28
Apr
2009
Music
Georgia Guitar Quartet
St. John's Lutheran Church
Saturday, May 2, 7 p.m.
Quad City Arts' 2008-9 Visiting Artist series wraps up with a May 2 concert by the Georgia Guitar Quartet, and because the ensemble is composed of classically trained chamber musicians, you probably already know what to expect from the group's performance: some Bach, a little Brahms, a bit of Radiohead ... .
SUGAR
OBSESSED
As with a person, sometimes you can fall immediately, madly, irrationally in love with a play. And I think I fell in love with author Charles Morey's Laughing Stock within its first two minutes, when artistic director Gordon Page (Don Hazen) introduced visiting actor Jack Morris (Alex Klimkewicz) to his venerated theatre in New Hampshire, and the young man took a moment to assess his surroundings before saying, incredulously, "It's a barn."
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, the Alan Ball comedy that opens the Riverbend Theatre Collective's 2009 season, takes place during a wedding reception, and the production is kind of like a wedding reception - or at least, the reception for a bride and groom you don't know all that well. It might begin awkwardly, but after a few drinks, dances, and interesting encounters with people you otherwise wouldn't have met, you discover that you're having an unexpectedly fantastic time, and when it's over, you may realize that you're not quite ready to leave.
As Ouiser Boudreaux, the easily agitated Southern matriarch with the permanently fixed scowl and "more money than God," Dee Canfield enters the Green Room Theatre's production of Steel Magnolias as though shot through a cannon.
I'm not sure where Barbara Park got the inspiration for her literary heroine Junie B. Jones, the adorable kindergarten heroine/hellion of the author's series of wildly popular children's books. But after seeing the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's presentation of Junie B. Jones & a Little Monkey Business, I have a pretty firm theory: Park swiped the characterization from kindergarten-era home movies taken of actress Sunshine Ramsey.
Neil Simon's The Dinner Party, written in 2000 and currently being staged at Black Hawk College, concerns three formerly married couples who meet for a très sophistiqué evening at a Paris restaurant: Claude (played here by Bryan Woods) and Mariette (Elizabeth Cook, alternating performances with Cayla Freeman), whose shared passion for literature outweighed their passion for each other; Andre (Paul Workman) and Gabrielle (Elizabeth Paxton, alternating with Kristen Lynn Raccone), whose sexual rapport wasn't enough to keep Andre faithful; and Albert (Thomas Riley Ratkiewicz) and Yvonne (Kaeleigh Esparza, alternating with Lynn Aaronson), whose obsessive devotion to one another eventually resulted in them getting divorced - twice.
Change of State Performance Project
