The opening scene of Norm Foster's Wrong for Each Other at Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre had me worried that I was in for a fluffy, surface-level relationship comedy in which a divorced man and woman reunite after reminiscing about the happiest moments of their shared past. Thankfully, Wrong delved under that flimsy comedic surface and let viewers in on the arguments and unfortunate familial circumstances that steered the relationship of Rudy Sorenson (Chris White) and Nora Case (Jessica Nicol White) toward an inevitable separation. And while Wrong panders with a predictable ending and plenty of witty banter between the real-life newlyweds, the script felt the most natural, the most right, when its characters stopped putting so much effort into entertaining the audience, and focused on each other.
Playwright Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street, the season-closing presentation at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, was the stage inspiration for George Cukor's mystery/thriller Gaslight, so it's kind of appropriate that the production's gas lights are perhaps its cleverest touch. I'm often remiss in praising the design for Richmond Hill shows, especially given the inherent (and considerable) challenges of theatre-in-the-round. But Angel Street is so technically assured and aesthetically pleasing that I found myself grinning in the first mood-setting seconds of director Tom Morrow's Victorian drama. (I'm calling it a drama rather than a mystery and/or thriller because the show isn't really much of either. But more on that later.)
During a recent post-show conversation, an actor friend and I agreed that perhaps the most exciting moments at any theatrical production are those few seconds before the production even starts, when the lights dim, cell phones (please God) are turned to silent or vibrate, and the venue becomes alive with possibility - with the awareness that, in this live art form, absolutely anything can happen.
Prior to its appearance on the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's 2008 schedule, I hadn't heard of the Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten comedy Dearly Beloved, so I was reasonably surprised when I arrived for Thursday's opening-night presentation and saw that, barring a handful of seats, the house was completely full. (Did these people know something I didn't?) I took it as a good sign, however, and there was an even more promising one not 60 seconds after the show started, when its first line, its very first, earned a huge, unexpected laugh.
You know a comedy is in trouble when its most engaging scene features an elderly woman's description of her escape from a German concentration camp. You know a comedy is in serious trouble when it uses that description merely to goose its tinny excuse for a plot.
In a theatre weekend that found me attending a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, a Kaufman & Hart play, a Shakespeare, and a pseudo-Shakespeare, I have to admit that, with the Riverbend Theatre Collective's presentation of Kimberly Akimbo, I was so psyched to see actors in modern dress screaming obscenities at one another that I could barely contain myself.
"Life's full of surprises."
It doesn't happen often, thank heavens. But I occasionally leave a theatrical production less disappointed than pissed off, as I'm occasionally forced into watching talented people dedicate their energies to a show that's clearly beneath them. Such is the case, sadly, with the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Moonlight & Magnolias, playwright Ron Hutchinson's comedy about the (imagined) farcical re-writing of the Gone with the Wind screenplay, and a work so confused and offensive that it all but completely nullifies the enthusiasm with which it's being produced.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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