“The word 'theatre' comes from the Greeks. It means 'the seeing place.' It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.” – Stella Adler
The QC Theatre Workshop's latest production, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (and Davenport native) Susan Glaspell's Inheritors, is rightly the place to look for one's truth in life, and to understand views on a diverse archive of social situations.
I won’t lie: I left the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s January 5 preview performance of Arsenic & Old Lace a little creeped out. This show could be titled The Original American Horror Story, although a version with a light seasoning of laughter, and director Donna Weeks did an especially nice job of casting the show's eccentric characters that brought us into its world of homicide and pleasantries.
The QC Theatre Workshop's Tribes didn't start off well for me on Friday, as I immediately hated Adam Cerny's overacting, with eye rolls so huge I was sure anyone in the lobby could see them through the curtain that separates it from the performance space. So I prepared myself for two hours of such overly dramatic physicality, after first cursing director Jennifer Popple for casting Cerny as a son in playwright Nina Raine's troubled-family saga.
The District Theatre's Doubt may be the most exceptionally performed, strongly directed production I've yet seen in the Quad Cities. Saturday night's flawless performance left me in awe, particularly for the production's perfect casting, and for how well director James Fairchild highlights playwright John Patrick Shanley's humor.
The Irish accents are so good in New Ground Theatre's The Beauty Queen of Leenane that, during Friday night's performance, it actually took me a while to understand the actors - particularly Susan Perrin-Sallak and Melissa Anderson Clark, who play the mother and daughter at the center of the play. It took me about as long to also understand the reason playwright Martin McDonagh's work has won so many awards, as I found the story a bit slow and dull at first, though it gradually built to a punch that I didn't see coming despite (as I recognized in hindsight) it being clearly foreshadowed.
New Ground Theatre's current offering, Mr. Marmalade, is about four-year-old Lucy and her imaginary friends. Suicidal, coke-snorting, physically and mentally abusive imaginary friends. And it's incredibly funny. One particularly dark scene during Thursday's performance, in fact, had me laughing so hard, for so long, that I was wiping away tears by the end of it.
A day after seeing it, I still can't decide whether I like playwright Jim Leonard Jr.'s And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, but I do know that I appreciate director Patti Flaherty's efforts in staging this nonlinear tale for New Ground Theatre. During Friday's performance, I struggled to follow the action, as Leonard's script confusingly jumps back and forth in time. Thankfully, however, Flaherty's directorial work helps create some clarity to the "when" with which we're dealing.
Susan Perrin-Sallak is currently one of the bravest actors in the Quad Cities. Starring in New Ground Theatre's Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, she's required to sing badly, and Perrin-Sallak delivers a daring vocal performance that's intentionally off-pitch and off-key, with poor placement, intonation, and timbre. It leaves her vulnerable to audience perception that the performer really can't sing. However, since her caterwauling is required by the role, and presented with such abandon, Perrin-Sallak's vocally painful singing is actually awfully good.
