The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) is a loosely staged, sloppy mess of the comedy by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield. In presenting (almost) every single one of Shakespeare's plays in about an hour and a half plus intermission, director Tom Morrow didn't seem to give his five actors much in the way of blocking, leaving them to frequently mill about or form awkward clumps. Yet it's this unrefined quality that turns out to be the production's chief strength; it's all the more delightful for feeling less like a scripted piece than an improv show.
Choreographer Courtney Lyon outdid herself for Ballet Quad Cities' Love Stories featuring Romeo & Juliet. This piece, presented in two acts, enraptured me during Friday's performance, and it was beautifully bizarre - and I mean "bizarre" as a positive, as the moves, lines, and compositions Lyon created for each scene were often stunning and always interesting, eliciting from me multiple gasps of appreciation.
Like a few dozen other optimistic souls, I attended Saturday's Genesius Guild production of Twelfth Night hoping that the threatened thunderstorms would bypass the Quad Cities, or at least Rock Island's Lincoln Park, for three hours or so. Alas, Shakespeare's game was called on account of rain (and some major lightning) at roughly 8:30 p.m., so those of us who were willing and able were invited to return to see the rest of the show, and its opening half-hour again, on Sunday.
Legally Blonde: The Musical is, of course, based on the 2001 hit starring Reese Witherspoon, a movie that led to a rather woebegone sequel in 2003's Legally Blonde: Red, White, & Blonde. Yet while watching the original film's stage version on Thursday, I felt that Red, White, & Blonde also would've been a fitting title for Quad City Music Guild's terrifically peppy new presentation, considering that this solo-star-driven show came off, instead, as pretty wonderfully democratic.
As with many things in life, it can be blamed on a friendly purple dinosaur.
POMPEII
During Thursday's presentation, actor James Thames seemed out of place in Scott Community College's The Actor's Nightmare, acting like he was acting, offering a limited range of emotions and inflections, and speaking with a note of desperation in his tone. However, his amateurish performance, whether by design or not, actually proved spot-on for this comedy in which a non-actor finds himself forced to perform roles in four plays with no prior rehearsals.
Three hours goes by quite quickly during Genesius Guild's well-paced, oftentimes hilarious production of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. While the piece is considered a "problem play," as the script defies the expectations of a traditional comedy, director Jeff Coussens highlights the work's ample amounts of humor, particularly in the production's first half. And with Coussens and his cast punching up every punchline through inflection and a sort of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" attitude, I ended up laughing harder at Saturday's presentation, I believe, than I've ever laughed while watching a Shakespeare performance.
Many cast members in the Prenzie Players' current offering, Titus Andronicus, are at their best expressing physical and emotional pain. There's Aaron E. Sullivan's shift from utter despair to cackling insanity as the title character, Catie Osborn's post-rape brokenness as his daughter Lavinia, and Jessica White's shrieks as she watches her character's son slaughtered. The desperation is so penetrating in its realism and sincerity that I was often uncomfortable during Friday night's performance - which is to say that the production is shockingly effective at delivering the darkness of Shakespeare's work. I walked away in awe.
There may be some of you who hear the title King Lear and, knowing only of the play's reputation as the mack daddy of all Shakespeare tragedies, immediately presume that any evening production of the piece will last well into the next morning. Allow me, then, to quell your fears: Saturday's Genesius Guild staging of the Bard's opus began promptly at eight o'clock, and after the night's presentation had concluded, I was back in my car by 10:55.
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