I love David Sedaris' writing, but on those rare occasions when I've heard the author read from his works on National Public Radio, I can only listen to him for a few minutes before feeling compelled to change the station. It's not that his high, reedy voice is unpleasant, exactly. But the caustic self-deprecation and derision that can make his stories so wickedly funny strike me as whiny and ungainly when Sedaris himself vocalizes them, and when he indulges in sentiment, his attempts at honest emotion ring hollow. (His "heartfelt" moments don't sound noticeably different from his sardonic diatribes.) This isn't a huge failing - Sedaris, after all, is a writer, not a performer - yet I still find that a little of him, vocally, goes a long way.
A beautiful princess. A handsome prince. A wicked queen. And a friendly woodsman who, if he refuses to cut out his best friend's heart, will find himself turned into that most hideous of creatures: SpongeBob SquarePants.
Never having done one, I can only imagine the challenges and pressures inherent in performing a one-person play that lasts over an hour, and I'm betting those challenges and pressures exponentially increase when you're also the play's author and co-director. I therefore doff my cap to Adam Michael Lewis, whose solo vehicle Mono-Blogs: Suffering Fools - currently running at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre - is a 60-plus-minute verbal marathon of rants, diatribes, and (as crass-tastic auteur Kevin Smith happily calls them) dick and fart jokes that Lewis delivers with unwavering fierceness and intensity.
There's an awful lot going on in the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's current presentation of the ghost story The Woman in Black - including two concurrent storylines, a wealth of exposition, a pair of actors taking on multiple roles and perspectives, and sound and lighting effects galore - and it winds up being much too much. But I'm generally happier watching a theatrical production that aims for the stars and doesn't get there than one that doesn't reach at all, so it was still easy to enjoy this wildly ambitious, if ultimately disappointing, presentation; I had just enough fun at Saturday's performance to regret not having more fun.
I was really looking forward to the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's production of The Full Monty, but that anticipation was nothing compared to how much I was looking forward to watching Friday's audience watch The Full Monty.
If you weren't able to get tickets for the Green Room's weekend presentations of Assassins, I'm guessing you weren't alone, as all three performances wound up selling out. But over the next two weekends, I urge you to try again - there are scenes in director Derek Bertelsen's production that are so good they'll give you the chills. And the scenes that don't? They're pretty amazing, too.
Even considering the show's cast and director, if you had told me a week ago that the musical comedy Are We There Yet? would wind up being my favorite Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse presentation over the past two years, I wouldn't have believed you.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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