Susan Perrin-Sallak and Melissa Anderson Clark, who play the mother and daughter at the center of the play. It took me about as long to also understand the reason playwright Martin McDonagh's work has won so many awards, as I found the story a bit slow and dull at first, though it gradually built to a punch that I didn't see coming despite (as I recognized in hindsight) it being clearly foreshadowed.
On Thursday, the District Theatre debuted a most admirable, impressive production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, a play boasting numerous surprises both major and minor. Yet if the reactions of a few of the evening's audience members are to be trusted, it might be necessary to spoil a few right off the bat.
Theatre can be a great escape, but it can also be so much more. In 2006, most of the area's challenging works were presented by the New Ground Theatre, My Verona Productions, and the Prenzie Players, and over the past year and a half, I've had the pleasure of interviewing the impresarios of these organizations: New Ground Artistic Director Chris Jansen, My Verona producers Sean Leary and Tristan Tapscott, and Prenzie founders Cait Bodenbender, John Luxton, Aaron Sullivan, and Denise Yoder.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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