I sometimes joke that “God gave us friends to make up for family.” But then another adage also comes to mind: “It could always be worse!” So if you think you have characters in your family, you may want to see the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre comedy In-Laws, Outlaws & Other People (That Should be Shot).
I sat through Thursday's The Boys Next Door at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre fascinated and perplexed by the mixture of emotions I felt. Author Tom Griffin's play about four men with various degrees of mental illness living together in a group home is a comedy, for sure. But director John VanDeWoestyne and his cast presented it in such a way that I wanted to "Ha!" and "Aw-w-w!" simultaneously during almost every moment. The piece is both funny and deeply touching, and much of the credit for that goes to the perfectly cast actors playing the titular "boys." While it took time for a couple of them to win me over, by intermission, each one had me convinced that he shouldn't have been cast any other way.
John VanDeWoestyne proves a capable center for the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's The Odd Couple. Portraying playwright Neil Simon's slovenly divorcée Oscar Madison, VanDeWoestyne's comedic timing shines as he adeptly pauses here or rushes there in ways that increase his punchlines' comical impact. The actor never quite overcomes his natural poise and intelligence to fully sell the character, but his Oscar is also a bit funnier for those qualities; it's fun seeing this normally classy man speaking and acting like a disorderly bachelor. While there's plenty that's worthy of praise in director Mike Skiles' well-paced production, it's VanDeWoestyne who deserves extra credit for being the glue that holds it all together.
Playwright Lee Blessing's A Walk in the Woods successfully re-creates a sense of the Reagan-era Cold War conflict between the United States and the then-Soviet Union ... at least according to an older friend of mine who also attended Friday's performance of New Ground Theatre's production. However, my theatre-going companion also agreed with me that the play is reminiscent of the film My Dinner with Andre, famed for simply being a conversation between two people in one setting. And Blessing's story is just that - a series of discussions between a U.S. and Russian diplomat sitting, or sometimes standing near, a park bench. For two hours.
As much as I love theatre-in-the-round, I recognize that not all plays work in a 360-degree environment. Take, for instance, Noises Off, the current offering at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre. A farcical comedy about the staging of a play (within the play) titled Nothing On, the show's second act offers, essentially, a view of the first act's goings-on seen from backstage, and the production's set is typically turned 180 degrees during the intermission to allow for that behind-the-scenes look. Consequently, prior to Thursday's performance at the Barn, I was baffled as to how director Jalayne Riewerts would pull off, in the round, this production of author Michael Frayn's farce. She does it, it turns out, by not staging the piece in the round.
When I first learned that Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre was staging author Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning Noises Off this fall, I'll admit that the news made me chuckle, and not just because the show is so funny.
Based on the reputation of the Tuna plays and remembering how heartily I laughed during a recent production of A Tuna Christmas, I expected the original piece in the series, Greater Tuna, to be, well, funnier. That's not to say that the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's production of this comedy isn't without laughs - they're just not side-splitting ones. Still, thanks to the two actors who impressively handle 20 roles between them, director James Fairchild's staging of authors' Jaston Williams', Joe Sears', and Ed Howard's play is adequately diverting, and good for an evening's entertainment.
By the time the titular character entered the play, I'd resigned myself to having to endure two more hours of few-and-far-between laughs during Friday's performance of The Nerd, while also fighting off a sleepiness fostered by the unusually high temperature in the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre. However, appearing in only his third stage role, Jordan L. Smith woke me up and held my attention with his annoyingly nasally delivery of playwright Larry Shue's monologues. The best reason to see The Nerd, it turns out, is the nerd himself.
At the start of the intermission to Friday night's District Theatre performance of Company, my partner turned to me and said, "I don't remember this show being that funny." He was right, because director David Turley accentuates the funny parts in this musical by composer Stephen Sondheim and writer George Furth. He does so, however, with subtle nudges and winks that almost cross over into silliness but don't, and that keep the production from sinking into sappy sentimentality.
