David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama, one year after winning a Best Actress Tony Award for Sex & the City star Cynthia Nixon. A movie adaptation is currently being filmed, starring Academy Award winners Nicole Kidman and Dianne Wiest.
When Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre opens its presentation of Lindsay-Abaire's acclaimed play on August 13, it will feature popular local performers Jessica Nicol, Denise Yoder, and Susan Perrin-Sallak, and boast direction by Bryan Tank, much admired for his work in such Quad City Music Guild productions as Jekyll & Hyde, Evita, and the recent All Shook Up.
And, as Tank himself understands, Richmond Hill's Rabbit Hole is still no slam dunk.
FUNNY PEOPLE
Following Saturday's presentation of Thesmophoriazusae - this summer's annual Genesius Guild send-up of an ancient-Greek comedy - I had the chance to say hi to its adaptor/director, Don Wooten. I congratulated the Guild founder on the sensationally silly 75 minutes that he and his cast had just delivered, and during our conversation, another patron came up to Wooten and told him that this Aristophanes goof was the most enjoyable season-ender she'd seen in decades.
Neil LaBute's Bash - the debut presentation from the newly formed Phoenix Theatre Company - finds three of the author's short plays performed in succession, and in the middle of its first offering, actor Chris White rises from his chair, walks to its back, removes his suit coat, and then sits down again. In movie parlance, this is what would be known as Bash's "action scene."
Some 20 minutes before the finale to the Timber Lake Playhouse's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you'll finally hear something that you hadn't heard once during the musical's first two hours: a legitimately sincere number. Granted, this romantic ballad is being sung by a practiced con man, and the object of his affection is a young woman from whom he's trying to swindle 50 grand, and he's only been hitting on her to prevent his rival from scoring first. But, hey, sincerity is sincerity, and besides, it's the only heartfelt moment you're gonna get.
ORPHAN
As the second in a three-part series of autobiographical works, Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues is, I think, something truly rare: a play that not only succeeds independently of its precursor (Brighton Beach Memoirs) and follow-up (Broadway Bound), but that's a smarter, funnier, stronger piece than either of its trilogy partners. Even those of us who are casually dismissive of the playwright's style generally agree that this military-themed outing showcases Simon at his absolute finest; the drama is lightly poignant and unforced, and the jokes - and there are dozens of great ones - seem to spring naturally from personality and situation. (In a wonderful break from his punchline-driven norm, Simon's characters here don't all sound interchangeable.)
Michael King has appeared in so many Genesius Guild productions, and has delivered such consistently outstanding performances, that it's easy to take the actor/director's copious talents for granted. Yet the experience of watching him as the scheming Richard III in the Guild's Henry the Sixth: Richard, Duke of York - the concluding half of director Don Wooten's two-part presentation of Henry plays - is so startling, exhilarating, and fresh that it's almost as though you're seeing the actor for the very first time. Stage work as profoundly inspired as King's is a night of unforgettable theatre unto itself. Then again, very little about this production isn't a thrill.
Countryside Community Theatre's current, charming presentation of Annie Get Your Gun is directed by married couple Christina and William Myatt, and stars married couple Sheri and Wayne Hess as Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. (You'll also find the wedded Cheryl and John Wagner among the show's 38 cast members, plus several parent/child and sibling/sibling combinations.) Yet the production's most endearing, unexpectedly inspired couple turns out to be two performers who don't share 40 years between them, and whose characters you're probably unfamiliar with if your only exposure to this Irving Berlin classic comes via Ethel Merman's glorious blare.
Over the last five summers, I've attended more than a dozen productions directed by the Timber Lake Playhouse's artistic director, Brad Lyons, and the majority of them have been utterly sensational. But I can't recall ever being more knocked out by the man's skills and obvious love for his craft than I was during Friday night's Wait Until Dark, Timber Lake's current - and top-to-bottom stunning - presentation of playwright Frederick Knott's 1966 thriller.
