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).
While the story would benefit from more attention to how and when plot points should unfold, and some of the dialogue would benefit from a greater awareness of how people actually speak, I quite liked the themes that author Melissa McBain explores in Altar Call.
The last time I watched Nancy Teerlinck perform, earlier this year, she offered a moving portrayal of a matriarch making tough, emotional decisions in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Moving. Yet as much as I liked her in that role, I think she's even better when she's playing ... well, a bitch ... such as the one she portrays in Playcrafters' current offering, The Christmas Express. Teerlinck's Hilda, who runs the play's Holly Railway Station, is an acerbic, crotchety, sarcastic, bitchy delight, and I think I now love the performer, and want to see this side of her comicality a lot more often.
It doesn't happen often, especially if you attend a lot of local theatre - where the on-stage faces tend to become familiar ones. But every once in a while, you'll be at a production that you're really enjoying, and gradually realize that you're routinely focusing on one performer above the others - and asking yourself, with a grin, "Who is that?"
Described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "simultaneously hilarious and touching," the road-trip comedy Leaving Iowa is the final presentation in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2011 season. Leaving Iowa is also the first presentation in Black Hawk College's 2011-12 theatre season, but don't chalk that up to either coincidence or some sort of Moline-based rivalry; the productions are actually one and the same.
What strikes me most about the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's production of Don't Talk to the Actors is the tone created by director Susan Simosky. While playwright Tom Dudzick's script calls for a couple of roles to perhaps be played bigger than they are, Simosky maintains a simple feel that's more natural than feigned. Watching Thursday's performance, it seemed as if I was looking in on real-life scenes rather than designed ones. There's a gentle, unforced flow to the effort that seems effortless.
The audience at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Saturday-night performance of Christmas Belles - 
Over my many years of theatre-going, there isn't a stage trilogy I've enjoyed quite the way I've enjoyed the Pazinski-family comedies of author Tom Dudzick, a trio of lightly philosophical, understatedly touching, devastatingly funny plays that began with 1994's Over the Tavern and continued with 1998's King o' the Moon.
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."
