After July 5's preview performance of On Golden Pond, it could be confidently asserted that Ernest Thompson's 1979 play was shaping up to be a show that Playcrafters Barn Theatre patrons would love.
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.
I could've left Saturday's Playcrafters Barn Theatre production of Ghost of a Chance at intermission and been quite pleased with the evening's entertainment. Unfortunately, I exited after the night's second act frustrated almost to the point of anger - not at director Patti Flaherty or her cast, but at the show's playwrights Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus.
The Curious Savage is the best production I've seen at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre so far this season. With its sharply funny script, interesting and endearing characters, and director Don Hazen's gentle touch rendering the piece heartfelt and sincere, I was captivated from beginning to end during Thursday's performance, curious as to how the story would unfold, and caring what would happen to the show's cast of sanatorium residents.
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.
The Playcrafters Barn Theatre's production of Rehearsal for Murder suffers from poor pacing, but excels in its sincere sentiment and charm. The actors, for the most part, tend to take too many beats between lines, which leads to sometimes-clunky dialogue progression. Still, Friday night's performance was appealing for its overall emotional effect, and likable for the cast's ability to move the audience to sympathetic sorrow for the main character's heartache.
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